Married nurse anaesthetists Mindy Brock and Ben Cayer, wearing protective equipment, look into each other's eyes, in Tampa General Hospital in Florida. CREDIT:NICOLE HUBBARD/AP
As I visited Laurel the other day to drop off a pre-recording of our weekly church service, Handel’s Messiah was pumping from her house. Laurel is over 80 and needs voices and music to be a little louder for her to appreciate them fully.
I gave her the DVD and asked how she was going. We talked about some of her fears about going outside. She was looking forward to getting some work done in her garden on a beautiful day. We chatted about the music and her cat, which had been on guard at the front gate but was now sunning itself luxuriously near our feet. Then I offered to pray for her.
Before Coronovirus, I had minimal contact with Laurel and other frail members in our church, not because we have a huge church, but because opportunities for conversation were minimal, and there was no functional reason to connect.
Now the world has changed. Now I connect weekly with several frail members of the congregation every week, and I am intentional in those conversations to check on their spiritual health.
One woman mentioned that she was thinking about God more and praying more. Another said that she is handing her anxieties and fears to God and feels comforted. As I pray with them some have become teary, and many say they have never been prayed for so personally before.
I feel there has been a palpable positive shift in the status quo.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross pioneered our understanding of grief, clarifying five stages, and I have been watching the world pass through them in the last couple of months: denial (young people partying on Bondi Beach), anger (crowds in the US rebelling against lockdown), bargaining (hairdressers protesting against the 30-minute limit imposed by the Australian government), depression (all of us in lockdown grieving the loss of celebrations, trips and work), and acceptance (our understanding that this is what is needed to protect the vulnerable). (Note: not all these stages are sequential, and it is possible to revisit them.)
David Kessler worked closely with Kübler-Ross and recently published a book about a sixth stage he has discovered: meaning making. And while much of the world is still navigating those early stages, this is the stage reached by many of those countries where the curve is flattening.
My social media is being flooded with more hopeful articles. The significant early voice was Arundhati Roy, the brilliant Indian novelist, with her metaphor of the pandemic as a portal:
Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.
We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.
She is right about the historic shifts caused by pandemics. David Griffin and Justin Denham are Australian infectious diseases experts who also know history. In an article in The Conversation they talk about some of the key shifts that have happened.
1. The Plague/’Black Death’ (14th Century) brought about understanding of quarantine, better working conditions, deeper studies of religion and philiosophy, and widespread questioning of authority.
2. Spanish Influenza (1918) brought about the use of face masks and bans on mass gatherings in response to infections.
3. HIV and AIDS (20th Century) led to the development of sophisticated public health campaigns, and contact tracing techniques, and led to an understanding of the impact of stigma associated with such diseases.
4. SARS (2002–3) revealed the need for transparent information-sharing across borders, including international health regulations requiring mandatory reporting. It also showed the link between human and environmental health, with changes in climate impacting on animal susceptibility to viruses, which could then be passed on to humans.
Andy Crouch points us to an even earlier plague, and Rodney Stark’s analysis in The Rise of Christianity.
The first Christians, who saw themselves as the household of God in their cities, did not flee the plagues. They stayed, and they served. In his book The Rise of Christianity, sociologist Rodney Stark develops a statistical argument that this commitment to providing meaningful care to people stricken by the plague was, all by itself, a major contributor to the growth of the church in the first centuries of the common era.
Already we are seeing that people do not want to go back to the way things were. A Sky News story reported on a recent YouGov poll in Britain which indicated that more than half (54%) of 4,343 people hope to learn from the crisis by making some changes in their own lives, and hope changes will be made for the country as a whole.
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the Royal Society for the Arts which commissioned the poll said, “This poll shows that the British people are increasingly aware that the health of people and planet are inseparable and it's time for radical environmental, social, political and economic change.”
What does this mean for the Christian community? How can we respond?
Here are some of my suggestions for what a post-pandemic world could look like, with Christian input.
1. A renewed appreciation of physical connections
While the church has responded heroically in obeying bans on mass gatherings by moving services online, this should not become the new norm.
I support Brian Zhand who warns “Don’t let a pandemic turn you into a Gnostic”. Gnosticism was an ancient heresy that compartmentalised the physical from the spiritual, leading to a denial that Jesus could be both fully human and fully God.
While it has been a novelty to experience church from our loungerooms, and I have appreciated still meeting as a church, Christianity is a way of life that incorporates the material world. As Zhand says, “To prefer digital over enfleshed is a gnostic move; it’s a move away from what it means to be human; it’s an insult to the Incarnation.”
Instead, we should take the positives of the online experience: widening our reach, understanding that the church is people not a building, and enjoying that our faith impacts our home-life not just the one-hour gathering on a Sunday… but weave that into a deeper expression of our church experience post-pandemic.
2. Fresh expressions of hospitality in the neighbourhood
An amazing thing has happened, we are recognising our neighbours. Instead of furtively avoiding people as we drive to and from work and shops, we are taking the time to walk around the block, to smile and greet people, and to take part in neighbourhood activities such as teddy bears in the window for “bear hunts”, or dressing up to put bins out.
I loved the innovation of street Facebook or WhatsApp groups to coordinate shopping or help. Some people I know put a card in everyone’s letterbox offering them a free home-delivered coffee.
Karina and Armen at Neighbourhood Matters have some wonderful resources to help individuals and churches pivot in this way, toward expressing compassionate renewal geographically.
