Coronavirus: Coming Out of the Crowd
I read the news this morning.
Shiver.
Now I’m writing. I can’t help myself. It doesn’t matter that I don’t have time for this. It doesn’t matter that what I might say is a little half-baked in the sense that I woke up this morning having no idea I was going to write about this. And it doesn’t matter that no one aside from God himself knows precisely how Coronavirus is going to impact us here. I can’t help myself. I’m writing about it.
I had to. I saw a headline that went something like this, “Girl Shunned in Italy.” A girl from Hong Kong is the face of Coronavirus there. She’s been shunned. She helped me make a connection that perhaps I needed to make.
Coronavirus and Leprosy
There are some similarities between how we are treating Coronavirus and how biblical people treated leprosy. Think about it. There are leper colonies. Wuhan, anyone? And what’s part of the advice if you get Coronavirus? Quarantine yourself. In other words, create your own leper colony. (By the way, none of this is a critique of that advice. It’s no doubt necessary. I’m merely making observations.) There are other similarities attached to it, too, like fear, morbidity, and contagion. I could go on. I won’t. You get the point.
All of this brings new meaning to that scene in Matthew 8, where Jesus touched the leper, doesn’t it? We don’t even want to be in the same country as Coronavirus. Jesus touches it.
Shiver.
All of which brings me to this: I want to help you approach Coronavirus spiritually. Scientists and doctors, who I thank God for, will help you approach it physically. They have a calling for that. I have a calling to do the former.
Spiritual Eyes
God would have us approach the sickness with spiritual eyes. He’s been helping Christians do that for millennia now. In the Old Testament, disease made a believer ritually unclean. Why? God was teaching us the spirituality of illness.
You cannot boil sickness down to mere science. It’s not just a virus or bacteria or a group of cells gone rogue in the body that we call cancer.
Disease has a spiritual cause: sin. And it has a spiritual consequence: death.
And no matter what the lethality is of Coronavirus, it’s essential to remember that every sickness is merely death on the way.
It’s this kind of spiritual reflection that illness deserves. Let Coronavirus prompt you to ask: Why is this planet so broken? Then let it affirm for you: wow, I – and this world! – do need God.
There’s a profound grace in that. I’m always moved in Matthew 8 when I see the leper come out of the crowd. Why? It reminds me of one of the literary moves that Matthew is making there.
There are large crowds following Jesus there, but only one guy comes out of the crowd to be touched by Jesus. Think about that. There were hoards there likely with bum knees and sniffling noses and sore throats who didn’t come to Jesus, but the leper did.
Sickness, adequately understood, brings you spiritually out of the crowd to Jesus.
Jesus Still Touches Lepers Today
Do you know what I say about that? Come out of the crowd today. Don’t just watch the news, crunch the stats, wash your hands for twenty seconds, and keep your eye on the people around you for symptoms. (You can imagine how many people were clearing a path for that leper, can’t you?)
Don’t be a bystander. Come out of the crowd, sick or not. Do you know what you’ll find when you do? Jesus is willing. Everybody else will put on their latex and their masks and step away, but Jesus will move in. He’s willing. He still touches lepers today.
Shiver.
There’s a little verse in Matthew that I think we with our modern medicine typically underappreciate. I believe this present moment might enlighten it. It’s a verse that tells you why Jesus can touch us.
“He took up our infirmities and bore our diseases.”
Matthew 8:17
It’s that verse I want to leave with you today. You know why? It tells you something incredibly important about Jesus. There is a sense in which Jesus did more than take up our sins. According to Matthew, he also took up and bore our infirmities and diseases – and I might add Coronavirus. Work this out theologically with me for a second.
The great church father Gregory of Nazianzus said, “What has not been assumed by Jesus has not been redeemed.” Think of what he’s saying there. If Jesus didn’t take up our sins, they haven’t been paid for. If Jesus didn’t carry our diseases, they haven’t been defeated.
Matthew’s saying Jesus bore and assumed our diseases. How so? I’m not saying, and Matthew’s not either, that when Jesus touched the leper, he got leprosy. There’s no indication of that from Matthew. What Matthew is, nevertheless, explaining is why Christ could heal people. Christ could heal and roll back the effects of sin because he himself bore the consequences of sin. Did Jesus get the flu in his life? Perhaps. Did he catch a cold? Likely.
Healing Us Ultimately Cost Jesus Ultimately
Do you know what else this tells you? This little line from Matthew is a statement he grabs from Isaiah 53, which is the great prophecy of God’s great Suffering Servant who suffers, dies, and rises for the people. Healing us cost Jesus, God’s great Servant, more than a fever.
Healing us ultimately cost Jesus ultimately. He lost his life.
Shiver.
Dear Christians, perhaps I write half baked. You decide. I do know why I write. I write to tell you that we have nothing to fear.
And, for the record, that’s not me being in denial. I promise you that. I realize I could get sick. 2020 has been rough at our house. I’m not in denial. I am, however, in hope. Can I call on you for that?
Come what may let’s show the world what it means to hope. Let’s show the world what it means to believe Jesus. I do think that this is a fantastic time to give our witness. I do not say that like a politician who never wastes a good crisis. I mean it like a Christian who is grieving the loss and death around this, who is interceding with God for the sick, and who is personally prepared to love and serve the sick the best I can, whatever that will mean.
Let’s hope. Let’s hope in front of the world. Let’s salt our conversations and thoughts with it. Why? Jesus touched all of us, lepers, baptismally.
Out of the Crowd
Shiver.
This is me coming out of the crowd bringing our Coronavirus to Jesus.
Come with me.
It is not we who should be afraid. Coronavirus should be.
The cure is coming. When Jesus comes the final time, sickness will itself get sick and die forever.
So, Christians, rise from your fears even as one day soon you will rise from the dead in the great name of Jesus.
