INTRO
True, we've never before had a nearly-instantaneous, nearly-worldwide network connected to devices in our pockets alerting us to rising temperatures and the temperamental outbursts of tyrants or the spread of malicious insects and viruses.
And being constantly aware of all this can feel disorienting and surreal.
But even so, we're not convinced we should be so quick to call our times "totally unprecedented." Our ancestors weathered tyrants and plagues and renovated their political thought and activity when facing the consequences of previous human actions.
And for those of us within the Christian Tradition, we must always remember that our predecessors took on the challenge of reinterpreting all of reality in light of the singular life of Jesus of Nazareth.
What is not "unprecedented" is humans encountering the unprecedented. And in the midst of our own unique challenges, we unnecessarily feed the bad reactions that can come with fear and uncertainty if we believe we face our challenges alone.
So, in this series, we look at people and moments in the Tradition where those who came before us give us precedents for facing our epoch-shaping tests and tasks.
This time we talked about how Christians have faces other public health crises, and in them, become like Christ, and come to see God.
STORY
COVID might be the first time we've had to live through a pandemic, but, to take some indulgent pleasure in stating what is excessively obvious, we are not the only ones who have lived. And for many previous generations, pandemics have been part of their lived experience.
As one example, in the middle of the 3rd century a massive plague tore through Rome. There is no way to be certain what illness was at the root of the epidemic, but because of the fevers, aches, and unexplained bleeding experience by the victims, historians have surmised that it might have been smallpox, some form of influenza, or a hemorrhage-inducing virus somewhat like Ebola.
Whatever the disease, it killed somewhere between ¼ and ⅓ of the Roman population. For a little perspective, America, as of my last Google search, just passed 750K COVID deaths. That is a lot to lose and mourn. For certain. But if the mortality rate were equal to that of Rome's plague, the numbers would be somewhere between 82-1/2, to 109 million. The height of the plague - and mind you, this is not the entire epidemic, but the height of the plague - lasted from 250 to 262 CE. That's 12 years.
Let that sink in.
And during these 12 years, upwards of 5,000 people were dying per day.
Under this kind of suffering, people must ask the question "Why?"
Initially, many of the political, philosophical, and religious leaders offered conventional answers for why something like this would happen. The Stoics believed in a highly ordered universe where nothing happens by accident, so they pointed people to some greater reason or purpose that humans simply could not see. Other's pointed to angry gods that must be appeased. And you may not know the specifics of the doctrines of the ancient philosophical schools or pagan rituals that produced these responses, but you've heard some version of these kinds of answers. And to a certain degree, for a time, these responses seemed sufficient enough.
Until the plague wore on, and on, and on, and the casualties piled up. And when the question "Why?" began to boil and spill out of peoples' minds to burn in their joints and instincts, the leaders offering the conventional explanations started acting out of fear and self-interest -- abandoning the sick to quarantine in country estates and finding whatever way they could to salvage whatever they could, for themselves -- and so, when people saw their leaders acting this way under the stress, the answers they offered lost all credibility.
And today, many, Christian or otherwise, offer and settle for, some variation of those same conventional explanations. So here, we'd like to introduce two Christian leaders from that period, because they offered responses that were much, much more challenging than the conventional answers on both the intellectual and the existential levels. But, because these responses refused to back away from the difficulties people were facing, they ended up proving, much more satisfactory.
The first Christian we want to introduce was named Dionysius. He was a bishop in the city of Alexandria, in Egypt. And in the preaching and instruction he gave during the years of the plague, he taught his church to understand the season and circumstances as a "school" and "testing."
Which might steer our minds to think of God as vindictive or cruel. But that was not his point at all. To understand the kind of intellectual framework he gave, let's unpack a couple things. First, to interpret what Dionysius meant by "testing," don't think of God saying "Let's see if you can impress me, and if you manage to pull that off, then we'll see about providing some relief." Think more in the lines of what Porsche or Chevrolet do with what they call their "testing grounds." On those automotive proving tracks, the companies take the things they have made and find out what those things are capable of. It's what they were made for.
