“How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” Psalm 137:4
On March 16, 597 B.C., the world ended. On that day, the armies of Babylon destroyed the City of Jerusalem, torched the Temple, and carried off its treasures and took the leaders of Israel into captivity. This defeat was impossible. Israel was God’s people. They were living in the land promised to the ancestors Abraham and Sarah. God, the one God, was their protector. It just wasn’t possible that Israel could be conquered!
For the next 40 years, the Jewish people struggled to answer that question, and in the process deepened a primitive tribal theology into something that resonates even to this day. Most of what we call the Old Testament was written or organized at this time. We would not have the Bible or the Christian faith if Israel hadn’t lost the promised land.
Obviously the foreign land was not necessarily a place for faith. No doubt many Israelites abandoned their identity in this crisis, assimilating into the cultures of the dominant people around them, angry at what they saw as broken divine promises of protection, disappointed in God’s weakness. But for those who stayed with the questions, and strove for a deeper understanding, the Exile became the time to create an identity and faith so sublime that it has carried the Jewish people through the centuries and even to our own day. A mature faith that reaches past superstition came out of this upheaval. Crisis became catalyst.
Crisis: Not what we want, but do we need it?
Supposedly the Chinese symbol for crisis incorporates the signs for both ‘danger’ and ‘opportunity.’ Whether personal or social, crisis means that the old ways of doing and thinking have failed, and in a big way. New coping skills and understandings are needed. Naturally, no one wants that. When our old ways no longer work, we can feel betrayed by unfulfilled promises or depressed by failure. The danger of crisis is that we get paralyzed, looking back with nostalgia and grief or forward with panic, never seeing the opportunity of new life present in essential change.
Our community life is in crisis, thanks to coronavirus. Trinity is all about building community, gathering together for worship and fellowship, learning together, making connections—all of that is not possible right now. We have choices. We could abandon this Christian venture, maybe come back to it when life returns to normal. We could complain about what we are missing, looking back to the traditions that Trinity has observed unbroken for decades. We could look for the opportunities of our own time.
What can we learn in this time of social distancing? Already Coronavirus is showing us how much we need each other. Can we recreate community in ways that connect with more people? What efforts can we make to understand our society and our responsibilities in new ways? Coronavirus makes it clear that we live on one planet–we cannot pretend that selfishly pursuing our own self-interests is even in our self-interest! Are we discovering what it means to love our enemies? The well-being of one is the well-being of all–Coronavirus not only shows us this truth, but gives us ways to live it out. What other Good News might we discover in this impossible situation?
Coronavirus has a lot to teach us about the limits of selfishness.
Jesus taught and demonstrated the truth of love. We will find our lives when we give them away. Really, it should not be a surprise that we need each other and that looking out for number one is no way to live. Hoarding, living as if we have no responsibilities or connections with others–we know this doesn’t work. Apparently we need another reminder. Coronavirus gives us the opportunity to live out the faith we claim.
When this crisis is over, we will go back to our old activities, but, if we have done our work right, we won’t go backwards. The people of Israel eventually returned to the land, but they did not go back to the way things were. We will have been changed by these current events, hopefully in holy, life-giving ways. Let’s use this time to connect, learn, pray and worship as God’s people—same identity in new circumstances.
We are living in a time of unique crisis—let’s not waste it.
2 Responses
Thank you!
So interesting, intellectual and spriritual.
“The well-being of one is the well-being of all–Coronavirus not only shows us this truth, but gives us ways to live it out.”
This reminded me of Spock’s famous line from The Wrath of Khan- “The needs of the many will always outweigh the needs of the few.” I think we need to build systems that put personal gain for a few below the well being of the many vulnerable people in our world. The current crises shows us how easily many, many people can be made to suffer when our society does not have adequate systems in place to protect them.