During this time of social distancing and staying home for our wellbeing and for the common good, home delivery has become a selling point for every commercial enterprise imaginable.

     This particular sense of delivery is the handing over or transferring possession of something. It is intentional and more often than not prearranged. You call...they deliver. As in these unusual times, the human interaction that defines most social exchanges can be cut to a minimum or eliminated entirely.

     On this Third Sunday of Easter we are invited by Scripture and the Church’s prayer to find relief and comfort in the sense of delivery that is not “of” something but from something and for Someone. “...and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil...” This sense of the term points to and celebrates our rescue or release from whatever oppresses us: an oppressive pharaoh or emperor, stinging serpents in the desert, lack of food and water, and finally the hard-heartedness of the very people who are the apple of God’s eye.

    In every age, and certainly in our own, we are and we know we are oppressed by that which seeks to trim and confine our humanity, by that which in other times we have simply taken for granted as being as good as it gets ... as being as good as we get. BUT, we have been delivered not but a seraph serpent on a pole, the blood of bulls or lambs from the flock, but by the Blood of THE Lamb. Circumstances might keep us from gathering in the heart of the Church, at the altar of the Word and of the Eucharist, but they have become our deliverance nonetheless! The Gift has not been withdrawn, but its power is intensified on our behalf. And it is given not only to address our pain, our fears, and even our losses in the face of COVID19. If creation should conspire to deliver this pandemic to us for some time yet to come, God is working our salvation in its turmoil and in its wake. And God’s grace is given to accomplish even more than we might think to ask.

     In these days we are reminded, that God remembers and delivers us from evil.   Amen.