He's In This With Us!

Several phrases have circulated globally over the past few weeks.  One is, "wash your hands for 20 seconds."  Another is, "practice social distancing."  We've heard this too, "if you're displaying Coronavirus symptoms, self-quarantine."  But one that has really stood out to me is, "we're all in this together."  From news presenters to doctors; from politicians to church leaders; many are saying, "we're all in this together."  In a nation and world that's been divided, through this pandemic, we are becoming somewhat united.

For those of us with a faith in God - or even those without any faith - in moments like these, it's natural to ask, "Is God in this with us?".  I believe the story of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, clearly demonstrates that God is in this with us - no matter what, no matter where, and no matter when "this" is.  In fact, one of the names given to Jesus in Matthew's gospel is Immanuel...God with us.

Though he is God, in his essence, Jesus Christ humbled himself - he emptied himself and became one of us.  The One who spoke everything into existence, who sustains everything by his powerful word, and the God who will bring all things to completion one day, allowed himself to become fully human.  He knows what it's like to live life, just as we live our lives.  He had to learn how to walk and talk.  He had to be disciplined by his parents.  He had to study the scriptures to discover who his Father was.  And as the writer of Hebrews reminds us, he was tempted in every way that we are tempted, yet without sin, so, he can sympathize with us when we are tempted.  When he fell down and scraped his knee, he bled, just as we bleed.  When others teased or mocked him, it hurt, just as it hurts when we face ridicule.  Jesus knew hunger, pain, thirst, loneliness, and sickness.  In fact, he's the only human to live a complete human life.  He lived his life to the full!

But Jesus didn't have to live the kind of life that he lived.  He could have chosen to live a self-absorbed life, seeking pleasure and wealth.  He could have tried to gain power through political manipulation or brute force.  He didn't have to live the life that he lived, but thank God he did!  Jesus chose to live a life full of grace.  He wasn't self-absorbed.  He loved God the Father with all his heart, soul, strength, and mind.  And he loved his neighbor as himself.  His was a life fully present to God and to others.  And his was a life full of compassion.

Let's consider the meaning of the word compassion.  Merriam-Webster tells us that it is a "sympathetic consciousness of other's distress with a desire to alleviate it."  The word comes from the Latin, com-patti, to suffer or to bear.  So, compassion isn't just sympathy, but rather having the desire to alleviate the suffering of another.  Compassion compels one to act on their feelings.  What is often translated as compassion in our English Bibles comes from the Greek word splancha which can be translated as, "to feel it from your gut!"  From the beginning to the end of the Biblical story, God is clearly seen to be compassionate.  He not only feels for us from his gut, he acted on those feelings by coming to share and suffer with us through his Son, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.  Even amid this Coronavirus pandemic, God is in this with us!

Let's reflect on a couple of stories from the gospel of Luke which highlight God's compassion and remind us that he's in this with us.  In Luke 7 we read about a woman who had already lost her husband and now has lost her one and only son.   As the funeral procession marches past Jesus, his heart goes out to this weeping woman.  But Jesus' initial words are not words one is supposed to say to a grieving mother.  Do not weep.  Do not weep?  How cruel!  How unthoughtful!  How insensitive!  Not only is it completely normal for this widow to weep, it's healthy and necessary.  But Jesus' words were uttered out of a deep compassion for this widow.  And the words he spoke next made those initial words come true.  "Young man, I say to you, rise!"  What a shock - what a joyous shock!  The young man, on the way to be buried, is raised from the dead.

For any who have lost loved ones, this story resonates in a powerful way.  Like this widow, we've grieved, we've wept, and we've hurt.  But we have faith that one day, Jesus will speak these same words to our loved ones - "I say to you, rise!".  One day he'll say to all of us who live for him, "Young man, young woman, old man, old woman, I say to you, rise!".  And it's all because our God is the God who raises the dead.  It's all because our God is a compassionate God.  He is in this with us!

Resurrection is our hope, but Jesus' parable in Luke 10 reminds us that we have work to do in the meantime.  Here, Jesus tells the story of the Samaritan - a story many of us have heard a thousand times.  But I would like to consider the story, not from the perspectives the priest, the Levite, or the Samaritan, but from the perspective of the injured man.  Jesus tells this parable to a lawyer who was seeking to justify himself by limiting those who could legitimately consider him a neighbor.  Considering this story through the eyes of the injured man helps Jesus' point become clear.

In this famous parable, a man was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho and was beaten to within an inch of his life by some robbers.  What if we were him?  We're lying there, beaten and dying.  But those who are like us, those who come from the same background, those we would expect to stop and help us, don't.  Maybe they're too busy?  Maybe they're too ritually pure to contaminate themselves with us (the priest and Levite would become ritually impure by touching a dead body and we look at least "half dead").

