Faith Matters | Find peace and purpose with the challenges we all face today with COVID-19
Then Jesus began to say to them, “Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs. (Mark 13)
In the verses just before this passage, the disciples marvel at seeing the Jerusalem temple, considered then to be one of the wonders of the world. Jesus’ deflating response is to say, in effect, “This? No big deal. It’ll be a heaping ruin before long.” Aghast, the disciples ask Jesus to reveal the meaning (and timing) of such a disaster. Again, Jesus seeks to tap down their over-reaction. “These things happen,” Jesus says. The real danger is in the panic and misunderstanding that follows.
The coronavirus pandemic sweeping the globe has come upon us so suddenly we have hardly had time to make sense of it. Nonetheless, we realize that it is a big deal, and not just in its immediate effects. Unlike in war, there is not going to be any announcement that the struggle is over. In some fashion, now only barely understood, this virus is going to be with us for quite a while. As a result, we are going to be living in a different world.
In other words, we can look forward to a “new normal”, which at this time can only guess at. And for that reason, we are confronting the danger Jesus warns about, becoming alarmed and being led astray. Recently, columnist Rex Huppke tried to administer a dose of reality.
Americans are daydreaming a return to normal, eyeing the calendar — May? Maybe June? — as if a switch will get flicked and the coronavirus pandemic and its life-altering impact will fade to memory. That’s not happening. I don’t say that to frighten — and I’ve never wished so hard to be proven wrong — but we’re a culture easily sold false hope. We buy up optimism when reality is too much to bear. Those tendencies don’t position us well for a global pandemic.
Huppke spoke with Gary Slutkin, an epidemiologist and infectious disease control specialist formerly with the World Health Organization, to understand our situation and how we need to respond.
“The world is going to be different,” Slutkin said. “Socially, we’re going to be different, economically we’re going to be different. I think there will be waves of things getting better and waves of things getting worse as we find our way.” And we will find our way. We will adapt, and overcome. But now is not the time for sunny optimism. It’s the time for science and pragmatism. The sooner Americans accept that “normal” is nowhere in sight — and that normal may look quite different when we get there — the better we’ll all be.
In our anxiety and frustration, it will be very tempting to listen to voices of “sunny optimism,” promising to lead us back to “normal.” As much as we want one, however, there will be no simple answer to the challenges that lay ahead. So, what do we do?
In his explanation of the calamities to come, Jesus gives a curious interpretation. All these frightful things have to happen, Jesus says. Yet, “this is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” Jesus’ teachings and parables are filled with images of planting and surprise growth, of searching and surprise discoveries, of birth and rebirth, of dying and rising. The unifying theme of these images is that something new is coming into being which Jesus encapsulates in another image, the kingdom of God.
We have tended to interpret this “coming kingdom” either as something personal and immediate or as something far off in the future. Entering the kingdom has meant “being saved,” “believing in Jesus,” so that we will go to heaven when we die. Or it has meant some apocalyptic day in the future when this world comes to an end and the kingdom comes as its replacement.
The problem with these views is that they don’t fit what Jesus actually talked about, which was mostly facing the challenge and discovering the gift of life here-and-now. The kingdom is “at hand,” “in your midst,” and “within you,” Jesus says. And while Jesus understood the coming kingdom as a personal challenge, he also understood it in a social context. The kingdom was not only confronting you and me personally, it was also confronting our relationships as men and women, young and old, insiders and outsiders, religious and nonreligious, rich and poor, powerful and weak, oppressors and oppressed.
Among other things, this pandemic has suddenly exposed multiple fault lines in our society and our world. The most notable has certainly been the inadequacies and inequalities in our health care system. But there are many others: in international relationships, in education, in work and employment, in business and industry, in our economic systems, in our wants and values. Many of these we have been vaguely aware of, but now they are starkly clear and unavoidable.
A common theme of spiritual traditions is living “in the now.” To do otherwise is to be distracted by what can’t be touched, the past, or what can’t be known, the future. Reality if always now. A second theme is that crisis and suffering, while not sought out, nonetheless present opportunities for discovery and growth.
With these perspectives, I think we can hear Jesus’ words speak to us and to this time we are in. We must live with the challenges each day presents to us. The past is past; the future of this virus, and its effect on our society and our own lives, is unknown and unknowable. In such one-day-at-a-time living, we can find a centering peace and purpose.
It also enables us to be awake and to be aware of what is truly happening in our world, sifting out the raucous din and hullabaloo of politicians and broadcast media. We can be watching for where God is at work in this crisis, where the Spirit is moving people and us to enhance life and to bring about new life. We can then see what most miss but what Jesus insists is always true: that every moment holds the possibility of the birth of the kingdom, of the creation of a world of peace and justice which is what God has always intended.
Faith Matters is written by members of the Bradenton clerical community. Doug Kings is pastor of Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Holmes Beach.