A Contagion Has Erupted

Way back when I was a pastor and my brother and his family would visit us just after Christmas, my sister-in-law fussed and fumed that my post-Christmas homily always focused on a somewhat ugly part of the Silent Night narrative. It was my habit/discipline to preach from one of the texts assigned for that Sunday in the Common Lectionary. I could not help it if Matthew’s Gospel told the story of the Slaughter of the Innocents. Musing from ‘Bethlehem to Bedlam,’ I’d always have to wonder aloud whether Jesus grew up with almost no friends his age to play with. Oh, dear, why do liberal preachers have to expose parts of the story so as to take some of the edge off the cozy feelings?

Well, I haven’t preached for a very long time and I’ve got the itch to resonate in a very dissonant tone from “Silver Bells” on this Christmas Eve. It is time to remember that it was very dark that first Christmas and still is.

It is no slaughter but all of us are threatened. It is a worse plague than HIV-Aids; it is more of a threat than Ebola. It is trumpacardia, so named as it strikes the very heart of our Democracy.

The outbreak has been identified as recently as mid-October by our 44th President, George W. Bush, when he spoke openly of a “nationalism distorted into Nativism.” Senator John McCain, himself at the mercy of a life-threatening cancer, joined in the identification of this disease when he spoke of “half-baked spurious nationalism cooked up by people [he didn’t mention specific names] who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems.” Republican Senator Bob Corker aligned himself with this diagnostic team by pointing out an “utterly untruthful President.” Corker’s fellow Republican Senator Jeff Flake signed off on the frightening diagnosis when he similarly characterized a “flagrant disregard for truth and decency.”

That trumpacardia is dangerously contagious is evident in its infection of military stalwart Gen. John Kelly, daughter of pious evangelicalism Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and even straight-laced convert from Roman Catholicism to Protestant fundamentalism Vice President Pence, who regularly calls his wife ‘mother.’ All three indicate by speech patterns as well as cognitive dysfunction, that their brain cells have been altered, as though by genetic manipulation, to patterns not imagined except by George Orwell’s prescient 1984. Apparently nearly half the population of the USA has been exposed to and is showing clinical signs of this deadly outbreak.

Do not panic! There is a remedy! Researchers with capability like that of the World Health Organization, but not limited by the recently truncated vocabulary of the Federal Center for Disease Control, have traced the source of the outbreak to a Republican nomination and subsequent election of a real estate entrepreneur become TV personality, Donald John Trump.

Surgical removal of the primary source of the outbreak, followed by vaccination, researchers assure us, will over time cure the infection and lead to the restored health of our People and Land. Do not let suspicious naysayers deter you from receiving the inoculation. There are no health-related injuries from receiving this vaccination; there is no mercury used in its manufacture and it is not a live virus. It is though a remarkable preventative. This vaccination is without cost and is self-administered. It is most effective when received in daily doses from MSNBC or NPR.  A milder inoculation can result from a similar regimen from CNN.

The warning label on the inoculation cautions that recurrence of the disease can result from subsequent exposure to FoxNews and anything controlled by Sinclair Broadcasting. Both these sources are being sold as truly effective but are in fact, placebos at best, but more likely counterfeit or fake drugs.

Season’s Greetings!