“He’s not here; He has risen!" ~ Matthew
28:6
Times of illness and plague are
not foreign to the Christ we worship. Christians
facing COVID-19 today would do well to remember how the selfless love of the
early church helped spread the Gospel in a world much more hostile to Jesus'
message than our world is today.
During the 3rd century, a smallpox-like plague killed
as many as 5,000 people daily in the city of Rome alone. As it was highly contagious, victims were often
thrown half-dead into the streets, where unburied corpses lay like garbage in
hopes of avoiding the ‘plague of death.’
Early Roman religion did not preach care for the sick. Yet Christianity offered a distinct contrast. The words of Bishop Dionysus, in one the most
infected areas, reflected a period of unimaginable joy for Christians.
The epidemic that seemed like the end of the world actually
promoted the spread of Christianity. The
harrowing images of putrefying bodies and burning pyres of corpses influenced
early Christian descriptions of hell and the afterlife. Now that hell had become a place on earth,
Christians were increasingly eager to avoid it in the afterlife.
Dionysus described the Christian community being transformed
into a brigade of nurses, running toward those afflicted, “Heedless of danger,
they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need; ministering to them
in Christ.”
Persons briefly too weak to cope
for themselves recovered instead of dying.
It’s entirely plausible that basis care (food, water and compassion) reduced
mortality by as much as two-thirds.
Christian charity did not just save lives - it also spread
the Gospel. Historians have long struggled to understand how a small group of Christians after Jesus's ascension
(Acts puts the numbers at several hundred followers), eventually outnumbered
all other faiths in the Roman Empire.
For history to possibly repeat itself, we must adopt the same charitable spirit, though it may look
entirely different in practice today.
First, respecting social distancing helps limit the spread
of the COVID-19. Christians should
value the lives of others more than the comfort and social opportunities of
daily life.
Second, share wisdom and hope, not panic. The nature of God is to provide light from
even the darkest places. Listen to
experts, to others in similar circumstances, and to God - pouring all
information and emotion through a sieve, straining only the most necessary
nuggets.
And finally, a faithful response
to the coronavirus doesn’t mean that we should clamor to volunteer at
overloaded hospitals. We can communicate
with the most isolated by phone and other media. We can also financially support charitable
enterprises doing God's work during this difficult time.
What the world sees is an instrument of death, we see as
love and the faith behind it.
Almighty Father, as we face the unknown days
ahead, let us be faithful. Let us share
the hope behind our faith, as we act in wisdom, as we serve others, and as we
follow what the Spirit may want to create anew.
Amen