So the analogy I'm making is that in response to the plague St. Dionysius said something akin to, "Okay, Christians. We have this story of Jesus entering into our suffering and death and then being raised to new life. If we trust that story, then let's see what we can do." Because, what he understood, and what he wanted his people to understand, is that whatever circumstances we find ourselves in, we were all made to be like Christ. That's how we come most alive.
So, the second point flows out of the first: in times of incredible suffering and fear, Dionysius framed the whole plague as a severe opportunity to experience the victory over death Jesus had already offered his followers.
And this framework, when tested, flowered into actions very different from those of the other Roman authorities who abandoned the sick to their fate.
To see something of the specific actions that grew from Dionysius' take, we can look to a second Christian leader named Cyprian. He was one of Dionysius' fellow bishops from another city, Carthage, which is also in North Africa. In one of Cyprian's letters from about 251, as he and his people were enduring all the radical doubt and anxiety that death and suffering can bring, St. Cyprian instructed his people to train their faith by caring for the sick. And, for this to be Christian training, it was important to him that it didn't matter whether the sick were relatives that duty said they should love, or the poor and enslaved whom duty would allow them to abandon.
Now in contrast, Pagan priests had no doctrinal basis to direct their response or the responses of their people to a situation like this. But Christian morality, from the beginning, stressed charity and love as central norms for Christian communities, particularly in caring for the poor and the sick.
And when we say the doctrinal basis for this kind of morality was there from the beginning, we mean it came from Jesus himself.
For instance, in Matthew, chapter 25, Jesus tells his followers that whenever they feed the hungry, welcome a stranger, or care for the sick, they do this for Jesus himself.
And Christians to a large degree took this seriously for the next couple hundred years. So, by the time Dionysius and Cyprian and their fellow priests and bishops entered the testing of their plague, they did so as a part of a church that had begun to develop an infrastructure set up to care for the sick and poor. This infrastructure included both systems for delivering aid, and the kinds of habitual, liturgical action that shaped individual character around charity and love for the sick, so that there would be Christlike people who could participate in and manage those systems.
So the church had virtues like love, courage, and faith, and also the concrete means for translating these personal virtues into actual help for those in need.
And all of these things were Christlike.
So this testing provided an opportunity for the Christians to become like Christ in a season when obeying Christ's example to not abandon the poor and the sick to fend for themselves also required they become like Christ in not fearing death.
So, while most were fleeing the cities to quarantine as best they could from the sick, Dionysius and Cyprian and their fellow Christians took it upon themselves to care for the sick and the dying. And this earned credibility, not just for them, but also for the ideas and practices that made them who they were.
And there are historians and sociologists who point out that not only would this action earn Christians goodwill, but further, if Christian communities were places where people actually received care, they would naturally produce survival rates much higher than the survival rates of places where people were simply abandoned. And this combination of higher survival rates plus goodwill amongst the survivors, some argue plays a central role in explaining Christianity's spread throughout the empire. And all this is true enough.
But we want to take this to as deep and mysterious a theological place as we can. To find a precedent for moral action that also provides a precedent for Communion with God. So, we want to argue that Christians obeying the moral call of the gospel is what enabled them to develop the doctrine of the Trinity. And that the doctrine of the Trinity is what allows us to hope for communion with God even in our own pandemic.
Now, you don't get more involved in matters of flesh and blood than you do in caring for the sick. But the Trinity, as a doctrine, is often considered the most "abstract" and "ethereal" doctrine. But it is anything but. So how is caring for the sick in a pandemic connected to the Trinity?
To see this, first, notice the time period. Dionysius and Cyprian lived through these plagues in the middle of the 200s. And the Trinity didn't get it's doctrinal seal until the full divinity of the Holy Spirit was asserted at the Council of Constantinople in 381.
