Rev. Danny Massie
Interim Pastor
Among the words that Paul addresses to the Christians of Ephesus and beyond are ones that speak to us in these problematic days of COVID-19 when our physical unity as a community of faith is diminished for the sake of health and safety.
In Ephesians 4:1 he writes, “I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”
Our unity in Christ, our spiritual connectedness, may not be so visible to us or others in these days, so we need to be more intentional and proactive in caring for one another.
Dark days
The current March edition of Sojourners magazine carries a fascinating article by Katie L. Hodges-Kluck who is with the Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Entitled “Lessons from Medieval Responses to the Plague,” she tells of how various individuals and communities responded to the catastrophic Black Death (or Plague) in the 14th century, a pandemic for more lethal than anything the world has experienced since or is likely to experience again.
From 1346 to 1353 the Plague killed 50 million people in Europe or about 60% of the entire population and millions more across Asia.
Giovanni Boccaccio (d.1375), an Italian scholar, chronicled much about this catastrophe and how people responded. Unfortunately the response was not largely different from what we have witnessed ourselves in recent days.
Fear and blame, aid and service
Many gave in to fear and distrust. Others looked for scapegoats to blame for the curse and tortured marginalized people like foreigners and Jews.
Discrimination and bullying were equally popular back then.
Rumors flew rampant through society as people struggled to know the cause or the cure.
Others selfishly took to hoarding limited resources while the wealthy fled to countryside retreats where they assumed incorrectly that they would be more isolated and safe.
On the other hand, many others found ways to cope personally and to offer aid and support for the most vulnerable about them.
People with specialized skill and knowledge offered themselves in service to others. Local governments made concerted effort to keep their communities clean and required residents to self-quarantine for the good of all. People sought creative ways to serve the neediest.
Our better angels
Let me close by quoting the close of the article which can serve as an inspiration to all of us as it shows that our better angels can emerge in such times of challenge.
(A former football coach of mine said to our team in the midst of a losing season, “Tough times may not build character but they certainly reveal it.” I am sure the saying was one he borrowed from someone else but I have thought of it often in intervening years and I think of it again in our current situation.)
Now here the close of the good professor’s article:
“One of the most striking examples of a community uniting under duress comes from another 14th-century writer, the Moroccan Berber adventurer IBN Battuta (d. 1368/9), who chronicled his 29 years of traveling some 75,000 miles around the Middle East, Asia, and Africa in a book commonly known as the Rihla, or Journey. In this book, Ibn Battuta describes the arrival of the plague in Syria in 1348. During this time of tribulation, he writes, the citizens of Damascus did not abandon one another or persecute the minority Christian and Jewish populations living within the city. Instead, the Damascenes set aside their differences. Members of the city’s various faith groups — Muslims, Jews, and Christians alike, from children to political leaders united in their efforts to protect their community.
“Ibn Buttuta explains how all the various people of the city came together and processed through the streets. The Muslims carried aloft copies of the Koran, Jews brought out the Torah, and Christians brandished the Bible in a united appeal to God to spare their city. The result, Ibn Battuta argued, is that Damascus had significantly fewer fatalities than other cities.”
