I’ve been reflecting over the past few days – as, I hope, you would expect of me - on the Christian’s role during the current pandemic and what it is we, as Christians, can bring to others in their need, in their loneliness, and in their fears. How may we best help our ‘neighbour’? That word ‘neighbour’ which in the teaching of Jesus encompassed a far, far wider meaning than just ‘the person who lives next door’. I am sure you will agree that it has been both heart-warming and encouraging to see how people of all faiths and none have responded to those in need at this critical time we all of us face. With so many uncertainties and unknowns it is very troubling indeed.
Yet as I talk with people at this extraordinary time when Christians and non-believers alike find ourselves forced by our current situation to think more deeply than usual about life, about its meaning, its purpose, one’s destiny, I find not only the opportunity to talk about Christianity, about Jesus, but also a far greater openness and willingness amongst non-believers to do so. It is an opportunity and a challenge all Christians ought to make the most of: not to do so would be to short-change people, to deny them the supreme and unique comfort of Christ - the message of his priceless offer to all, the assurance of their sins forgiven and the sure hope of eternal life through him. What a wonderful message that is at any time; and especially so perhaps at this!
Christians have a calling of course, a duty given us in the Second Commandment, to ‘love your neighbour as yourself’; and so the practical deeds of love – doing the shopping for the vulnerable and isolated, collecting their prescriptions, phoning the self-isolators and the lonely, etc, etc are ones we must do as best we can – if of course we are able and, it goes without saying, in a way that poses no health threat either to them or to us.
But these also offer us an opportunity to speak of Jesus. Our detractors will say that doing so is ‘insensitive’ or ‘taking advantage of people when they are at their most vulnerable’: but such attitudes come from a view of the world that either refuses to acknowledge God’s existence or actively works, wittingly or unwittingly, against Him: they fail or refuse to recognise that we are made by God, in his image, and for a relationship with him. No, here is an opportunity both to serve others and to confess him, those two sides of the same coin of what must constitute the Christian’s love.
It was through the message of Christ crucified and the sacrificial love of ordinary Christians that Christianity turned the Roman empire upside down, introducing a completely new hierarchy of virtues, values, and morality: the ‘light’ of Christ turned back the ‘darkness’ of paganism, and this against all the odds - or as we would want to say, by faithful self-sacrifice and by God’s grace!
Christians argued in love and through love (what we used to call ‘charity’) that each and every human being is created in the image of the one, true God, and therefore of infinite value. This turned upside down the prevailing view of the status, value, and rights of every living individual.
It was this truly egalitarian spiritual doctrine the Christian community believed and, albeit imperfectly, practised, that produced such a deep and dynamic moral and social reversal which then had so many far flung fruitful consequences for all.
From the beginning, Christians argued, for example, that women were of as equal value as men, that infanticide was wrong, that ‘might’ was seldom if ever ‘right’, and that this life is not the be all and end all of human existence.
This last point, the message that there is eternal life and that it is offered, as a gift, to all who will be reconciled to God through faith in Jesus Christ, must surely be on our lips at this time when so many are forced by their circumstances to contemplate their mortality.
The Second Commandment is very much about loving the whole person: and if ‘whole’ means the mind and soul as well as the body, then why would we so restrict our love by not sharing the ‘Good News’ of Jesus with them?
That Christians and the institutional Church have too often failed in this their calling we must acknowledge; but British Common Law, the ending of slavery, the establishing of universal education, the emancipation of children, the relief, rather than the acceptance, of the evils of poverty, the motivation for modern scientific enquiry, the sanctity of human life, and the very concept of ‘human rights’, all these and so much else are the consequences of the Christian revolution which dates from the first century Anno Domini; and we should not be reticent about saying so.
This is still a Christian country and most people’s moral outlook - whether they realise it or not - is a direct consequence of that simple but wonderfully liberating and sustaining fact, the historical fact of the first Easter.
It is the resurrection of Jesus which proved that everything that he taught, did and, most importantly, claimed about himself, could indeed be believed – reasonably, rationally, and on the basis of sound historical evidence. That evidence will never be sufficient for those who do not wish to examine it, but to those who humbly and genuinely search for the truth, Jesus has promised to make himself known; we have only to open the door of our lives, but from the inside, and invite him in.
For many, sadly, it is only at times of adversity or uncertainty that they are able to hear Jesus knocking at the door of their life (Revelation Ch 3 v 20) with his offer of forgiveness, reconciliation, and a personal, eternal relationship with him: their lives at other times are too much taken up with distractions, temptations, and so much more. We can lovingly and respectfully help them to hear his knock by sharing the Good News of him with them.
Yes, there will be some who don’t want to hear it, and some, sadly, who will even hold it against us. But the ‘loving’ Christian really has no choice: as St. Paul says to the Corinthians in the passage that was read to us this morning, ‘we are ruled by the love of Christ’, or, as another translation puts it, ‘the love of Christ constrains us.’
As a very practical aid in this, the book ‘City Lives’ (you can find copies on a table by the New Room in the church, which is always open) tells the stories of a whole variety of people from different backgrounds who have heard his knock and responded. It would surely be a most ‘loving’ gift to offer (in a suitably gloved or freshly washed hand of course!) to a neighbour in need.
May the Lord Jesus bless you in all you that you do for him.
Rev Campbell Paget, Vicar of Brenchley 22 March 2020
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