Coronavirus #2: The Personal Picture
CORONAVIRUS #2: the PERSONAL PICTURE Trinity
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 5.4.2020
Where is God right at the time of this coronavirus pandemic? Last week we saw that he is behind it, just as he is behind everything. We saw he is in it, using it to warn us of something more serious, to wean us away from our idols to Jesus, and wooing us, that we might find our rest in Jesus. That is the big picture.
How about the personal picture, as it comes close to us, and into our daily lives?
Not that it’s all that close to most of us. It has caused us inconvenience, with toilet paper unavailable, or the sport we usually watch not on, or Tuesday morning coffee with friends not possible.
As someone said this week we modern Australians don’t do ‘uncomfortable’ very well. We don’t like feeling out of control. And we sure don’t like talking about death – who has “funerals” any more … they are all “celebrations of life”. For some of us, and for many people in other countries, it’s worse than that.
It has meant death for more than 60,000 people and infection for more than another million. There are so many deaths in Spain and Italy normal funerals cannot be held. Millions are mourning.
For some, the personal impact is financial. Jobs are lost, savings are not worth as much. Millions with no savings or government benefits, cannot buy even food for their children. For others of us the financial impact is going to be with us, or our grandchildren, for decades, as we or they deal with gigantic new national debts.
For some, the emotional and mental cost of the pandemic is big, with crippling social isolation, worse domestic abuse and fears and anxieties heightened.
As it all gets closer, is there anything to hold on to?
The new atheists have nothing to say. When Richard Dawkins was asked what can be said about the child dying of cancer – what the child has done to deserve this, he says “The answer is, there is no reason why … and no reason to ask why?” In this universe there is “no evil, no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference” (p552)
In the Sydney Morning Herald last week, Peter Fitzsimons who isn’t famous for depth of insight or compassion, rejoiced that the pandemic will means the end of religion, as a whole lot of old people die, and take their superstitions with them. He had no real answer.
The brilliant atheist of a previous generation, Aldous Huxley wrote: “It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and that at the end one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‘Try to be a little kinder’.”
I am not pretending this morning that God has given us all the answers to our questions, but he has told us enough to enable us to do so much better than that. When suffering comes close …
- FEEL IT
In 1 Thessalonians 4, we read of people who have lost family members and close friends in death. Paul says “we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep (they have died), that you may not grieve as others do, who have no hope.” (v13)
Do Christians grieve? Yes, but not in the same way as others do. We aren’t blocks of wood – we are made with affections and deep souls like others.
More than 60 of the 150 Psalms are songs of lament. Jesus is described in Isaiah 53 as “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”. We know that he wept over an unrepentant Jerusalem, and at the grave of his close friend Lazarus.
It is not as though Jesus grieved DESPITE being perfect. He grieved BECAUSE he was perfect.
There is so much reason for grief. 170,000 people died in Australia last year, including some of our own. Illness, hatred, family fractures, wicked disregard for the unborn, loss of income and so much else touch many. The slimy fingerprints of death can be seen across the whole of our lives.
The wonder is not that we grieve, but that we do not grieve more. The pandemic’s results for us may be slight or significant. They may be different from our neighbours, or people in Spain, but they are real. Of course we grieve. We do not pretend that pain and sadness are not real, in the name of a false spirituality.
God’s word to us when trouble and death are close: God says “Feel it”.
- LEAN INTO IT
I use that term because by nature and by culture we lean away. Children lean away from doing what is difficult to what is easier; teens lean away from being called to account; adults lean away from what’s uncomfortable or what we cannot control or what costs.
At a personal level, we spend whatever it takes to be healthy, and demand that we not suffer. At a national level, we do whatever it takes to secure the future. At a church level, we avoid anything that gets kickbacks from anyone, and avoid demands that make us feel comfortable.
Brothers and sisters, that is so unrealistic at every level. In a world in rebellion to God, suffering and pain and discomfort are an inevitable part of daily life. God says that “the whole creation groans” (Rom 8:22).
It’s more than a random generalisation. Why cancer for him, soured marriage for her, tough times for them? A few verses on, Paul writes about all things that come to the children of God working for their good (Romans 8:28). What comes to you or to me is never random, but designated, and designed to bless and change us.
Jesus isn’t behind and in all things like a puppet master pulling the strings. While he orders all things, he stands beside us as “the Man of Sorrows”. There is nothing we feel that he has not felt. Nothing we suffer that he has not suffered. No help that we need in mind or heart that he is not able to give abundantly.
Don Carson writes: “You can trust a God who is not only sovereign, but who bleeds for you. Sometimes when there are no other answers for your guilt or your fears or your uncertainties or your anguish, there is one immovable place in which to stand. It is the ground in front of the cross.”
