An empty church, a sign of love

Galatians 6:1-10

Today I want to reflect on what it means to be a community in light of COVID-19, both as a community that holds to the words of scripture that remind us time and again that we need not be afraid and as a community that holds one another in love, a community that does not minimize the fears of others, and, ultimately, a community dedicated to the care of the most vulnerable.

            Firstly, I confess that I don’t know what on earth I’m doing. They don’t cover this in seminary. I suspect you are finding yourself in a similar boat, dazed by how quickly things are changing and unsure whether that’s prudent or how you should be feeling about that. The first step of all might be giving ourselves permission to stop and grieve, because we have lost things already and other things hang tenuously in the balance—trips and concerts, sports, weddings, even work and school and basically everybody’s social life. I’m sort of an action person, as some of you are, but you are not obligated to do things right now; you can grieve your losses, even if nobody you know ever gets sick.

Next, some perspective is helpful. The history of the world is full of challenging moments, many more-so than this one. The world God created and called “good” still grumbles under the weight of this brokenness we call sin. In other places in the world, Christians and non-Christians alike deal with these realities on a day-to-day basis, and it is our privilege to live in a place and time where this is odd and extraordinary.

We are so unaccustomed to this type of adversity that all we can think to do is go out and raid stores for toilet paper. It’s a sign that something is wrong with us that our first instinct is to hoard. So, I have some news that is at first going to sound bad: Life is not only about you—health is not about you, salvation—even—is not about you. Christ lived and died for the community of faith, and that we make that only about our personal and individual salvation is a symptom of a disease far more devastating than any pandemic. Our selfishness will lead to the pain and suffering of others, and that is true all the time, but far more obvious now.

            Let me be completely plain as it regards the novel coronavirus, and as a millennial myself, I am sick of healthy young people proclaiming that since there is little risk to them, everybody else is overreacting. Life is not about you. As Christians, we should be willing to make great sacrifices for the sake of others, no matter their vulnerability. Instead, too often we won’t even make small sacrifices unless there is evidence that our direct contribution is doing something, like we need to get credit for doing good. It’s selfishness, pure and simple. We should not live in fear, but we should put the needs of others before our own. Too often we are better at saying, “Thoughts and prayers!” than we are at committing to making ourselves uncomfortable for the sake of somebody else who has no choice.

I get it. None of us know what should be done, but one of life’s secrets is that none of us ever know what should be done. We do the best that we can with limited information. The test of whether a thing is right or wrong is not based on whether you are acting with an understanding of all the science or anything like that, or else we would be paralyzed. A choice is right if we make it for the sake of others and it is wrong if we make it our of selfishness. So many of the old fairy tales fail to tell us that good and bad are rarely obvious, but if we are making a choice with somebody else in mind—somebody who will not benefit us personally—then that choice can’t be wrong. It’s less often a choice between right and wrong and more often the choice between what is right and what is easy. 

            When Jesus says that there are two commandments to follow—Love God and love our neighbors—we would do well to reflect on what those two mean in practice. It’s not always clear how to best love your neighbor, but you can be damn sure it means to comfort those who are anxious, to stand alongside those who are afraid, and to put others’ needs before our own. The evergreen point is this: Life is not about you.

            We are so hopelessly individualistic that we read Jeremiah 29:11, one of the most popular verses in all of scripture: “For I know the plans I have for you, plans …for a future with hope,” and assume that that verse is about God’s plans for me. It isn’t. The “you” in that verse is the chosen people of Israel. The verse is about God’s plans for Israel—for the larger community of faith. It’s not that God doesn’t care about you; it’s that you are part of something bigger than yourself. Our lives matter because we are part of the body of Christ and in that body all parts have value, but it is the body itself that gives us meaning.

This is why our response to COVID-19 is particularly challenging. We are presented today with the paradox of being community and practicing distance at the same time. Even as we worship together, we are tempted to look at one another as potential sources of some unseen danger, or we carry with us anxiety of what would happen if we ourselves are the source. As a result, the community is strained. We can’t be together and apart at the same time. Add to that mix the fact that physical health is not the only consideration. We should all be concerned with the mental health of one another, and not just those of us who might be stuck with our children and nowhere to go for an extended period of time—though you should definitely be praying for us, too, because I can only take so much Dino Dana. No, there are people more vulnerable who slip through the cracks. We were not created to be in isolation; we are only ourselves when we are together.

            So, there is this sense that the one thing that should persist in the face of fear over disease is this place—this assembly. We need each other today more than ever. Yet, we may need a paradigm shift to understand what love looks like. We need to love each other enough to care for the well-being of others more than ourselves. Soon enough, the sign of loving our neighbors may well be an empty church.

            If that happens, I suppose that might look like a defeat, that perhaps fear has won perhaps, but emptiness is one of the most powerful symbols in our faith. When the women went looking for Jesus’ body on Easter morning, they discovered that the tomb was empty. At first they were afraid at the unexpected, but that emptiness was pregnant with possibility. The Christian faith is defined by empty fields, empty wombs, an empty cross, and an empty tomb.

            An empty tomb is a sign of absurd hope, like a church willingly emptied for a greater good. It is a church bursting with potential. It is a reminder of what we are missing, and also a declaration that our community is brave enough to sacrifice for the sake of the most vulnerable. Throughout my time here, I’ve said probably a hundred times that we are church for the least, the last, the lost, the lowly, the little, and the dead (Capon). Well, here we are.

            It never comes like we expect it, does it? When we talk about community, it is always in the context of drawing closer, of loving one another with hugs and tears, not hand sanitizer and whatever that foot-shake thing is that we did at curling last Thursday. I don’t know about you, but that’s not how I expected to be called upon to love you!

            So, today, if you are anxious in this in-between time, if you’re unsure of whether to change anything, or if what you are doing really matters, or if anything you do is but a drop in the ocean, if you are unsure if we should be closer together or further apart, then today I want you to know that you are free to not know what the heck you are doing. You are free to not have all the answers. You are also free to change your mind at any point. What you are not free to do is to give up on others or to stop in the work of caring for your neighbors out of fear of what may be. As it says in the Galatians reading, “Carry each other’s burdens and so you will fulfill the law of Christ.”

           

            Most importantly of all, do not be afraid! We are presented with a community challenge that will bring this community together. Around the world, the same thing is happening. Strangely, a virus might be the single greatest reminder of how deeply we are connected with one another. If that’s true of viruses, let it be a thousand times truer of our love for one another. May your concern over embracing one another be a reminder when it comes time to embrace again of why we should never take it for granted. May we hold to the promise of the resurrection that proclaims that when it looks like death has won, three days later everything is turned upside-down, and it is irresistible and inevitable like the changing of the seasons. For a season, emptiness may seem like it has all gone wrong, but it is merely the precursor to resurrection.

            Amen.