So, more than a century before the Trinity was solidified in Christian teaching, when Christians practiced their faith in the way laid out by Dionysius and Cyprian, connected to the commands of Christ, those Christians concluded that Jesus' words promising that when you care for the sick, you care for Jesus himself, had proven true. That means, to them, Jesus, their Lord, who entered the grave and rose from the dead and ascended to heaven, was still present as they cared for the dying.
And so, if that Jesus who walked in Galilee and Jerusalem 250 years earlier, was still present to the Christians in Alexandria during the plague, those later Christians had to wrestle with the question of how Christ continued to be with them. And their conclusion was The Holy Spirit.
In the last episode, we walked you through the reasoning that lead Christians to assert that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. And the driving conviction at work in this doctrinal development was that salvation is union with God. And so, since only God can unite us to God, Jesus must be God. And, conversely, since only a human could truly unite humanity to God, Jesus also had to be fully human.
And now, just move through the same pattern of reasoning. If trusting and obeying Jesus united them to Jesus in the Holy Spirit, and Jesus is God, only God can unite us to God, the Holy Spirit must also be fully God. Or else the Holy Spirit would not be able to unite us to Christ.
So in short, living their faith in the proving grounds of the plague led them to experience a reality they could not explain. So they had to develop new ways of thinking about and expressing what they were living. So the combination of action and contemplation made the church into the kinds of people who could imagine and articulate the concrete reality they experienced in the Doctrine of the Trinity.
So, in the conversation that follows, Julius and I talk about what it might actually look like for us to become more like Christ in the midst of our public health crisis, and how becoming more like Jesus might allow us to know, and see, and talk about God more clearly.
DISCUSSION [Auto-Generated Transcript]
Julius: All right. Welcome back to “All Things.” Today, Julius (myself) and Wil, are picking up on a conversation about, um, I guess the, the precedent of all precedents as we talk about, um, I mean… the topic that spawned this whole idea. Talking about where we are right now in a pandemic. And today we're picking up on a story about how the church responds to a very similar crisis of public health, um, with dealing with a plague even.
And I think one of the things that struck me from the story was this notion of how the deadly mortality that surrounds the church proved to be an opportunity for the church to become more Christ-like by, um, learning not to—how was it phrased here… “learning not to fear death.”
And, and I'm struck by that because there's, there's a heart there that, um, situated in the story that, that place, that comes from a place of compassion. I think in contrast to what other leaders in the day and in their culture were starting to act out of self-interest here. The church's response in caring for the sick and the dying came from a place of, um, compassion that they saw from the life of Christ. And so as we parse that out into what this precedent has to show us, Our present day situation in the pandemic.
How can we talk about some of the differences that can get kind of confusing? Um, because on the surface, one could look at this and argue like, Hey, well, the church went out to like, when people were quarantining from the sick and the dying, they went out into the, like to, to make contact with these people to care for them.
Um, how was that? Um, Different from some of the rhetoric that I'm afraid like it can get compared to in our present day about this faith over fear, like, uh, why do we have to quarantine from other people and like limit our gatherings and stuff when we have faith in God and that we don't fear death? Well, it feels to me like those are coming from two different, very different places.
So how can we talk about some of the differences to help kind of change? Um, what this precedent really has to offer us
Wilson: Yeah, I can see why this will be so confusing to people because you, my hope would be for me, this is true. And I hope this would be true for the listeners as well, that when you hear the story of people like Cyprian and Dionysius and, and their churches and what they did in this kind of situation, and then there that.
You would see their actions and something inside you would, would resonate and be inspired and that you would feel like the word for that is courage and faith. And then you would hear their reasoning for it is grounded in Jesus and something in, you would say yes, but then it can be really confusing because you hear some of the same rhetoric, some of the very similar language, you know, about faith, overcoming fears of death and, and risk and all this kind of stuff.
But then you look at what is actually happening, the actions that accompany, that, those words and, and it, you just don't have quite the same visceral sense of like, yes, that's right. And good and true. And so how. That the, that the rhetoric can be so similar, but something's very different. And this is, I think the real, the, the real nugget of potential in this episode is to name what the actual precedent is.
