Suddenly we’re learning a bunch of new words and phrases: COVID-19, flatten the curve, social distancing. We are beginning to understand that we’re going down a path we’ve never even seen before, much less journeyed. As I’ve been reading around on various social media streams in the past week, I’ve been impressed by a series of voices reminding us (followers of Jesus) that this is a path journeyed before, and there are voices from other times and places that can help guide us in the days and weeks to come.
The first reminder comes from The Triumph of Christianity by Rodney Stark. The book is an attempt to place the early Christian movement into the larger context of Roman culture and civic life during the birth and early centuries of the church. In the sixth chapter, Stark makes an argument I’ve seen before: Christianity became attractive and gained converts throughout the Empire because it met very real and physical needs within the culture at large. The early church took seriously Jesus’ words in the Lord’s Prayer (“may it be on earth as it is in heaven”) and went about the task of expressing the wholeness of God in the rather grim and oppressive world of the Roman empire.
One of the examples cited by Stark is the ministry of Jesus’ followers to a series of smallpox plagues that swept across the Empire in the late first and early second centuries. In a pre-scientific world, the only way that smallpox could be treated was by expulsion and isolation of those infected. If a family member in an urban setting contracted the disease, the only choice the family had was to expel the family member from the home and leave them to die on the streets. This kind of heartless pragmatism made the teaching of Jesus on mercy (Matthew 5:7, 23:23) stand out in stark relief. Stark notes that:
In contrast, in the pagan world, and especially among the philosophers, mercy was regarded as a character defect and pity as a pathological emotion: because mercy involves providing unearned help or relief, it is contrary to justice.
Faced with a series of smallpox plagues, neither the philosophy nor religion of the Roman world had any counsel to comfort or to bring relief. This contrasted with Jesus’ followers who saw meaning in the plagues: an opportunity to express the kind of mercy Jesus both practiced and taught his followers. Leaders of the church urged their members to remain in plague struck areas and provide comfort and aid not only to members of the church but to all those affected. Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria praised the work of believers under his care and noted their self-sacrifice in meeting needs and expressing mercy:
Most of our brothers showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ, and with them departed this life serenely happy; for they were infected by pains.
Jumping forward to the sixteenth century and the founders of the Reformation, we have the writing of Martin Luther. In 1527, Germany was in the grip of the Bubonic Plague. That year, the first case of the plague appeared in Wittenberg; Luther was urged to flee the city for the safety of the country. Luther’s context in Wittenberg sounds eerily familiar: the university had been closed, church gatherings were being discouraged, people were practicing what we have come to understand as social distancing. Not only was Luther facing questions about whether to flee the plague-infested city for safety, his counsel was also needed from area pastors who were facing similar contexts. That year, Luther wrote Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague.
In this letter, Luther offers wise and balanced counsel. Mature followers of Jesus have an obligation to remain in places facing the plague and offer comfort and hope. Luther reasons that times of danger do not diminish the obligation we have to care for our neighbors. If we would rescue our neighbor in ordinary times, extraordinary times do not negate our obligation to act on behalf of our neighbor:
Now if a deadly epidemic strikes, we should stay where we are, make our preparations, and take courage in the fact that we are mutually bound together . . . so that we cannot desert one another or flee from one another.
Luther interestingly extends that to the question of social distancing: at times loving our neighbor means staying away from them and doing whatever is in our power to stop the expansion of calamity into our neighbor’s house. Mercy and love never ask us to live in ways that cause potential harm to ourselves or our neighbor:
They disdain the use of medicines; they do not avoid places and persons infected by the plague, but lightheartedly make sport of it and wish to prove how independent they are. They say that it is God’s punishment, if he wants to protect them he can so without medicines or our carefulness. This is not trusting God but tempting him. God has created medicines and provided us with intelligence to guard and take good care of the body so that we can live in good health.
Always we are guided by a simple ethic: what does it mean to love my neighbor, to act as Christ would act with regard to my neighbor? Luther’s practice and advice to others was to be guided by the same ethic of love that we observe in normative times. Luther stayed in Wittenberg through the plague.
Finally, biographers of John Calvin point out that Calvin faced the plague on multiple occasions during his ministry in Geneva, Switzerland. The plague first appeared in Geneva in 1542. The Town Counsel asked Calvin to refrain from pastoral ministry among those effected by the plague. Like Luther, Calvin reasoned that his pastoral relationships demanded both his presence and continued ministry in Geneva. He stayed in the city and continued to pastor in spite of the requests of the Town Counsel.
These are new times for us, but we have guiding voices that remind us that we need to love our neighbors regardless of our times, that being the presence of Christ to those who are effected or afraid is as true this year as last; that we should find guidance in the same set of ethics that we embraced when the questions we faced were more familiar.