This Disease – Coronavirus – Will Not End In Death

As we celebrate the 5th Sunday in Lent, Archbishop Charles Jason Gordon, in his homily said, “This disease will not end in death.”

Today’s gospel reading is another very big text, layered with meaning in every direction, every line, every verse, and has more symbolic meaning than you could ever believe. But today we can’t take all, otherwise we’d be here for a very long time. So what I want to pull out of the text is what I consider its core; its kernel. I want you to hear a line in this text, “this sickness will not end in death.” Now that is a most remarkable line for us to be reading on this day as we’re facing the pandemic throughout the world, and here in Trinidad and Tobago.

On the eve of moving into the next stage as we go into a full lockdown of our country; in the panic that people are experiencing; in all the different ways in which people are now fearful, anxious cabin fever has already stpped in for the children who have been home now a couple of weeks, and the parents who have had to be home with them. And now we have a further lockdown again because this sickness seems to be so pervasive, so powerful, it seems to be so invincible that it takes over a country and it does what it wants with the country. And yet we have to believe what the Word teaches us – “this sickness will not end in death.” “The sickness will not end in death.” That will not be the final end.

As we listen to this text of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus; these are the closest family of Jesus when he comes into Jerusalem. He comes up the Mount of Olives, he goes into the Garden of Gethsemane, he passes along into Bethany. This is a very short distance from Jerusalem to Bethany and whenever he’s in Jerusalem, that’s where Jesus would go, and that’s where he sees this family that he’s very close to, and yet, when he got the message that your friend Lazarus is ill, Jesus does the strangest thing ever; he waits two days.

For all of his sermon, please view the Youtube link below.