And the precedent is Christ. And that Christ shows up that. It goes into play Christ, assumes risks on, on his own body himself and invites his followers to freely follow him into places of risk, to care for the sick and the dying to care for the people that can do nothing in return for them. Right. The outcast and the lonely.
So, so yes, you get Jesus going and actually touching. Uh, disease that can easily be transmitted through physical touch. Right. And you see, you see Jesus touching a sick little girl and not knowing why she died, but touching her and raising her to life. Right. Um, and then he tells his followers to do this, but what Jesus, I mean, the precedent is Jesus is here heal to care for, to love the sick, the dying and the vulnerable. And I saw again, I know it's super dangerous to treat anything on social media as an actual position that somebody holds because,
Julius: yeah.
Wilson: uh, at the risk of sounding like a very cheesy dad, which I guess I. I definitely am a dad. And I guess it's okay to be cheesy sometimes, you know, but you find way more strawmen on social media than you do.
Even in the, the harvest festivals in Halloween though, the, in the middle of the hay amazes that I've taken my kids to. And so recognizing that this could very well and, and even naming that this probably is more of a straw man than, um, strap.
Julius: Yeah.
Wilson: Women women make this mistake as well, but a straw man argument.
Um, because I know lots of people have the mini pastures. I do know, I don't know. Directly that have been just blatantly irresponsible. I know many that have made huge sacrifices to care for the people of their congregation and their town and their, their neighborhood as best they possibly can. So for all the, for all the knuckleheads you read about on Facebook or, or Twitter or whatever, I know lots of them and I've, I've not actually met.
Of them in leadership positions. And so that stated, I will say, but there there's stuff out there. There's rhetoric there memes. And the, the one I'm thinking the meme in particular that I'm thinking about said what? Jesus social distance question, mark brah. He touched lepers. And as it's like the only, the only connection there is the physical touch, but in all the other things that matter to, to make some guiding a connection to the disease, these are way different things
Julius: right.
Wilson: that, yes, Jesus touched lepers to heal them. What, what given what people are worried about now? It's not like Jesus was like, Hey, I might have left. But here you go. Right. Um, and, and go like rubbing up against children, right. Potentially spreading that disease to them. activity. What heat. And in setting that precedent and then calling his followers to do is to love and care and do everything they can for healing. Right now, this is what these early Christians and during the plagues in the third century, right? This is what Dionysius, this is what Cyprian or Cyprian is, is teaching talking about and calling his followers to do and even understand at this point you've got. 200 plus years of the church working to practice this as best they can. So they've got at this point, they've got the precedent of Jesus, of Jesus's teaching, which creates a moral demand. That then creates a habit. And because, because. Other bishops and Christians had been working to figure out how do we care for the sick and the dying?
How do we care for the vulnerable and the ill? And the poor, the church had began to develop an infrastructure that helped them actually do these things. And so what they ended up doing did, and this is why there are certain sociologists that will credit the plagues. It just, now there are many dimensions to it, you know, theologic.
Dimension spiritual dimensions, uh, sociological psychology, you know, there are many dimensions to it, but on a sociological level, there are many sociologists that will credit the way Christians handled the plague as being a central factor in the spread of Christianity and why this little obscure start-up faith was able to eventually like, uh, convert the empire from the inside out was because of how they handle this, because it led to here. Right now. Sure. Sometimes miraculous and I have no reason and I don't intellectually or otherwise to doubt that part, but even just practical where at the time were so many for fear of their own safety, for fear of their own comfort. We're just abandoning the sick we're abandoning the places where the illness was spreading. Now you have people who are willing to give the most basic and actual needed care. And so more people serve. And when Christians care for the, when Christians care for each other in this way more than abandoning, it was more effective in treating and curing the ill. Right? And so you have both look at the recovery, but also just as sociological numbers, game more are still alive.
