Pandemic Parables 1. It isn't going to happen . . .

Life has changed a lot in 2020.  I've been thinking about how it changes the way I look at some Parables of Jesus.

Like this one:

Matthew 25:1-13

“At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five were wise. The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. The wise ones, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep.

“At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’

“Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps.  The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.’

“‘No,’ they replied, ‘there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.’

“But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut.

“Later the others also came. ‘Lord, Lord,’ they said, ‘open the door for us!’

“But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.’

“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.

This parable speaks into the pandemic's most amazing and controversial issue - preparedness.  Put simply, we (that is the whole world) didn't see it coming.  Look up any example of 'Looking ahead to 2020' on the internet and you will not find a trace of the coronavirus - but plenty about the Olympics and Brexit.  This absence of foresight even applies to this report about China (where the virus was already known to exist late in 2019).

We won't get a practice run for Jesus' Return.  But I think that Covid-19 is a reasonable echo which has quickly (but not in the blink of an eye, 1 Corinthians 15) re-ordered the world without an army or an assembly being able to stop it.

Surely this generation will never live quite so complacently ever again?  But then again, the parable suggests that even those who should be attuned to watching, become drowsy.  Great shocks can speak to unpreparedness, but cannot cure it.

May the Holy Spirit of God reach the drowsy souls before midnight.

How can I keep from singing?

It has been a surreal experience to return to the church building for Sunday morning worship these past two weeks.  Certainly things were feeling pandemically safe, but then again so is the local cemetery (for its residents).  We have some imaginative ideas for worship in the weeks ahead: but singing with our voices seems a distance away.

It is easy to OVERestimate the importance of singing.
The viral rise of the Contemporary Christian Music industry (CCM) has left most of us wondering how we ever found God without five of this year's new songs being sung.  Yet astonishingly we did.  You don't have to be a Quaker to object that God is at work when songs are silent.  Countless believers have spent years or lifetimes imprisoned or isolated in such ways as to render congregational singing a distant dream.  The Bible enjoins and reports praying far more often than singing (especially in the New Testament!).

But it is easy to UNDERestimate the importance of singing.
Most religions have some kind of music and song, but Christianity is full of it.  Whole service forms are based around singing, and whole church traditions defined by its forms (Anglican Evensong, Hillsongs, Gaelic Psalms).  One look at our church building gives the clue that singing is part of it . . .

. . . the organ, the choir stalls, the piano, the drums, the screen (mainly for projecting song words).
Singing, in Christianity, is an expression of the fundamental joy of a saving faith.  It is not a necessary rite; it is more than that.  Christianity is a new song.

Shai Linne: George Floyd and me

To my mind, Shai Linne's piece is required reading:

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/george-floyd-and-me/

In case you don't get to it's end (or the link disappears) - this is how it ends:

For me, “life as usual” means recognizing some people perceive me as a threat based solely on the color of my skin. For me, “life as usual” means preparing my sons for the coming time when they’re no longer perceived as cute little boys, but teenage “thugs.” Long after George Floyd disappears from the headlines, I will still be a black man in America.

And you know what? I thank God for that! He knew exactly what he was doing when he made me the way he did. Despite the real and exhausting challenges that come with my outward packaging, I know that I’m fearfully and wonderfully made. And I wouldn’t want to be anything other than what I am: a follower of Jesus Christ who has been saved by grace and redeemed by the blood of the Lamb—who also has brown skin and dreadlocks and does hip-hop.

Good News in a Pandemic: 7. Warning

STAY HOME

STAY ALERT

KEEP YOUR DISTANCE

WASH YOUR HANDS

DO NOT TRAVEL

SELF-ISOLATE

The last few months have multiplied the warnings.  Even though they're becoming more complicated these days they keep on coming.

It's not that warnings, including Government warnings, are anything new.  There is a whole industry of them, like packets of peanuts with warnings that the packet contains nuts.  It is just that they are now serious news - and well received by most, however unpalatable they appear to be for our comfort zone.

The renaissance of the warning as good news is itself good news.  Through increasingly complacent times the idea that the Bible warns has been offensive almost, that God warns irritating, that the Holy Spirit warns best avoided and the Jesus warned (he did it a lot) just perplexing.

Given that the Bible begins (in a perfect relationship between God and Man) with a warning, and that its last chapter is replete with warnings, we should better understand warning as a positive thing.

What is a pandemic if it is not a general warning to humanity?  The birds don't care, the moon doesn't mind, no angel has caught Covid-19 and nobody who died before last November had it either.  It is a warning to the people of now - to me, to you - that life is finite, material things are temporary, relationships are precious, and attention must be given to our soul's relationship with its Maker before we are brought face-to-face with Him.  That's where the Good News of a Saviour comes in - it was the most important thing after all . . .