Wednesday, March 25, 2020
“Do not dread the disease that stalks in darkness, nor the disaster that strikes at midday.” (Psalm 91:6, New Living Translation) 

                It must be the end of the world!

                Although I have not intentionally gone looking for any evidence I am probably safe in saying that there are those extreme, right-wing, fundamentalist Christians who are using the Covid-19 pandemic as a sign of the end times or, at the very least, being God’s judgment and punishment on a corrupt, sinful, hell-bound world. Admittedly, this is low-lying fruit for harboring such ideas; after all this pandemic has all the ear-marks of the works of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, “to kill with the sword and famine and disease and wild animals.” (Revelation 6: 8, NLT)

Although I do not share such apocalyptic eagerness and fervor, (won’t I look silly if they are right?) the pastoral theologian in me wants at least to ask the honest question about the possible  intentions of God throughout this terrible ordeal. We can’t just stick our heads in the sand and wish it all away.

We cannot ignore the fact that in our Old Testament God uses disease as a tool for punishment and  correction, sending a clear, drastic and dire message for his people’s need for repentance, atonement, radical change, and a return to faith and trust in God. It is not a pretty picture either for humankind or, for that matter, God. Nevertheless, disease is one way through which God expressed his righteous anger, his justice, his power to affect radical change in the world.

Simplistically put, disease is a symbolic but very real force that indicates we are as far away from God as we possibly can be. It is indeed a terrible way to get our attention but apparently we won’t listen otherwise.

Our estrangement from God is killing us.

There was a poster on the Internet that pointed out that Covid19 was the world’s way of sending humankind to its room so that we can think about what we have done.

This is a good starting point. This disease is changing the world and will continue to do so for some time. So, perhaps we can and should use this time-out, this sitting in the corner, to contemplate our sins and the damage that humanity in all its politics, structures, institutions, behaviour, environmental impact, its economics, its conflicts and wars, its abuse of social media and re-think and re-set our priorities and directions.

We are being forced to slow down, to reduce our consumptive habits, to re-discover and appreciate one another more deeply, to depend on each other, to change our work habits and addictions, to find value in small things and small acts, to seek each other’s welfare, to pollute less, to appreciate health and well-being in its many  and diverse forms.

In the middle of all that is the opportunity to re-connect with the sources of our faith.  Where once we made no time for prayer, worship, meditation, contemplation or self-reflection and spiritual nourishment, now we do have the time and opening. God calls to us through this pandemic, not to punish us or harass us, although some will interpret it as such, but to ask us to trust him to lead us through to the other side and re-build a broken relationship with him. Almost ironically, it becomes a call for healing.

Jesus was the living embodiment of the antithesis to disease. “At that very time, Jesus cured many people of their diseases, illnesses, and evil spirits, and he restored sight to many who were blind.” (Luke 7:21, NLT) We are reminded by him of God’s ultimate vision for humankind’s well-being, wholeness, restoration, fullness and safety. But we need God to have the total experience of such a life. In Jesus God has begun to reverse the evil effects of  humankind’s vulnerability to disease and death. Jesus inaugurates God’s shalom with the world.

But will we get it? Will we stop our world-ending habits and take God seriously? Will we shrivel in fear and waste away in viral paralysis or listen to the Voice of God speaking through Jesus that there is no better time than the present to leap into the arms of Gods Love and begin to re-shape the future for the better?

                Be safe and keep well! Blessings! 

Dale