These themes are expressed in an innovative exercise posted by Melinda Cousins, Teaching Pastor at Richmond Baptist Church, who captured ideas from the congregation of God at work at this time in the infographic below.
3. A willingness to talk openly about spiritual matters
There’s nothing quite like an incredibly contagious virus with deadly side effects to get people thinking about mortality and what matters. Friends of mine said recently that they had not realised how focused on material things they were until the most important thing in the house became toilet paper, and cans of soup, and pasta; until they had to weigh up our ‘need’ for things with reduced income, and the danger of a simple trip to the shops. Suddenly the lure of luxury items and experiences did not seem as important as relationships, and purpose and meaning.
Even within Christian circles, I would have been hesitant to ask people directly about their spiritual welfare, or they may have been evasive in their response, but those conversations are opening up now.
4. A renewed commitment to the value of the earth and its inhabitants
In our busy, selfish existence, we may have occasionally signed a petition, joined a march, or written to a politician about the rushed approval of a brown coalmine; or even ignored those requests in our social media feeds. However, this pandemic has heightened our awareness of our interconnectedness, not just as people, but with the environment. Although the source of the virus is still unsure, the likelihood is that it was caught from a live exotic animal in the markets in Wuhan, China.
One result of the pandemic, and reduced industrial activity and vehicle movement, is that the air is cleaner, and wildlife is more visible. As many have commented, we can hear the birds sing.
Will we be willing to make more permanent changes to help the earth breathe more easily? The British poll noted earlier suggests yes.
5. A church more mobilised by compassion
Our church now has approximately half the congregation involved in running online services, contacting frail members, delivering services to the community, as well as doing all the background coordinating.
Tammy Tolman, a pastor at a church in Dapto south of Sydney has noticed a similar change in her church, “If we don’t take this opportunity now to reassess and rethink what God calls the Church to be then we miss an incredible opportunity. Going back to having one or two people up the front doing everything while everyone else sits passively would be tragic.”
6. Christians leading the way in innovation for the common good
I have noticed a renewed commitment by Christians toward use their gifting, skills and businesses to respond to recent crises, including the devastating bushfires and now the pandemic. They are living out what Andy Crouch describes as the responsibility for all Christian leaders, “to speak, live, and make decisions in such a way that the horizons of possibility move towards shalom, flourishing for everyone in our sphere of influence, especially the vulnerable.”
I see it in a friend of mine who runs a Christian dance company and is having conversations with ballet dancers who do not want to return to an industry marked by bullying, sexual harassment, discrimination and an obsession with the myth of a perfect body. They are mobilising for change.
I see it with a Christian school which is not weighed down by current circumstances but sees potential: “We are making the transition and looking at ways to make this an opportunity for growth and development. Very exciting to think we are paving the way into new territory. And again, we are referring to it as workship. This is what we do to be faithful stewards.”
7. An understanding of the need for a foundation of spiritual health
While health workers, teachers and supermarket workers are busier than ever, many have noticed the difference working from home, reduced commute times, and changed circumstances.
I was speaking to some Christian entrepreneurs recently for whom this unexpected and unwelcome pause in activity has had unexpected benefits.
“I can’t remember the last time I had eight hours sleep at night,” commented one.
Another mentioned the way she and her family members have reconnected more deeply, and they have been able to get into better rhythms of encountering God in his Word and prayer. “We are laying a more firm foundation for when things begin moving again.”
A young friend has drawn comfort from the prophets during the pandemic, and particularly Isaiah’s contrast of light and darkness, such as Isaiah 60:1–3:
‘Arise, shine, for your light has come,
and the glory of the Lord rises upon you.
See, darkness covers the earth
and thick darkness is over the peoples,
but the Lord rises upon you
and his glory appears over you.
Nations will come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your dawn.
This is a glimpse of the new kingdom under the reign of the Messiah. Paul reminds us in Colossians 1:15–20 that this Messiah, Jesus is reigning, and fulfilling his purpose of reconciliation:
For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
As Tom Wright in God in Public has said, Jesus rules now through his people, the church, continuing this work of reconciliation:
Jesus rules the world today by launching new initiatives that radically challenge the accepted ways of doing things: by jubilee projects that remit ridiculous and unpayable debt, by housing trusts that provide accommodation for low-income families or homeless people, by local and sustainable agricultural projects that care for creation instead of destroying it in the hope of quick profit… That is how the sovereignty of Jesus is put into effect. Jesus went about feeding the hungry, curing the sick, and rescuing the lost sheep; his Body is supposed to be doing the same. That is how his kingdom is at work.
The pandemic has given all of us, and especially the church, the time to reflect on the way things were, and the way things could be. It’s not a new story, it’s an old story given fresh expression. I sense there is the real possibility that we could live out Lisa Sharon Harper’s vision at the end of her book The Very Good Gospel:
Evidence of the presence of the Kingdom of God is thick wherever and whenever people stand on the promise of God that there is more to this world—more to this life—than what we see. There is more than the getting over, getting by, or getting mine. There is more than the brokenness, the destruction and the despair that threaten to wash over us like the waters of the deep. There is a vision of a world where God cuts through the chaos, where God speaks and there is light. There is a vision where there is protection and where love is binding every relationship together. There is a call for humanity to exercise dominion over self and the rest of creation in a way that serves all, not just self. And there is a promise that as long as we follow God’s way, there will be life, healing, and love. There will come a day when all the world stands before God in shalom, and there will be only one tree, and its leaves will heal our wounds.
Come, Lord Jesus, in us and through us, and ultimately to bring about the New Earth.