March Madness and the Israelites in the Desert

MARCH IS MY favorite month of the year and not simply because of the renewal of spring. As a college basketball fanatic, it is also because of the NCAA men’s tournament, otherwise known as March Madness. My passion for college hoops began when I moved to Tucson before my junior year of high school and started attending every home game at the University of Arizona, where college basketball is an obsession. In light of the hardship and devastation that this pandemic has inflicted, it feels overdramatic to say that my spirits were crushed last March when the NCAA made the necessary decision to pull the plug on the March Madness tournament. This year, the NCAA plans to host the tournament in a bubble, following the model of last summer’s NBA playoffs. The tournament will feel incomplete without screaming fans, but the fact that it will take place at all offers a signal that the beginning of the end of the pandemic is within sight.

As our nation moves out of a long, dark winter of COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations, and deaths, we can all use a dose of something to look forward to, even if those somethings don’t look identical to life before the pandemic. A bubbled March Madness feels like a fitting metaphor to the critically important space we will be in as vaccines help us turn the tide against this virus and toward a new normal. But the journey between the spring and fall will likely feel like a long and tortuous one, particularly if COVID-19 fatigue devolves into resentment, resignation, or at worst nihilism. With the advent of more contagious and possibly more deadly strains of the virus, social distancing and mask-wearing will be even more necessary to transition from the wilderness of the current pandemic into the promised land of a post-COVID-19 world.

We can glean lessons from the Israelites, who spent 40 years wandering in the wilderness, traveling a distance that should have taken mere days had their journey not been derailed by their unfaithfulness, rebellion, idolatry, and fear. The Israelite travails in the wilderness offer us a cautionary lesson: We must not allow selfish individualism, fear, or fatigue to sabotage the imperative to conquer COVID-19 by ensuring that the majority of the population gets vaccinated as soon as possible. This poses a critical test of pastoral leadership as our churches can play an instrumental role in encouraging congregants and community members to get vaccinated, overcoming distrust and disinformation. How we come through this COVID-19 wilderness will set the stage for the radically more humane world that we must create beyond the pandemic.

While it is too early to make predictions about the NCAA tournament, I can say with a high degree of confidence that this year’s March Madness will feel like a balm for sports fans and a bridge between our present situation and the post-quarantine reality on the horizon. Among the most inspiring staples of the NCAA tournament each year are the runs that Cinderella teams so often make. These are underdog teams that go deep into the tournament, busting brackets and upsetting superior teams with their stellar play and pure grit. To defeat COVID-19, we will need to tap into a similar degree of spiritual grit and passion, knowing that our sacrifice and perseverance will benefit everyone, particularly the most vulnerable.