Monday, April 20, 2020

Weekday Devotion With Pastor Chris


When the Black Death showed up in Wittenberg in 1527, most of the residents who had the means chose to leave the city.  Martin Luther, however, and his pregnant wife Katharina chose to stay in order to care for the sick.  Luther wrote, “We must respect the word of Christ, ‘I was sick and you did not visit me.’ According to this passage we are bound to each other in such a way that no one may forsake the other in his distress but is obliged to assist and help him as he himself would like to be helped.”

Two hundred years before, when the plague first showed up, both rich and poor were affected.  At times, the dead outnumbered the living and there weren’t enough survivors left to bury the corpses.  People barred themselves in houses or fled to the countryside.  Very few risked visiting or caring for the sick, but many parish priests, nuns and monks did precisely that; many of them falling ill and eventually dying as a result.

     This is what Christians have always done.  In the third century, when the Plague of Cyprian was claiming as many as 5,000 deaths a day in Rome alone, Christians showed extraordinary care and compassion for those who suffered.  Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria at the time, wrote, “Most of our brother Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ, and with them departed this life serenely happy; for they were infected by others with the disease, drawing on themselves the sickness of their neighbors and cheerfully accepting their pains.”

     This is what Christians do.  We care.  It is what Jesus did.  Even in the midst of this quarantine we are not helpless.  Members of our congregation have been bringing food to the people of Sharpsburg, making masks and distributing them in places like Longwood and Presbyterian Care, and making extra-commitment gifts to support those in need.  We can pick up a phone and call someone who is alone.  We can drop off a meal on the front porch of a neighbor.  We can write a note of appreciation, encouragement or support.  We can wear masks ourselves (even if it is just a bandanna) to protect those we encounter from anything we, ourselves, might be carrying.

     In his book, The Rise of Christianity, sociologist Rodney Stark suggests that the plagues “search us.  They discover in us either the way of the flesh (self-preservation) or the way of the Spirit (self-giving sacrifice). The third-century plague found in the church a Spirit-filled people, willing to walk the way of their Master.”  So may this pandemic find the same in us.

"And the King will answer and say to them, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers or sisters of mine, even the least of them, you did it to me.” (Mt 25:40)




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