More Christians are still alive, and there are plenty of people who survive because Christians care for them. And this is why it's spread. And you see the connection. Between who Jesus is, what he did in the actual outcome of their actions, in caring for other people, right? Not just the F the efficiency and the effectiveness of caring for them, but the outcomes on all those levels, the mental, the spiritual, the psychological, and the physiological levels.
It, it led to goodness and healing. And so it spread. And now in contrast to contemporary situations where people might be using very similar language about, you know, faith over fear, we're learning not to fear. Um, I think what's quite telling and the question we have to wrestle with. Right? And so even with that, and I know being charitable here will not win me points with some other people that are understandably very upset, but, but even still being committed to being charitable and looking to find some kind of common ground, I would at least say that if you're going to take that rhetoric, there's something potentially.
At least that we could work with. Cause it's, it's good. Right? If you're gonna, if you're gonna claim Christ as your Lord, and you're going to take the, the name Christian for yourself, then yes, we, we need to learn what it means to have faith over fear, uh, to, to place our hope in something that is larger than.
Um, to place our, our, our desires to direct our desires and our wants to, to something, um, beyond and larger than just surviving, like sure.
Julius: Right.
Wilson: But if we're going to do that, then we, we must really, really grapple with the question of like, um, who is actually assuming the. And for whom is the risk being assumed? Um, because so many of the things, the critiques that are put out there that need to be listened to are, you're not really putting yourself, especially if you're like a middle-aged healthy. Right. You're you're not, you're not really putting yourself at risk. The critique is that needs to be taken seriously.
You're putting others at risk. You're putting the vulnerable, you're putting the, the, exactly the people that Jesus would risk for. You're putting at risk. And we've got to really wrestle with that question. And so who's assuming it, and for whom and now. The place where I would kind of rubber band this back is to say, yes, we need to learn right.
Slowly, painfully by Jesus's guidance. And it's miraculous. It's, it's nothing other than the holy spirit, continuing to make Christ life Christ, faith, and hopefulness. And God's in God alive in us and to us right. To, to overcome the fear of death. But the question here is what death are you really scared of?
Julius: Hmm.
Wilson: Because I'm afraid that, you know, especially the middle-aged healthy, right. That you're not most concerned with your potential death from COVID
Julius: Yeah.
Wilson: I would just, I would put this out and I won't presume to know. Um, but for certain what's going on in the secret places of people's hearts and minds, but I would definitely want it out there as something to talk about and wrestle with.
Is it like, are, are we overcoming that fear of death or is the rear real fear of death that we need to face the fear of our gatherings in our congregation, in our finances
Julius: Yeah.
Wilson: dwindling down to nothing or to.
Julius: Yeah, I think, um, one of the other things that I see is like, um, it's interesting that part, that paradox where I feel, and I want to say this is charitably as I can. Is that a lot of the folks who. We'll speak with that kind of what, to me honestly, sounds like bravado sometimes, actually that like people with who speak with bravado are kind of the most scared.
And I kind of, and I sympathize with that. Like I want to show like sympathy because I think some of what's happening there is kind of like, uh, I'm actually, like, I'm actually scared that what if, um, Or at least some of the anxiety that I perceive is that like, what if we're wrong? Like that, that this is, this is a real kind of test of like, what if our faith isn't big enough to handle this?
Or like the way that we do church, like church, as we know how to do it, what if, what if it isn't big enough to hold our fears of death? And so some of us will just swing completely the other way of like, you know what? No, like
Wilson: Right.
Julius: faith over fear.
Wilson: And, and that can go and in a situation like, and where you see it, especially more viscerally for more people was in a time where the plagues were running rampant and they didn't understand germs. They didn't understand bacteria. They didn't have modern medicine, they didn't have a hospital.