The one who stops to help is nothing like us.  He's not a Jew, he's a hated Samaritan.  If a Christian was lying there half dead, it might be like an atheist or agnostic coming to the rescue.  For an American, it might be an Iranian stopping to help.  For a modern Jew, it might be like a Palestinian providing aid.  Though this individual is from a different culture and practices a different religion, they act like a neighbor and therefore they become our neighbor.  Shouldn't this change the way we view them?  Wouldn't this remind us that their people are people made in the image of God?  The unexpected one was the neighbor in the story and Jesus says to go and do likewise.

 Not only during this pandemic, maybe especially during this pandemic, but not only during this pandemic, we have the opportunity to show love and compassion to every single person that God places in our path.  Our God is a compassionate God and we are to be like him.  Like Jesus, we are to offer words of grace, not condemnation.  And as we see in the Samaritan story, we are to offer compassion to all those God places in our path.  Because like the young man from Nain, our hope and our future is resurrection!  And so we go and do likewise.  We go and do likewise because our God is a compassionate God.  We're all in this together, because our God is in this with us! - Shay

Sabbath Rest

The world is in the middle of a "new normal" as it comes to grips with the Covid-19 pandemic.  This virus has had a serious impact globally.  Thousands of people have already died and there will be more.  We mourn and pray for their loved ones.  Though many of us are younger, in good health,  and don't have much to fear, there are those who are vulnerable.  Namely, the sick and the elderly.  We should not forget the impact this virus could have on them.  All of us have friends and relatives who may be vulnerable to this epidemic and we should not lose sight of that.

Less important, but significant, there are serious economic impacts that are already being felt and will continue to be felt for some time.  In the Roaring Fork Valley of Colorado where my family lives, the local economy is driven by tourism, which is presently at a standstill.  And depending on how the overall economy reacts over the next few months, construction, which is another major industry in this valley, may be affected.  Plus, with so many businesses of any variety shut down, quite a few people are trying to make ends meet on a reduced salary or missing wages.

Almost everywhere in the world, day to day routines have been altered.  Many, though not all of us, have more time on our hands than we did a few weeks ago.  The things that seemed important just a few days ago, no longer seem so urgent.  And so, we have time to pause for a moment and reevaluate what's most important in life.  We should not let this moment pass in vain.  To quote "Dead Poet's Society, we should "Carpe Diem", or "Seize the Day"!

We are so busy in the modern world, as T.S. Eliot wrote in his poem "Burnt Norton", we are "...distracted from distraction by distraction...".  We can become so frantic, so busy, so distracted, that we don't have the time to stop and smell the flowers, let alone contemplate the beauty of the flowers.  We're so busy living life that we sometimes forget what life is all about.  We need moments to slow down...to think...to have meaningful conversations with others.  Whether we know it or not, our bodies require rest.  And we need both time and space to be fully present to God, fully present to others, and fully present to God's creation.

Even thousands of years ago, this was true.  It's why God gave his people, Israel, the gift of Sabbath.  The gift of Sabbath was the gift of being able to cease, stop, and pause.  It was the gift of rest.  But sadly, in our quest for self-sufficiency and in our endless pursuit of the modern notion of the good life, many of us have neglected this life-giving and life-enhancing gift from God.

God's gift of Sabbath goes all the way back to the beginning.  It's woven into the very fabric of creation.  The way Genesis 1 tells the story of creation is through poetry.  There's a rhythm - a cadence - to God speaking all things into existence.  Day one...day two...day three.  It was evening and it was morning, the sixth day.  And then, on day seven, the destination of creation is realized as God ceases from work and rests.  He bless the seventh day and makes it holy.  Work is important, but even more important is the rest that work affords.

As the Biblical story progresses, the Lord delivers his people from Egyptian bondage and then gives them the Ten Commandments at Mt. Sinai.  The fourth command and the one with the longest explanation says this.  "Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy.  Six days you shall labor and do all your work.  But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work - you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.  For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it." (Exodus 20:8-11).  Did you notice that the gift of Sabbath rest extended to the children of the Israelites?  And not just their kids, but also to their slaves and their livestock, and even to the alien, the foreigner living among them.  They're told to remember the Sabbath!  So often, we in the modern world forget God's gift of rest.

In Deuteronomy 5, the Ten Commandments are repeated, including the Sabbath command.  But, in this recounting, the explanation given isn't tied back to creation, but rather to God's redemption of his people in the Exodus story.  He reminds them that they were slaves in Egypt - that they had no rest there.  But now, they've been set free, and so they are to live as free people.  And this freedom of rest is again extended to their children, slaves, animals, and resident aliens.  In Deuteronomy 5, we see that God has always been concerned for the wellbeing of his entire creation.

