Easter is always a special day for me and this year it was no different. I am always taken aback by the Holy Spirit revealing a fresh aspect of Jesus' death and resurrection.
The words carried with me after the Easter service were simple, but profound:
love, life, hope, and power. Jesus didn't rise from the dead and take off; He rose from the dead and came back! From the tomb flowed love, life, hope, and power to all those that believe.
The story I share with you is not my own, but one in which a a vignette was shared on Easter Sunday. (I googled the story and found the full-version when I came home.☺) I thank Pastor Nick Mundis from Oak Hill Church, Bloomington, MN, for his heart-felt sermon. Pour a cup of coffee, or pop a soda (it's a long one) and read about the love, life, hope and power that should fuel us all.
Pandemic Love
The swine flu, and the possibility of a world pandemic,
is not only in the news, it is unnerving. (This was written in 2009, when swine flu was in the headlines.) One has only to recall
history to realize that global killers have plagued human civilization
before. Gruesome details abound. But, surprisingly, so do acts of love.
Greek historian Thucydides describes the world’s first recorded
pandemic in 430 BC: sudden attack, inflammation of eyes, burning in the
stomach and throat, bloody coughing, diarrhea, violent vomiting, livid,
ulcerated skin, and then death. Those who survived often suffered the
loss of toes, fingers, genitals, sight, and even their entire memory. A
third of Athens was killed.
Other plagues mar history. Under Byzantine Emperor Justinian I,
disease-ridden fleas killed 40% of Constantinople’s population and a
quarter of the region’s population. Another outbreak occurred in France
in 588 AD, where an estimated 25 million lost their lives. Under a new
name, the disease returned in the middle of the 14th century. It was
known as the Black Death, because of blackening of the skin due to
hemorrhaging. People fled its path and in so doing aided the spread of
the disease across the continent. A quarter of Europe’s population was
killed. Asia and the Middle East were also hit. By the 18th century, an
estimated 140 million people had died from the bubonic plague. In the
20th century too, the Spanish flu came and went like a flash. An
estimated 40 million people were killed, more than were lost in the
Great War.
Pandemics are real, and we are not exempt. Our natural instinct
is to either worry about what might happen, becoming obsessed with
protecting ourselves, or to ignore the doomsday prophets all together,
burying ourselves deeper in a life of distraction and diversion. Neither
response prepares us.
The history books are full of horror. As it is today, death and
the horrid get the headlines. But throughout history, there exist
stories of hope, not just horror. I can’t help but think of the early
church in this regard.
In 165 AD, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, a devastating
epidemic swept through the Roman Empire. The mortality was so high in
many cities that Marcus Aurelius spoke of caravans of carts and wagons
hauling the dead from cities. In all, during the fifteen-year duration
of the epidemic, from a quarter to a third of the empire’s population
died. Almost a century later, a second terrible epidemic struck the
Roman world. In 251 to 266, at the height of what became known as the
Plague of Cyprian (the bishop of Carthage), 5,000 people a day were said
to be dying in Rome. Two-thirds of Alexandria’s population most likely
perished.
Pagan Rome was completely ill-prepared to help the sick or deal
with mass death. By the time of the early church, the people knew that
their priests were clueless as to why the gods had sent so much misery
to earth, or whether the gods were involved or even cared. Worse yet,
the doctors, priests and nobles fled infected areas in droves. Since
pagans had no belief in immortality, and Stoicism demeaned any sort of
heartfelt compassion, the plagues were meaningless and cruel. The basic
response of pagans was thus one of flight.
The best of the Greco-Roman scientists knew of no way to treat
epidemics other than to avoid all contact with those who had the
disease. And this they did, often evacuating entire towns, being afraid
to visit one another. Hence, the famous physician Galen, who lived
through the first epidemic during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, got out
of Rome as quickly as possible.
In stark contrast to such hopelessness and fear, the Christians
showed how their faith made this life, and even death, meaningful.
Cyprian, for example, almost welcomed the great epidemic of his time,
knowing that it was an opportunity for the church to give witness to the
hope that was within them. He was so overwhelmed by a sense of
confidence that the members of the Alexandrian church were accused of
thinking of the plague as a time of festival.
Instead of fear and despondency, then, the earliest Christians
expended themselves in works of mercy that simply dumbfounded the
pagans. For them, God loved humanity; in order to love God back, one was
to love others. God did not demand ritual sacrifices; he wanted his
love expressed on earth in deeds of compassion.
This love took on very practical, concrete forms. In Rome, the
Christians buried not just their own, but pagans who had died without
funds for a proper burial. They also supplied food for 1,500 poor on a
daily basis. In Antioch in Syria, the number of destitute persons being
fed by the church had reached 3,000. Church funds were used in special
cases to buy the emancipation of Christian slaves.
During the Plague in Alexandria when nearly everyone else fled,
the early Christians risked their lives for one another by simple deeds
of washing the sick, offering water and food, and consoling the dying.
Their care was so extensive that Julian eventually tried to copy the
church’s welfare system. It failed, however, because for the Christians
it was love, not duty, that motivated them.
The first Christians not only took care of their own, but also
reached out far beyond themselves. Their faith led to a pandemic (pan =
all; demos = people) of love. Consequently, at the risk of their own
lives, they saved an immense number of lives. Their elementary nursing
greatly reduced mortality. Simple provisions of food and water allowed
the sick that were temporarily too weak to cope for themselves to
recover instead of perishing miserably.
Pagans could not help but notice that Christians not only found
the strength to risk death, but through their care for one another they
were much less likely to die. Christian survivors of the plague became
immune, and therefore they were able to pass among the afflicted with
seeming invulnerability. In fact, those most active in nursing the sick
were the very ones who had already contracted the disease very early on
but who were also cared for by their brothers and sisters. In this way,
the early Christians became, in the words of one scholar, “a whole force
of miracle workers to heal the ‘dying.’” Or as historian Rodney Spark
puts it, “It was the soup [the Christians] so patiently spooned to the
helpless that healed them.”
In the midst of intermittent persecution and colossal
misunderstanding, and in an era when serving others was thought to be
demeaning, the “followers of the way,” instead of fleeing disease and
death, went about ministering to the sick and helping the poor, the
widowed, the crippled, the blind, the orphaned and the aged. The people
of the Roman Empire were forced to admire their works and dedication.
“Look how they love one another,” was heard on the streets.
Our time is not unlike the twilight years of the Roman empire.
The god of materialism provides no hope, the structures and institutions
of society that are meant to address social needs are indifferent and
cold, and the current adversarial atmosphere of mistrust, suspicion, and
violence breed fear and loneliness.
In an age of impersonal medicine, fear of
death, social isolation, and mounting catastrophe, today’s church has
the opportunity to go beyond the precautions of quarantine and vaccine
and trust in the ultimate protection: Love. Instead of retreating from
the onslaught of pain and death, the church has the chance to
demonstrate that Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Instead of
fear, which makes it difficult to look beyond the precautionary,
followers of Christ can show the world that it is in giving our lives
away that we find life. How we live and how we die is our message. If we
would but dare more in faith, here and now, then perhaps, like with the
early church, an outpouring of new life and real hope, instead of
terror and flight, will sweep the earth.
Charles Moore
May 15, 2009
They didn't run....for the love, life, hope, and power of Jesus fueled their daily life.
Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. I Cor. 15:57