Right. And so the best hope was actual people giving. Care for folks not abandoning, right? It gave, gave the IL a much higher chance of survival. Now, continuing this and the desire to be understanding and charitable. I do want to say that I would understand the concerns for our institutions like item. I know for, for a while, it's been very easy to dismiss and criticize something because it's just institutional or you're concerned about maintaining the Institute. Like, I want to say that that, that should be taken into account. If, if we mean what we say, and we do mean what we say about like the ethos and the drive and the vision for this whole podcast is exploring what it means that Christ reconciles and heals all things, then that should include our institutional and political level.
I mean, cause those are just the things that we need to do life together. So yeah. W I understand being worried about that, but we always have to prioritize. And think, but are those really the most important and does it come a time where if we face institutional debt, It's worth it. I mean, learning to F to F uh, learning to overcome the fear of even that death, because this is, this is the thing with institutions.
When we would get really scared, it can be the thing that we place all our hope in to get us through the next five years. Right. This is what if I'm isolated in my house or this or that, this is what's going to keep my income coming or whatever, right. That's the institutional dimension. But if it comes to a conflict between being faithful to Christ and.
Faithing institutional death. Are we willing to face that one to,
Julius: Hmm.
Wilson: and so this is a place where we do. Uh, that this, we haven't talked about it directly yet, but this precedent and story that we've laid out gives us another precedent and story for exactly this question about concerns like for our local churches and for our denominations. Right. That, um, what hasn't been stated and would just need to, to fill in the gap.
What I would need to fill in the gap for some listeners is right about like the. Of what we've named so far. So we've talked about the plagues and the two fifties, and we've talked about Jesus of Nazareth. So, right, right. About the middle of that, right around the beginning of the second century, there's a Bishop named Ignatius of Antioch.
And some of his letters are some of the earliest letters that we have there. There's some of the earliest Christian literature we have. That that date right after the new Testament times. So like next earliest to new Testament documents or some of his letters if, um, Ignatius and where he. Living there's, there's a move right now to, to shift the Christian worship service from Sunday, from Saturday evenings, which is when the traditional Jewish Sabbath had been celebrated to Sunday mornings to place it in line with the resurrection of Christ, which is the foundation and the hope for all like Christian proclamation, everything.
Right. So then moving from Saturday night to Sunday.
Julius: Um,
Wilson: And his letters are immediately a response to the criticism he's received because, uh, Quote, unquote being quiet. And what they mean by that is you're you're in the office doing too much work or you're out in the streets doing too much and you're not showing up and talking a bunch in front of us.
Right. You're letting other people preach and teach. You're not talking enough. And he says the reason. I mean silence. You have to understand the context of what the silence is here, but he says, the reason for my silence here is because I'm the way he says I'm doing the work of a Bishop because when we were worshiping on Saturday nights and this was Eucharist and the Eucharist was actually a full meal, a full communal meal.
And when we're doing that on Sunday nights, he says, this was the primary way that we were able to obey Jesus. So making the connection to what we're talking about here to live and flesh out the precedent. You told us to care for the poor and the ill and the primary central way we do this is, is woven into our worship.
That the Eucharist at the time, wasn't a little like cardboardy wafer and, and a tiny little plastic, uh, cup of grape juice. It was a full meal.
Julius: Um,
Wilson: that meal culminated in the ritual with the bread and the wine that was distributed to everyone is the body, you know, the body and blood of Christ. And this is how the church would bring their resources.
And at this point we could do it here because Saturday nights, the poor and those that the rest of the time they had to work basically nonstop for their. Base-level sustenance, they could show up. But when we go to Sunday mornings, especially those that are still enslaved, those that are working a lot of people may not be able their masters may not give them the time off to attend worship.
And so what I'm concerned with is I understand this. This institutional move, you know, for the liturgical reasons, but Ignatius says, but I'm not speaking so much. I'm giving that to others so that I do the main work of a Bishop, which is making sure we're still finding ways to care for them. Like that's the main precedent, right?
To, to live that out.
Julius: So. So I like what we've come to so far with what this precedent has to offer us. As far as the churches, at least like posture for how to respond to something like a pandemic and how that still, like, it comes down to conforming to the shape of Christ and how the compassion of Christ or the character of like Christ-like compassion that was formed in the church.
