6
" With God’s permission the enemy has sent poison and deadly dung among us, and so I will pray to God that he may be gracious and preserve us. Then I will fumigate to purify the air, give and take medicine, and avoid places and persons where I am not needed in order that I may not abuse myself and that through me others may not be infected and inflamed with the result that I become the cause of their death through my negligence. If God wishes to take me, he will be able to find me. At least I have done what he gave me to do and am responsible neither for my own death nor for the death of others. But if my neighbour needs me, I shall avoid neither person nor place but feel free to visit and help him. Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel, ed. T. G. Tappert (London: SCM Press, 1955), 242, from a letter of 1527. "
― N.T. Wright , God and the Pandemic: A Christian Reflection on the Coronavirus and Its Aftermath
10
" For Jesus’ first followers, then, his death and resurrection were now the single, ultimate ‘sign’. Prophets like Amos had been forerunners. God has now spoken through the Son, once and for all. For us to try to read God’s secret code off the pages of the newspapers may look clever. We may even get a reputation for spiritual insight – but actually, we are doing it because we have forgotten where the true key to understanding is now to be found. Similarly, any claim to tell from world events when the ‘second coming’ will occur is a claim to know more than Jesus himself (Mark 13.32). Jesus himself is the reason why people should turn from idolatry, injustice and all wickedness. The cross is where all the world’s sufferings and horrors have been heaped up and dealt with. The resurrection is the launch of God’s new creation, of his sovereign saving rule on earth – starting with the physical body of Jesus himself. Those events are now the summons to repent and the clue to what God is doing in the world. Trying to jump from an earthquake, a tsunami, a pandemic or anything else to a conclusion about ‘what God is saying here’ without going through the Gospel story is to make the basic theological mistake of trying to deduce something about God while going behind Jesus’ back. "
― N.T. Wright , God and the Pandemic: A Christian Reflection on the Coronavirus and Its Aftermath
12
" This is well set out in Rodney Stark’s famous book The Rise of Christianity (1996, Ch. 4). Stark makes a compelling case that the way the Christians behaved in the great plagues of the early centuries was a significant factor in contributing to the spread of the faith. Stark, and others who have followed him, have collected the evidence from the plagues of the 170s AD, which killed the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and the 250s. (Nobody is quite sure what diseases they were. One might have been smallpox, the other measles, both killers when attacking unprepared populations.) The emperor Julian, who tried to deconvert the Roman empire in the late fourth century after it had become officially Christian under Constantine, complained that the Christians were much better at looking after the sick, and for that matter the poor, than the ordinary non-Christian population. He was trying to lock the stable door after the horse had bolted. The Christians were being for the world what Jesus had been for Israel. People took notice. Something new was happening. "
― N.T. Wright , God and the Pandemic: A Christian Reflection on the Coronavirus and Its Aftermath
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" When the present pandemic began to take hold, a passage from the writings of Martin Luther went the rounds on the internet, with Luther’s usual combination of down-to-earth wisdom and practical piety. Luther faced several plagues in Wittenberg and elsewhere in the 1520s and 1530s, and in his letters to church and civic leaders he insisted that preachers and pastors should remain at their posts: as good shepherds, they should be prepared to lay down their lives for their sheep. Likewise civic and family leaders should only flee from a plague if they had made proper provision for the safety of those left behind. He offers advice which sounds as relevant today as it was five hundred years ago. Plagues, he says, may perhaps be messengers from God; but the right approach should be practical as well as faithful. This, he says, is how one should think to oneself: With God’s permission the enemy has sent poison and deadly dung among us, and so I will pray to God that he may be gracious and preserve us. Then I will fumigate to purify the air, give and take medicine, and avoid places and persons where I am not needed in order that I may not abuse myself and that through me others may not be infected and inflamed with the result that I become the cause of their death through my negligence. If God wishes to take me, he will be able to find me. At least I have done what he gave me to do and am responsible neither for my own death nor for the death of others. But if my neighbour needs me, I shall avoid neither person nor place but feel free to visit and help him. Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel, ed. T. G. Tappert (London: SCM Press, 1955), 242, from a letter of 1527. "
― N.T. Wright , God and the Pandemic: A Christian Reflection on the Coronavirus and Its Aftermath
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" We today know that only too well: someone may carry, and transmit, the Covid-19 virus without knowing they have it. So the natural inclination of a Jesus-follower, to obey Jesus’ call to go and help at the place of danger, even at the risk of one’s own life, looks rather different when that apparently heroic action might easily make matters worse. The generous one-dimensional desire to be a hero, to ‘do the right thing’, needs to be rounded out with the equally generous willingness to restrain apparent heroism when it might itself bring disaster. Yet this cannot become an excuse for doing nothing. Out of lament must come fresh action. At the very least, clergy (properly trained, authorized and protectively clothed) must be allowed to attend the sick and dying. If, as sometimes seems to be the case, secular doctors suppose that such ministry is superfluous, this must be challenged at every level. As we thank God that in the last two or three centuries the long-term calling of the Church to bring healing and hope has been shared in the wider secular world, we must work with the medical profession, not least to ensure a fully rounded, fully human approach. This applies particularly when people are near the point of death; the hospice movement of the last fifty years has been largely a Christian innovation, privately funded, witnessing to a hope that secular medicine has sometimes ignored. The call to Jesus’ followers, then, as they confront their own doubts and those of the world through tears and from behind locked doors, is to be sign-producers for God’s kingdom. We are to set up signposts–actions, symbols, not just words–which speak, like Jesus’ signs, of new creation: of healing for the sick, of food for the hungry, and so on. This means things like running food banks, working in homeless shelters, volunteering to help those visiting relatives in prisons, and so on. These can be rewarding tasks but they, and all similar things, are also demanding. For them we will need, as Mary, Thomas and the disciples in the upper room needed, the living presence of Jesus, and the powerful breath of his Spirit. That is what we are promised. "
― N.T. Wright , God and the Pandemic: A Christian Reflection on the Coronavirus and Its Aftermath