- Doesn’t it make all the difference when you are in a strange place to have as a guide someone who says “It’s okay – I’ve been here before”?
- Doesn’t it make all the difference when the one who says “I’ve put you in this tough situation” says also “You are not here DESPITE the fact that I love you, but BECAUSE I love you, and I know this is the way to blessing”?
- Doesn’t it make all the difference when Jesus says as loudly as he can “You don’t need to be afraid, because I, the King of Kings have bound myself to you in and by my death for you.”
We don’t have to lean away from suffering at all costs. Or try and escape what he has sent. Or see it as a contradiction of his love, when it is proof of it. We can lean into it.
A man who often was unable to get out of bed because of a back injury one day he wrote a letter to himself about his situation and the Lord Jesus:
“In time of trouble say
FIRST he brought me here; it is by His will I am in this place; in that fact I will rest.
NEXT, he will keep me here in his love, and give me grace to behave as his child.
THEN he will make the trial a blessing, teaching me the lessons he intends me to learn, and working in me the grace he bestows.
LAST, in his good time he will bring me out again – how and when he knows.
Let me say I am here, by his appointment, in his keeping, under his training and for his time.”
Can you lean into what hurts, and is tough, challenging and sad? When Jesus who has died for you is with you and for you, yes, you can. When that is what he has planned … anywhere else would not be half as good … nowhere else would be half as safe.
- Feel it
- Lean into it.
- LOOK PAST IT
In our reading, God said “we do not grieve as others who have no hope.” What is this hope that sweetens our grief? The hope of a coronavirus cure? The hope of a change in the stock market or the labour market, or in our feelings or other circumstances?
No, no. Our hope is in the return to this fallen world of the Lord Jesus. The hope of that day when he will make everything new.
- Those who have died before he comes back will rise out of the ground with new resurrected bodies that no virus can ever touch.
- Those who are still alive on that day will be radically changed and caught up together with the others to Jesus in the air.
- Then “we will always be with the Lord”. Which means what? No isolation. No social distancing. No destructive bugs. No tears ever again. No delights missing, and no evil present.
That day is as sure and certain as the day Jesus walked out of his grave. He walked out into a radically different life and he will bring that life to this world, and to all who are waiting for his coming – for the day when every Christian will be with him. No wonder God says “Encourage one another with these words” (v18)
Is this just a cop out? Being escapist? Tough now, but OK then. We know that those who are most focussed on that day, are those who are the most useful, and most responsible, the most loving people here and now. They are good citizens who work hard at their jobs, take their medicine, and love people deeply.
They are the most realistic about this world. They don’t have to pretend that death can be avoided. That they are better than they really are. That life is better than it really is.
We know how ugly death is – we have seen Jesus die. We know there is life the other side of death – we have seen Jesus smash death. We don’t have to get everything sorted now, with all scores levelled now, because the day is coming when every score and every person gets sorted. We don’t have to have it all now, and we are free to use what we have for others – because we shall have everything then.
Grief now. Leaning into suffering now. Looking past the present to an ultimate future.
One of the things that makes all that elusive is the rolling 24 hour news cycle. Among those who put news together there is the saying “What bleeds, leads”. If it’s alarmist and graphic, that’s what we are served. Is there any other news but catastrophe just now?
Of course we should we be aware of what is happening with the pandemic? Just 1 or 2 news broadcasts a day will do that. At least as much, we need to be hearing the words of Jesus. Words that speak about grief over sin. Words that speak about his power and purpose and presence in our troubles. Words that speak of a new heaven and a new earth where everything is radically new.
Words of life and for life are with Jesus. If clever people find a vaccine for Covid-19, 170,000 of will still die next year.
While the Prime Minister and other leaders, give a brilliant lead just now, they still will not be able to heal our deepest fears, or give the meaning and significance for which our souls long.
How many stories do we have to hear of people who make it to the top, have everything, live to 100, but who still die, and still hurt, and so often are self-absorbed, before we realise that hope, real hope simply isn’t to be found anywhere in this world?
Isn’t that what we are learning in a new way just now? That there is no ultimately true answer in this world?
Jesus once preached a sermon to a crowd of about 10,000 people. They didn’t like what he said and they walked away in droves. “Won’t you go also go away?” Jesus asked his disciples. “To whom can we go?” Peter asked. “You alone have words of eternal life?”
Words that free us to grieve. Words that enable us to lean into suffering. Words that enable us to look past the present to the most real world of all.
To whom will you go? That’s a good question for any day, but it was never more pressing than in this bad day.