A couple of pastors have pointed out that the corona virus and this pandemic has shown us our idols, like wealth. This means the virus has shown us our sin. Can a disease show us our sin? Yes, the Lord can use it to show us our sin but this Yes is highly qualified as I hope will be demonstrated.
During Lent, we sing before the Gospel a verse from Joel, which is the Old Testament reading for Ash Wednesday, Joel 2:
Return to the Lord your God,
for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love;
and he relents over disaster.
What was causing the prophet to call Israel to repent? Answer: a plague of locusts.
What the cutting locust left,
the swarming locust has eaten.
What the swarming locust left,
the hopping locust has eaten,
and what the hopping locust left,
the destroying locust has eaten. Joel 1
We would see a plague of locusts as natural phenomenon to be solved by human means. Yet, this plague of locusts did remind the prophet of God’s judgment, the next verses:
Awake, you drunkards, and weep,
and wail, all you drinkers of wine,
because of the sweet wine,
for it is cut off from your mouth.
6 For a nation has come up against my land,
powerful and beyond number;
its teeth are lions’ teeth,
and it has the fangs of a lioness.
7 It has laid waste my vine
and splintered my fig tree;
it has stripped off their bark and thrown it down;
their branches are made white.
All of a sudden, “you drunkards” won’t be able to drink because the locusts have destroyed the harvest, no more grapes for a while! They were not awake and alert. Therefore, has a natural phenomenon like the plague of locusts have shown Israel their sin, as covid-19 has shown us our wrong(s)?
Note: It is only the called and ordained prophet, bringing God’s Word of judgment and grace could show Israel’s sin and God’s judgment and the call to return because the Lord is merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. Can a natural phenomenon show us our sin? No. Only by God’s Word can we be shown our sin as David was by the prophet Nathan preaching to him, see Psalm 51, “Against you, you alone have I sinned…” The Lord relents. It is not the natural phenomenon itself (and the natural phenom of say, a plague, is actually a symptom of human sin and death) but it is God’s Word that showed Israel’s sin.
Secondly, God could well have brought upon the plague of locusts, of a plague, as opportunity to call the people to repent and teach them. In Hebrews 12, it is written:
And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?
“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
nor be weary when reproved by him.
6 For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
and chastises every son whom he receives.”
7 It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? 8 If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. 9 Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? 10 For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. 11 For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
Israel was the Lord’s son. A true son is disciplined by his true father. As a son, Israel was being trained and disciplined by this plague of locusts. Again, the prophet, like a true Pastor, will remind the people that they are being disciplined by this chastisement and learn by it according to God’s Word of Law and Promise.
In this time of covid and quarantine what can we learn about ourselves to return to the Lord our God? We have talked so long about ‘finding God on the golf course’ or in nature, or on my own, of the deity in the mirror, we now learn in quarantine, this is mighty lonely. We make the communion of the saints into a gathering suitable to me, or my socio-economic group, or my tastes, or even my race. If I seek the God I want, it will be a double of myself (Bonhoeffer). And the Law will show us this deity is desperate in separation. Only the Lord’s forgiveness, His Word, can train us in holiness. God tells where He will be found in the place most opposite our sin: the Cross, dying in our sin to be our brother and die for us. “Return to the Lord your God…”
We are made and redeemed for communion. Even in the state of grace, the Lord saw after He made Adam that it was not good for the man to be alone. He created woman from man to be marriage, a communion and for
children to fill the earth. Maybe we are learning that there is no “digital communion”, no communion via the tube and the screen but only by His Word and Sacraments: His Words, the Bible and the means of grace that we can repent, return and rejoice. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live?
This Maundy Thursday, 9 April, 2020, happens also to be the date of Pr. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s execution by the Nazis of his participation in the plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler and it is the 75th year after the pastor’s death. Bonhoeffer learned the importance of the communion of the saints in the chastisement of the Nazis:
The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer. With great yearning the imprisoned apostle Paul calls his “beloved son in the faith,” Timothy, to come to him in prison in the last days of his life. He wants to see him again and have him near. Paul has not forgotten the tears Timothy shed during their final parting (2 Tim. 1:4). Thinking of the congregation in Thessalonica, Paul prays “night and day . . . most earnestly that we may see you face to face” (1 Thess. 3:10). The aged John knows his joy in his own people will only be complete when he can come to them and speak to them face to face instead of using paper and ink (2 John 12). The believer need not feel any shame when yearning for the physical presence of other Christians, as if one were still living too much in the flesh.
A human being is created as a body; the Son of God appeared on earth in the body for our sake and was raised in the body. In the sacrament the believer receives the Lord Christ in the body, and the resurrection of the dead will bring about the perfected community of God’s spiritual-physical creatures. Therefore, the believer praises the Creator, the Reconciler and the Redeemer, God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, for the bodily presence of the other Christian.
The prisoner, the sick person, the Christian living in the diaspora recognizes in the nearness of a fellow Christian a physical sign of the gracious presence of the triune God. In their loneliness, both the visitor and the one visited recognize in each other the Christ who is present in the body. They receive and meet each other as one meets the Lord, in reverence, humility, and joy. They receive each other’s blessings as the blessing of the Lord Jesus Christ. But if there is so much happiness and joy even in a single encounter of one Christian with another, what inexhaustible riches must invariably open up for those who by God’s will are privileged to live in daily community life with other Christians! Of course, what is an inexpressible blessing from God for the lonely individual is easily disregarded and trampled under foot by those who receive the gift every day. It is easily forgotten that the community of Christians is a gift of grace from the kingdom of God, a gift that can be taken from us any day—that the time still separating us from the most profound loneliness
We don’t know what we have till it is taken away, like with covid.When Pr. Bonhoeffer wrote that the community of Christians’ gift of communion is, “…gift that can be taken from us any day”, he knew the Nazis can do this. Too many in our constitutional republic want to trample on our 1st Amendment rights, and maybe covid has given them easy cover. Nevertheless, what we as Christ’s blood redeemed people deem as essential according to God’s Word, government has determined to be non-essential. Before this time of covid, many Christians regard the Church, the communion of the saints, as non-essential in intentional sporadic commitment. We have decried how paltry our congregation is in the artificial glow of the mega church on TV. I will let Pr. Bonhoeffer have the final word:
“If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian community in which we have been placed, even when there are no great experiences, no noticeable riches, but much weakness, difficulty, and little faith—and if, on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so miserable and so insignificant and does not at all live up to our expectations—then we hinder God from letting our community grow according to the measure and riches that are there for us all in Jesus Christ.”
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