Saturday of the
Fifth Week of Easter
May 16th
READING: John 15: 18-21
‘If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world—therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, “Servants are not greater than their master.” If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also. But they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.’
~~~
New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993, 1995 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
REFLECTION
Sad to say, but if you Google “Pastors who have died of Covid-19” you will find a disturbing number (pastors of course will only be the tip of the iceberg in terms of those who have died in this way). In the USA particularly, choirs, standard congregations, funeral assemblies: many of these held in early days of the virus’ spread were veritable petri dishes for contamination.
In many cases the deaths reflect a tragic demographic; “It’s showing the inequities of health disparities and economic disparities in the black community,” notes one US academic.[1] Poor education and opportunity for social distancing opportunity heightened the risk of exposure, especially in early days of the pandemic. This is an injustice that we can safely assume grieves the heart of God. So too is the red hat waving bluster of US leadership, on which history will not look kindly.
Worse, though, some have died through the demonic bravado of church leaders glancing at passages like John 15:18-19, citing the US First Amendment and insisting on congregating to score points in politico-religious warfare. Their demographic has been less obviously colour based, though it has tended to reflect a lower socio-economic bracket (and a particular political allegiance). This form of leadership, keen to make its point, has willingly, culpably spread an undiscerning and lethal virus.[2]
Where the gatherings have been willful disobedience, or US First Amendment bravado (and its equivalent in other nations), the perpetrators have rightly attracted the fury of the wider community. When a pastor opines that the virus is a conspiracy to insert microchips into people to control them he is not reflecting Christlike wisdom.[3] Passages in which New Testament writers predict persecution for Christ-followers have been grist to the mill of idiocy. “If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you,” “If they persecuted me, they will persecute you,” or the Beatitudes’ warning “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man” make for fine grandstanding, but have little to do with the Way of the Cross to which Jesus challenges his followers. As one notice circulating in social proclaims media proclaims, “It’s not about you.”
Church leaders believing they have a hotline to divine protection may like to remember that idiocy was not, at least in the versions of the Christian Scriptures that I read, a fruit of the Spirit. The blood of those who die as collateral damage in egotistical grandstanding cries from the dirt of the morgues and burial pits.
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| protected postprandial python in our Darwin laundry |
Christians probably need to note that an important rider in the Jesus-sayings of this passage and the Matthew and Luke accounts of the Beatitudes quite explicitly emphasize that the persecution Christians may attract is on behalf of their association and identification with Jesus and his Reign of God proclamations, not because of sensationalist, avoidable, and tragically costly idiocy. We can be thankful that our church leadership, both in this diocese and the wider national mainstream churches, continues to engage its collective wisdom and intelligence in the service of God’s Reign.
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