Dear Friends,
I have been invited by several folks in the last week, including our Board and a couple of our intercessors, to communicate to our Verbena friends in the midst of the Coronavirus declared pandemic. I'll start off by saying this: Surely the people of God must have a Spirit-led response in the midst of any storm, crisis or challenge that brings light and hope into darkness, anxiety, panic and fear, while at the same time obeying the authorities and being prudent in all circumstances.
When I began to draft this piece last Friday, following a Board call, I found that many other believing leaders were doing the same thing and in far greater depth and research informed than I am able to do here. Here is a link to one of the most exhaustive lay responses I have seen. Please read it all the way through. It is wise, thorough and a call to unique responses as citizens of the kingdom of heaven as well as one to the pragmatic based on good authority. It dovetails with my own thoughts in many ways, which I will summarize here…
First of all, we must pray. This is a call to intercession on behalf of the whole world, and the heart of Verbena is intercession. We believe this changes everything, including us, as we seek the mercy and intervention of a loving and good God. Oswald Chambers once asserted that God changes things in response to prayer. That hit me with the force of transforming thunder 22 years ago, and we have believed it and practiced it for every person coming for an intensive in the most damaging of circumstances and memory. God is aware of this crisis, as He has been of every other the world has faced over time... So, let’s pray.
Here is what my pastor invites us to pray for:
We pray not only for ourselves, but for all who have been impacted, indeed devastated, by this virus. Pray for those who have lost their lives and their livelihoods and those who are helping them; pray for the medical teams and first responders who are on the front lines of our health defense and those doing research and working behind the scene to end this. Pray for those who lead our nation and states as well as leaders the world over that a coordinated cooperative effort may bring about a swifter resolution to a health crisis.
He concludes with this statement which I wholeheartedly pass on to you. "Prayer is a good antidote to panic." He then quotes Philippians 4:6-7 (NIV), "Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." Let’s do this together and with our children.
Continue as often as you will to receive the Eucharist. If your church is closed, meet in a small group and with your family to receive. We believe in the Real Presence so let’s receive it, administering in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, asking God through the descending power of the Holy Spirit to make these elements for us the sacramental reality of His body and blood as He declared it is. Appeal to your church leaders to make the sacrament available to smaller units of folks at various times throughout the week as opposed to shutting everything down.
Continue to meet together for worship and prayer in small groups, as Hebrews 10 instructs, encouraging one another in the today of this crisis and while we still call it Today.
Help the poor and displaced. What an opportunity to stand in the gap, not hoarding but sharing with those losing jobs, losing meals and losing housing. Meeting the pressing needs of our neighbors right where we are. This can be accomplished with the appropriate and advised social distancing. And powerfully preach the love of God.
Obey the authorities. Be prudent and wise, informed and gentle. Read The Wall Street Journal article of March 14th entitled "America's Long Fight Against Contagion." I am in the demographic most at risk by age and by underlying conditions. Elderly, really? Laurie asked me if I were concerned for myself. I said, "No, not really,” but I will take all the precautions recommended.
Jesus is the same today as he has been through every contagion and catastrophe and He is the way, the truth, and the life. And so, I trust in God for my going out and coming in and for yours. I will stay at my post. Would I like your prayers for my protection? "Yes." Do I wash my hands, and do I elbow pump when the putt rolls into the hole? "Yes." Am I at risk? "Yes." Am I at peace? "Yes." Am I praying? "Yes."
Forgive me if you think this next paragraph is out of place in addressing the subject, but I feel deeply convicted in my spirit to express it. The biggest threat to America and its people, and to the world and its people, is not this virus. It is a threat for sure and to the most vulnerable: this for the elderly as polio was to the children. But there is a virus growing more lethal and pervasive. It is the ever-present virus of deception and unbelief in the goodness of God and calling evil good and good evil. We pray for the elderly in this current crisis. All lives are precious, including the most vulnerable of all, the unborn, dying in massively greater proportion. With this in mind, I pray:
Father, use all crises to bring many to Christ and open all eyes to the truth. And use them more clearly in us to conform us more nearly to the image of your Son according to your purpose. In that way, all things work together for good for those who love the Lord and who are called according to that purpose that He, Jesus, might be the first born among many bearing that family likeness.
Finally, the Covid-19 crisis is causing us to pause and reorder. It also comes in intensity here during Lent, a recurring time to pause and reorder in the rhythm of time eternal. It is a concurrent time to pause to believe, maybe a nudge to silence and contemplation on that which is Eternal and an exposing of idols in how we spend our time. I am filling some of that Lenten space and reordering to the Sabbath. I am reading Sabbath as Resistance by Walter Brueggemann. He describes the Sabbath pause, and you could even say this dual pause we are in is transformational:
"In this (Hebrew) interpretive tradition, Sabbath is not simply a pause. It is an occasion for reimagining all social life away from coercion and competition to compassionate solidarity. Such solidarity is imaginable and capable of performance only when the drivenness of acquisitive is broken. Sabbath is not simply the pause that refreshes. It is the pause that transforms. Whereas Israelites are always tempted to acquisitiveness, Sabbath is an invitation to receptivity, an acknowledgement that what is needed is given and need not be seized." (p. 45)
Will you join me in this Lenten Sabbath, all the more spacious in light of these recent developments? Let’s redeem the time in many ways with our eyes fixed on Jesus. And remember this redemptive promise and invitation contingent on repentance and prayer. So we are back where we started, with prayer:
When I shut up the heavens so that there is no more rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among the people, if my people, who are called by my name (that is us), will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will turn from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land. (2 Chronicles 7:14)
Bless you all in every way.
Trip and Laurie