Dear reader: Peace be with all of you in these difficult times. What follows is borrowed from a letter I sent to the members of my parish, for which I am the adult Christian formation director. It’s not quite on the usual topic of this blog, but I hope it brings you a bit of cheer at a time when we all need some.

One of the great cult rock songs from the California rock scene of the 1970s was “Lawyers Guns and Money” by Warren Zevon. You can listen to it here. It goes like this:

I went home with a waitress the way I always do
How was I to know she was with the Russians, too?

I was gambling in Havana, I took a little risk
Send lawyers, guns, and money
Dad, get me out of this.

An innocent bystander
Somehow, I got stuck between a rock and a hard place
And I’m down on my luck
Yes, I’m down on my luck
Well, I’m down on my luck

I’m hiding in Honduras, I’m a desperate man
Send lawyers, guns, and money
The **** has hit the fan

“Lawyer, Guns, and Money” is more than a satire of late Cold War (or early hipster) culture. In fact, it is nothing less than a 20^th Century lament. The lament mode must have appealed to Zevon; he also wrote “Poor Poor Pitiful Me,” one of Linda Ronstadt’s biggest hits, for which the title pretty much says everything you need to know. The song is not an Old Testament lament. The singer in “Lawyers…”, on some sort of extended spring break lark, has discovered that there are dangerous people out there, and now, an “innocent bystander,” finds himself somehow stuck in a bad spot. None of this is his fault; he’s just “down on his luck.” And while his plea to his Dad for help may remind us of the Psalmist calling on God, nowhere do I recall the psalmist asking for lawyers or money. That one line in fact captures modern life better than almost anything I can think of. What do we do in times of distress or conflict? Start a war, call a lawyer, or spend some money. (Note: Zevon himself was certainly no whiner. He died at 56 from mesothelioma. A frequent guest on David Letterman, his only comment on his illness when he last appeared was “I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years.”)

The lament tradition, which draws on the Book of Deuteronomy’s covenant theology – that is, our well-being ultimately depends on God’s protection, which is offered to us as a package deal with God’s wisdom —  goes something like this:

Israel: What’s going on, God? Things are really bad right now.

God: What did you expect? Remember all those commands Moses gave you? Why didn’t you listen?

Israel: You were right, you were right. Please rescue us and we’ll do better from now on. You’re the greatest, God.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Lamentation is in fact a form of worship, perhaps the most profound, because we demonstrate our confidence in God by turning our sorrows over to Him. The Psalms are full of lamentations. Over and over again, the Psalmist moves from despair to hope. Thus, Psalm 69 starts out “Save me O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold.” By the end, however the Psalmist says “I will praise the name of God with a song; I will magnify him with thanksgiving.” Likewise Psalm 13 begins “How long, O Lord?  Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?”, but ends “But I trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation; I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me.” And, most familiar to us, Jesus invokes Psalm 22 from the cross, when he says ““My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” It is no accident that the Psalmist saw fit to follow that with the most beloved of all the psalms “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”

Christians know that God did not send this virus to us. There are a whole bunch of reasons that the God Christians know through Jesus did not do this, indeed could not have done this, to us, starting with the fact that God loves us and wants us to flourish, so that punishing us with a virus would be contrary to his essential nature, a sort of divine schizophrenia. (And, yes, not even God can do things that are logically impossible. That’s why asking, “Can God make a rock so big not even he can pick it up?” is a dumb question for anyone over about 8 years old. God can’t make a square triangle either.) Nor, in any meaningful sense, did we “cause” this. We certainly didn’t create the virus or make it angry. Viruses don’t have emotions. Christians emphatically believe that God is not indifferent to us, but viruses certainly are.

But although neither God nor humans caused this, its reality requires ordinary citizens to do something that 21^st Century Westerners are not very good at: stop. Doctors, nurses, and scientists are rightfully searching for clues to how we can get ahead of this epidemic. That is what they should do. God gave us brains, and expects us to use them. But for the vast majority of us that aren’t medical professionals or scientists, the smartest thing we can do is, simply, nothing. Stay at home and give the professionals space to work. That, for modern persons, is the hardest thing to do. We are much better at go than at stop.

At heart, a lament is a prayer that arises from suffering. It’s not simply a complaint about our condition, although it is that. It is a leap of faith that our prayers will be answered. You may recall the scene from Indiana Jones  and the Last Crusade where Indy, to retrieve the Holy Grail and save his wounded father, steps out into the abyss and finds a bridge across a bottomless chasm. The hard part for us is that we are all wired in some fashion to be like Indiana Jones, to charge into danger. That’s part of the charm of the movie. The audience cannot unremember that Harrison Ford is not only Indiana Jones but also Han Solo of Star Wars fame, and his father, played by Sean Connery, is most famous as British agent James Bond. We could scarcely find two actors less associated with characters that rely on faith rather than effort.

Yet, that is precisely what we are called to do: stay at home, to wait on the Lord. Psalm 27 tells us:

The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?

The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid

 When evildoers assail me to devour my flesh—

my adversaries and foes—they shall stumble and fall.

 Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear;

though war rise up against me, yet I will be confident.

One thing I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after:

to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,

To behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.

 For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble;

he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will set me high on a rock.

Now my head is lifted up above my enemies all around me,

and I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy;

I will sing and make melody to the Lord.

Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud, be gracious to me and answer me!

 “Come,” my heart says, “seek his face!”

Your face, Lord, do I seek. Do not hide your face from me.

Do not turn your servant away in anger, you who have been my help.

Do not cast me off, do not forsake me, O God of my salvation!

 If my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up.

Teach me your way, O Lord, and lead me on a level path because of my enemies.

Do not give me up to the will of my adversaries, for false witnesses have risen against me, and they are breathing out violence. 

 I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

 Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!

Written in the First Temple period, when the belief was that YHWH actually resided in the Temple, the Psalm seems to describe a physical journey to the temple, where the psalmist will take refuge literally “in the house of the Lord,” and asks for protection from adversaries along the journey. Neither Christians nor Jews today, however, believe that access to and protection by God requires us to go anywhere. There is no single, physical residence for God. Rather, we take refuge in the Holy Spirit, which is available to us anywhere. The psalmist says “I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” That is what is required of us today, and that is something we can do at home, with each other’s help.

Finally, I got this from a friend yesterday:

World: There’s no way we can shut everything down in order to lower emissions, slow climate change and protect the environment.

Mother Nature: Here’s a virus. Practice.

To his credit, my friend, agnostic through and through, did not blame the pandemic on God — unlike many nonbelievers, who keep God around for the sole purpose of blaming Him for everything that’s wrong with the world. However, while God did not send us the virus, God does expect us to learn some things from it. My prayer today is that we take Him up on the opportunity. The world will change because of this; the question is how. This is a chance to practice things we may have forgotten about. Guns are not going to get us out of this crisis, and neither are lawyers (believe it or not) or, for that matter, money. What will, is faith, and hope, and charity. Faith that the extraordinary things demanded of us now will work. Hope that we have the strength to do it. And charity for each other as we do this.

My other prayer for today is to remember that there are people that cannot stay at home and wait: first responders, health care professionals, grocery store and pharmacy workers, caregivers, law enforcement officers, and so on. Even as we get anxious to reenter the larger world, they would want nothing more than to be sheltered at home with their loved ones. Let’s all pray that they be safe as they put themselves at risk for our sake.

God bless us, every one.