Um, and the desire for like healing and wholeness for the community around them is what ultimately gave them the discernment to figure out how to respond to their times. And so pulling together that thread, as well as the thread that we kind of just laid out about like some of our own fears about, um, our own beliefs or like our belief systems or institutions worship, as we know it.
Th that there's some fear about those things dying or disappearing, at least in the form that we knew them. How can the precedent that we talk about? How can that give us some kind of hope for the possibility of like, um, our continued deepening knowledge of Christ, um, even as. The ways that we do, like the worship gatherings changed to, to, um, to adapt to our times, like out of care and the like talking about where we are now in the pandemic, that we've had to learn how to worship together differently, but how can that, um, how can this precedent help ease some of the anxieties that some people have about the church disappearing?
And, um, and I know that we, we put down the thread about like how this. Led to development and how we talk about something like the Trinity even, and how that was a big development. Like
Wilson: Yeah. That's.
Julius: what can that show us?
Wilson: Right. Well, that's right where you got to push it that deep. And we've got to, we've got to like live Christianly that, uh, fundamentally, and, and what that means is it reframes the whole. Is it? Sure. I understand. And again, please, we've we, we get, and we understand the fears and the concerns.
I mean, Shama has felt it too, you know, just like everyone in way. Like we, we understand we have compassion for that, but we've got to see really what's happening would shift our perspective to this. This is providing us an incredible opportunity to commune with Christ, to seek him first and, and to actually know him, but not, not just in like a, an abstract, like heart mind thing, but to actually still tangibly, physically commune with Christ as we care for the sick, the ill, the right.
And. So to, to draw that together, we say, what we've got here starts the historical pieces. We've got Jesus of Nazareth. And he says, this is my body. And this is my blood, right? Not, this will make you think about my body or blood. This will help you remember my body. He says, this is my body. This is my blood.
He also in Matthew 25 says when you cared for the least of. When you clothe the naked, when you gave a drink to the thirsty, when you fed the hungry, when you did this, you did it for me.
Julius: Yeah.
Wilson: And when we put, when we put our lives out there with that sort of focus and intensity, we have to see he meant it. And do we believe it that this is an opportunity to care for?
And so to commune. Him. And so what you've got connecting the historical pieces here is you've got Jesus saying these things, making these promises and you have actual church leaders that track. And believe it. And so, all right. So if we're moving it from Saturday night to Sunday morning, I'm gonna make sure my first thing is not getting in front of my people so that I write so that they hear me talk.
And so that they see me, I'm going to, I'm going to say, make sure that I'm gonna be in front of my people in a different way, as far as making sure our priority is to continue to care for Christ, by caring for the. By feeding the hungry and that being part of our worship, part of our identity as the people of God.
So you've got Ignatius that, that puts. Into practice. And so 200 by the year, two 50, when Cyprian and Dionysius are engaging their plagues, they have the commands, the moral demands, the promise of Jesus. You've got the precedent of church that has prioritized that you've got bishops and Christians that make that their habit.
And so what grows up around. Institutions and infrastructure. And so they have all of these things connected that allow them. One to perceive the real opportunity to care for Jesus, by staying in caring for the sick and the dying. And they've got the social accountability, the habits and the infrastructure that make it possible for them to do this.
And so coming out of it, Christian survive at a much higher rate than, than many. People groups. And that creates a spiritual, psychological effect on people, because look at what those Christians did, look how they risked to care for the vulnerable and the sick look. Look how many people would say I am alive because this follower of Christ didn't abandon me.
So to like put a fine point on this. Our fears are unfounded.
Julius: Hmm.
Wilson: If we start to think that, well, if we give up this and if we give up this kind of institutional gathering, like what look things for a time might die. And so that's where the real school is. That's where Dionysius his words still speak to it.
