In the March 26th issue of the New York Review of Books, reviewer Helen Epstein, considering two new works, begins with this statement: “The United States is in the throes of a colossal health crisis.”
Ms. Epstein was not writing about the Covid-19 pandemic. I suspect it wasn’t even on her radar when she wrote the piece some time before publication, and that well before the cover date. Sure, the Senate Intelligence Committee knew by then, as did other elected officials. Some epidemiologists and public health experts understood the likelihood of what has, in fact, occurred, saw the runaway train and told our leaders what they needed to do, but they were largely ignored. And there is the long-term problem of our health system, less free-market than perverted-market, for abstract ideas of supply and demand fail completely when it comes to the value we place on our own lives and on the lives of those we love. I’m not willing to offer my mother’s life nor sacrifice my own to prop up the value of shares in Boeing. I bet you’re not either.
But, as I said, Ms. Epstein was not writing about the pandemic, and while we can anticipate, with some dread, the many books that will be written about this scary time in which we live, she was reviewing books about what health insurance companies would call our nation’s “pre-existing condition,” one from which the nation suffered before this corona virus jumped species. She was referring to the soaring mortality rate among white Americans without a college degree. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of military service and trade schools. Many of us wish more young women and men became electricians and plumbers and roofers. I’m particularly big on roofers at the moment. I’m not suggesting that a Bachelor’s degree itself saves lives, nor am I suggesting that the sorts of jobs that require a degree somehow make you happier. The good Lord knows that isn’t necessarily true. But the data is the data, and it has been consistent and statistically significant, in fact, statistically overwhelming.
These deaths come from suicide, which has declined in most groups but risen sharply among those white Americans without a degree, especially men, especially in regions where manufacturing played an important role in the economy. Just as bad are the deaths from drug-addiction, especially in recent years opioid addiction, as well as lives lost to alcoholism. Suicide and addiction, the twin children of despair. The numbers are so big that the average lifespan of Americans as a whole started dropping in 2015.
I hear a lot of boasting about growth in the last decade, since the 2008 economic crisis, but it largely left these folks that worked in manufacturing behind. For many, especially the middle-aged, it hasn’t looked like there was much of a future, which has led to not only to despair, but also to rage, violence, and populism.
Now, I’m not going to try to parse the why. I have some ideas, exploitative labor practices in some countries, lack of environmental protections, as well as the insane cost of healthcare for workers here in the U.S. But I imagine that the despair that has driven so many to drink, to drugs, to self-destruction, isn’t all that different from the despair felt by the Hebrew exiles in Babylon. With an average lifespan not much over 40 years of age, the sixty five years they were in captivity was more than a lifetime. The generation that returned to Jerusalem only knew the once great capital from stories.
And here, Ezekiel. He was born into a family of priests. Like all prophets, he heard a call from God, believed that he had received a personal word that absolutely had to be spoken. The prophets that came before him, Samuel, Nathan, Elijah, known to us from the histories, Isaiah and Jeremiah, each with books of their own, the dozen prophets, historic and fictional, found in the Book of the Twelve, they almost all had a word of warning as well as a word of comfort, a word of promise. Ezekiel was mostly promise, for the worst had already happened. Jerusalem had been destroyed. That magnificent temple, the House of God built by Solomon, that most wise of kings, had been destroyed. The bones of a generation of exiles were in Babylon, not in Judah, where they belonged.
And here, this vision of dry bones in the valley, this vision of a people gone.
And here, the word of God. I will bring life where you see only death.
Speak my word, even here where no one seems to hear. The bones of your mothers and fathers hear. The four winds can hear. The power of life can hear, and will re-enter what looks used up, desiccated, dead.
Make straight a highway through the desert. We’re going home to a place we’ve never been before.
And they did. Persia conquered Babylon and sent all of those held captive back to their native lands. Persia, modern day Iran, granted people freedom and funded reconstruction. The Jerusalem that rose from the ashes was not the exact same as it was before. It would never be as it was before. But it would be close, new and yet in continuity with the past. A new Temple would go up, and it too would last for centuries. But an un-credentialed street preacher prophesied that it would once again be destroyed, not one stone left on top of another, and forty years later, that would happen.
But the people would go on, these people to whom God spoke, through word and deed, on the banks of the Nile and on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, these people who understood themselves as chosen, through Abraham or through Jesus. These people who crossed a desert escaping Egypt, would cross a desert coming home from Babylon, would scatter around the world, some following the rabbis, others the Way of Christ.
It looked bleak. The bones were dry, the valley a place of death. But God happened, as God always does, a mystery that is life and love and serendipitous creativity and mystery… and mystery, so powerful that it takes our breath away at times, for that power surges through creation, erupts from the human spirit, upcycles what looks broken and useless. Behold, I make all things new.
These bones, this traditional reading for Lent. This moment when things are looking grim. Wow.
And the word is that God is not finished with them yet. And the word is that God is not finished with us yet. Listen. Hear that? That is a wind coming this way, the branches just starting to stir.
And we too will rebuild after this pandemic. Maybe, just maybe, this is a time to listen to the prophets, to admit that what comes next won’t be exactly like what was before, BC, before Covid-19. Maybe it shouldn’t be. Maybe our supply chain should be less dependent on an authoritarian communist regime. Maybe our healthcare system should not put a price on people’s lives. Maybe we all thrive when workers thrive, like those folks driving trucks and stocking the shelves that so many have overlooked for so long. Here’s to the worker in the toilet paper factory and the folks filling soup cans.
Scripture is full of texts about labor, about immigrants, texts that condemn greed and announce God’s generosity, that demand that we be as generous, as forgiving, as we would have God be toward us.
Maybe this is a chance for us to ask hard questions about how we define success, to look at the dry bones in the river valleys of America where once great mills and manufacturing plants crumble, along with the lives that depended on them.
You’re probably stuck at home. Why not spend a little time imaging a world where love and justice win. As John Lennon, sang, imagine. Dream a little dream. Heck, dream a big dream. We’ve got this. We can survive this and come back strong, making the world a better place. We claim to be a people of hope. Look at them bones, that dry and dusty valley. What do you choose to see there?
Things looked pretty bleak. Speak to those bones, said the Lord. Trust me says the Lord. I know a thing or two about creating life.
Amen.