Dare to Hope in a
Time of Pandemic By Rev. Dr Collin Cowan
SERMON AT THE ACADEMIC OPENING SERVICE OF THE FACULTY OF THEOLOGY AND RELIGION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PRETORIA GENESIS 45: 1-11; 1 PETER 1: 1-7
W
e are living in a broken world, a world that is more and more being defined by distrust, discord and disruptions of all kinds. This is not the world that so many of us desire and it is not the world that defines the content of our character and the quality of our contribution to society. Nonetheless, we cannot ignore this fact nor deny the truth. We all know that something is radically wrong with the world as it is; and that we yearn for a flourishing life, amid the destruction. We live between pain and possibility. We struggle with the meanness of humanity as we search for the meaning of our humanity. We hurt as much as we hope. We know that, as US Vice President, Kamala Harris, likes to say over and again: “We are better than this”. It is in the context of such a world that my topic for today’s sermon finds grounding – “Dare to hope in a time of pandemic”. Arundhati Roy, responding to the Covid-19 pandemic, says: Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to “normality”, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.
Indeed, I agree that we are ready for this daring “imagination” and this hope-filled “fight” because we know that the coronavirus is only a glimpse into the pandemics that plague society today, snuffing life from all of us. In this regard, this imagination and fight are for the soul of our humanity and the integrity of God’s creation. Therein lies the basis for hope and the path to our freedom and future. “Hope: the language of life” was the theme with which I started my journey with Council for World Mission. At our Assembly in 2012, we defined hope as a “statement of discontent”. We argued that such a statement speaks of hope as the language of life, the indomitable and audacious conviction… that with God all things are possible”. And we declared, with deep certainty, that we would “not settle for mediocrity or second best”. In his book, “Dare we speak of hope?” Alan Boesak, who was the keynote speaker at that Assembly, rightly suggests that hope functions within the framework of fragile faith; and that
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