This is an opportunity for us to learn, not to face fear, but we've got to do that soul searching and ask what does. The fear of what death is really most deeply rooted in me.
Julius: Yeah.
Wilson: the promise here is if we're afraid that our faith is going to go away, that our churches are going to go away, that our local gatherings, our bodies, even our institutions, they might shift forms or this and that.
But if we're afraid that the church is going to go away, that our faith and our central doctrines are going to go. No, it's an opportunity for us right now to, to like they were in the two fifties to put ourselves in places where the only explanation is he's still here. And because of that presence, we're experiencing a life and a reality beyond death beyond just our efforts and beyond our explanations.
And. Like it's quite the opposite. It's an opportunity for us to get into a place where our faith gets more real and more true, and it might be an opportunity to shed the fears that lead to a simulacrum of the Christian faith.
MEDITATION
When it comes to understanding things that contain a certain depth - things like lifelong friendships, having and raising a child, seeking a vocation and not just a job, knowing God, with these kinds of things, deeper understanding always follows our living.
For instance, I experienced this in a profound way beginning with the night before I decided I was going to propose to the woman who eventually became my wife. At that point, because of my grade school vocabulary teachers and because of the testimonies of the people who had gone before me in jumping into their own mysteries, I knew, to a certain degree, what words like "commitment," "faithfulness," and "vulnerability," meant.
But that night was one of the most intense nights of my life because it brought me to the enigmatic edge of those deep mysteries .. and invited me to jump.
It brought me to a scary awareness that if I was going to go through with the proposal, I was also going to enter into circumstances that would shift those things from words and concepts and make them into lived realities.
And the real tension came because what I wanted was to get what I wanted without having to go into that fearsome territory beyond what I already knew. I wanted the fact that I could define words like faithfulness and vulnerability and risk, and use them properly in sentences, to be enough to carry me into a profound communion with someone I loved.
I wanted to calculate and plan and prepare ... And control ... I wanted especially some guarantee that that vulnerability part would not end up leading to hurt ...
That's what I wanted. And I couldn't let go of wanting it. But I also knew I wasn't going to get it.
Instead, if my understanding was going to go beyond calculating and controlling ... If my understanding was going to deepen, I would have to enter into and move through that mystery.
Which meant, my deeper knowledge would have to follow my living.
And so now, 20 years later, having stepped into something like that, I know what words like trust and faith and communion are pointing at in ways that are difficult to put into words even though I've been able to define all the necessary terms since grade school.
See, the order in which we come to understand is always the reverse of the order of existence.
So here's were we have landed in this episode. People like the Apostles, Ignatius of Antioch, Dionysius of Alexandria and Cyprian of Carthage and their fellow Christians, didn't stop with understanding the grammar of Jesus' sentences. In fact, with some of Jesus' sentences, like -- "What you do for the least of these, you do for me." Or, "Surely I am with you, to the very end of the age." -- once you understand sentences like those, they lead you to confusion.
And so, the Apostles and Dionysius and the Christians who weathered their plagues, stepped into the mysterious realities those sentences pointed to.
And because they lived them out, the church was able to give you new words, like "Trinity."
And, just like words like vulnerability and trust were still to a large degree abstract for me on the night before I proposed, to us, the word "Trinity" seems abstract and etherial because we have only received it as a result of someone else's testimony.
So, if you want to understand what the Word is pointing to on a deeper level, you are invited to follow that same course walked by those who developed the word.
So, in the time of our plague, what opportunity do you have to assume risk for someone else's healing ...
Name it ... Be specific.
What could you give up that might benefit someone in a more vulnerable position? And what might that cost you?
Do take some time to discern if this is just a silly risk, or if it would be a genuinely Christlike action. It'd probably be a good idea to talk to a couple people you trust to help you in this discernment process. We're not advocating careless and foolish, knee-jerk reactions.
But once you've named a genuine opportunity to be like Christ as you care for Christ in the poor and vulnerable, do it.
Do it in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
So those words will move from etherial concepts, to names of people you've come to know.