Let me begin by acknowledging rubbish.  We all know what rubbish is.  Perhaps you remember in Mother’s kitchen, or on the job site, when someone was cleaning up and the pile appeared in the middle of the work area:  rubbish.

            The book of Nehemiah acknowledges the rubbish that was a hindrance to those rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem:  “And Judah said, ‘The strength of the bearers of burdens is decayed, and there is much rubbish; so that we are not able to build the wall” (Nehemiah 4:10, KJV).  The text makes clear that the voice is not the voice of one man, but the voice of “the people in Judah” (NRSV), or the clan of Judah, talking at this point about the impossibility of their task.  They had been discouraged by the tactics of Sanballat, Tobiah, and others.

            It saddens me that, while people are still becoming ill with COVID-19, and while people are still dying from COVID-19, and while the medical staffs have been overwhelmed – overwhelmed – in a pandemic now more than 12 months old, one such as our elected Governor can be so cold, so uncaring, so callous, so dangerous, so selfish as to permit people who do not want to wear their masks to endanger the lives of others with impunity!

            I cannot help but remember – often – the Detroit bus driver who taped his own testimony weeks before he was hospitalized and before he died from COVID-19.  He recorded himself talking about how people got on his bus and coughed their spit over him without even covering their mouths!  When his tape was aired on the news channel I watched, it was aired after his death.  I cannot forget that image of him taping.

How many more will die, trying to work in restaurants where people bark their orders at them with mouths uncovered and aerosols of spit lingering in the air?  How many more will die, trying to make a living for their families, in an atmosphere contaminated by the very air they are breathing – because people do not want to wear masks although we are told that masks protect us?

            He’s your Governor.  He’s my Governor.  But I believe he has miscalculated, that his actions are uncaring and selfish, and that he is brutally wrong.  This decision is rubbish.

            Perhaps it is meant for a political statement.  Perhaps it is meant for the economics of it all.  Perhaps it is meant to discourage.  But, unlike the people in Judah who saw the obstacle and began to fear, I will not and we need not fear.  “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7, KJV).  I will continue to wear my mask.  I will continue to social distance.  I will begin to stop shopping in places where I believe people are callous about defending their employees’ right to mask or by asking customers to mask.  Why?  Because, I’m with those who are building a wall – and in our case, it is a wall against this coronavirus disease!   And I will not let the mockers ridicule us or daunt our courage or commitment or confidence that this wall we will build!