We see this concern, even for the land in Leviticus 25.  Every seventh year, the Israelites were to allow the land to rest.  They were to plant no crops in that year and they were to trust God to provide for their needs from the previous year's abundance.  And after forty-nine years, the fiftieth year was to be a year of Jubilee!  Debts were to be forgiven.  Indentured servants were to be set free.  And family land and inheritances were to revert to their original owners.  

What an amazing way to organize a society!  If the Israelites had trusted God to take care of them, they would have flourished.  But throughout their time in the Promised Land, they often put their faith in themselves and in the gods and the ways of the nations around them.  None of the other Middle Eastern nations had a Sabbath day or Sabbath year.  Like we sometimes do, the people of the Ancient Near East looked to their own hard work and ingenuity to provide for their needs.  And Israel and Judah often followed their lead.  In fact, one of the reasons given for the exile is that the Promised Land was to be given several decades of rest for all the Sabbath years that Judah had failed to keep.

In his commentary on Genesis, the Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann says this regarding the Judeans in exile, "The celebration of a day of rest was, then, the announcement of trust in this God who is confident enough to rest.  It was then and now an assertion that life does not depend upon our feverish activity of self-securing, but that there can be a pause in which life is given to us simply as a gift."  As Brueggemann reminds us, life if given to us as a gift and God has also given us rest - a Sabbath - if we will trust him.

Some of the Jews of Jesus' day had missed the forest for the trees in their observance of the Sabbath.  Jesus had to remind them that the Sabbath was created for mankind, not mankind for the Sabbath.  Rest is a gift, not a burden.  If the Jews of Jesus' day were guilty of "over-keeping" the Sabbath, I wonder if we're guilty of "under-keeping" it?  

Though Christians are not called to sanctify Saturday, the principle of Sabbath should still inform the way we live our lives.  Have you ever noticed how getting sick forces you to slow down, to take it easy, and to rest?  The only time some people slow down is when they are sick.  And even then, some people try to push on, despite their illness.  As bad as Coronavirus is - and make no mistake, it is bad - one of the blessings that has come out of the global shut down is that nearly everyone has been forced to slow down.  (I acknowledge that many in the healthcare field and other industries maybe busier than ever).  Many people have found themselves with more time at home, more time with family, and more time to think about what's most important in life.  When a global pandemic strikes, when people are losing their lives, and when the economy tanks, we are reminded of why we live our lives in the first place.  God gave his people the Sabbath rest, in part, to give them the time and space to focus on him and on his provision for them.  

Despite the negative ramifications of this dreaded disease, let's make sure that we don't miss the opportunity that this tragedy affords us.  Let's take the time to reflect on God and our relationship with him.  Maybe pick up the phone or organize a Skype call or Facetime conversation with an old friend or loved one.  If you need to be reconciled with someone, don't waste another day!  And go outside.  Social distancing doesn't have to only happen indoors.  In fact, doctors say that getting some fresh air and sunlight helps boost your immune system and your mood, provided you maintain social distancing.  So, take a walk or a hike.  Go on a bike-ride.  For those in the Northern Hemisphere, notice the changing of the seasons from Winter to Spring.  See the differences of light and shadow as the sun moves higher on the horizon.  Take a look at the plants which are beginning to green.  Notice the budding of the trees.  Take the time to stop and smell the flowers.  Look for God's beauty and majesty in his creation.  

I realize there will be times when you're stuck inside.  When you're holed up at home with your family, certainly enjoy a movie or your favorite TV Show.  But don't limit your time to those activities.  Read a book.  Many people are too busy to read these days, but this is a great opportunity to get back into the habit or to develop the habit for the first time.  And there's a pretty good book I'd like to recommend.  It's called the Bible and it's full of exciting stories and meaningful concepts.  It's home to the greatest story ever told - the good news of Jesus Christ!  Habits take time to develop, so take this time to develop the habit of daily Bible reading.  And pray.  In Philippians 4, Paul tells us that we are to be anxious for nothing, but we are take everything to God in prayer.  

As we press on through the disruptions of our normal lives, make sure to do meaningful things with those closest to you.  Of course, have fun while you do it.  Remember, mankind wasn't made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was given to us as a gift from God.  We should see this present Sabbath rest as a gift, not a burden.  And this crisis also provides us with other opportunities.  Let's be sure to be on the lookout for those in need.  Maybe it's a neighbor, a co-worker, or a complete stranger.  Let's be fully present to God and fully present to those he places in our path as we weather this storm.  And for those who are already a part of a church family, make sure you stay connected.  If you aren't a part of a church family, this might be a good time to seek one out.  It's times like these that church family is most important!  

Regardless of our background, Jesus gives this invitation to any who would heed it.  He says this in Matthew's gospel, "Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." (Matthew 11:28-30). - Shay