Pandemic as Revelation: Seeking God’s Voice in the Midst of COVID-19

     How does a minister of the Gospel speak into the tragedy and loss of a global pandemic? How does a pastor keep a congregation knitted together in unity and love when they are isolated in their homes? How does a leader direct people toward the Kingdom of God in a time fraught with division? These are some of the questions I have been asking myself over the past eighteen months as I have navigated COVID-19 in the context of parish ministry. 

It has been a difficult season to be a pastor. But to be fair, it has been a difficult season to be in any line of work. Our medical professionals, our teachers, and our frontline workers are all receiving the brunt of the pandemic and have responded with courage and resolve. My own difficulties seem to pale in comparison with the sufferings of others. Even so, it has been hard. 

But just for now, I want to focus on one very small but important way in which the COVID-19 pandemic has made my job easier. The past year and a half have given the people I lead a deeper and clearer understanding of the biblical concept of apocalypse. “Apocalypse” or “revelation” (how the word is translated in the title of the last book of the New Testament) is more often associated with imagery from the Left Behind books than the witness of Scripture. In that shift, we miss an important aspect of the book of Revelation (and other apocalyptic passages in the Bible) that is right there in the name. An apocalypse is a time when things that have been unclear or invisible are revealed. 

At the end of all things, as John writes in his apocalypse, the ultimate revelation is that of Jesus as Lord of the entire cosmos and of his ultimate victory over sin and death. But other things are revealed along the way, specifically the false idols of power, wealth, and self that plague those inside and outside the Church. Therefore, an important task in reading the book of Revelation becomes identifying what is being revealed and how the people of God ought to respond.

We are living in an apocalyptic moment. I do not mean this to say that Christ’s return is necessarily imminent, but that we are living in times that are revelatory. I believe that the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed three distinct things for the Church and will posit an appropriate response to each. The pandemic has revealed the deep brokenness of the world, calling for repentance, the importance of integrity between the words and actions of the people of God, calling for wholeness, and the need for a robust theology of suffering, calling for the proclamation of the Gospel. I will discuss each revelation and the appropriate response and will then conclude with how each response is an opportunity for evangelism in a world that desperately needs the good news of Jesus.

As Christians, we understand that the world is broken and need of redemption, but the pandemic has put this more directly on display. Recently, I was grieved to see video of a young man being heckled at his local school board meeting. As he was expressing his desire for the school board to enact precautions so that students with vulnerable family members would not unintentionally infect them, he shared that he had lost his grandfather to COVID-19. At this point, the young man had to stop speaking temporarily because of the voices of the jeering crowd. Such cruelty reveals our deep brokenness and sin. I shudder to think of those hecklers in that room who would claim the name of Jesus. 

I have not been immune from the ways in which COVID-19 has caused us to not live up to the Great Commandment to love God and our neighbor. In the midst of stress, I have had moments of anger, rudeness, and foolishness. If we are honest with ourselves, we could all find ways in which we have fallen short. The problems are not simply “out there” among the culture. The pandemic has revealed our own sinfulness. 

As the people of God, our response to our sinfulness ought to be repentance, turning to God and away from our selfishness and false idols. Our instinct, driven by our chosen media bubbles, is first to think of the ways in which those who are different from us are in the wrong, but Jesus tells us that repentance must begin with us. As he says in Matthew 7, we must first remove the log from our own eye before we can help our brother remove the speck from his eye. The world is watching. If they see an unrepentant Church, defending its own rights and concerns in ungodly ways, our witness is compromised. If the world sees a humble and repenting people, we may find that we will be given opportunities to share the reasons we have chosen the way of grace. 

In the life of Jesus, we see a great integrity between his words and his deeds. One is not separated from the other. When the people of Israel heard Jesus’s teaching, they marveled at his authority, noting that was different from that of the Pharisees. Jesus not only had the right words to say, but his actions backed up what he had spoken. 

COVID-19, along with the other cultural conflicts of the past year, has revealed a crisis of integrity in the Church. It seems as if the pandemic amplified all of the other tensions already in place: political, racial, and cultural. In many ways, the Church has responded beautifully and faithfully to these tensions — praying for the sick, in gathering the diverse body of Christ in a spirit of unity — but there have also been ways in which God’s people have responded poorly to the these struggles. It should disturb us to see members of the body of Christ among the most adamantly opposed to taking necessary precautions to protect our neighbors from infection. To a world that knows little of the faith, our actions do not seem to live up to our call to love our neighbors as ourselves. 

Of course, Christians are also among the ones who have done the most for their neighbors in the midst of pandemic, but St. Paul reminds us that we, especially leaders in the Church, should seek to live above reproach. He also tells us that, as far as it is up to us, that we should live at peace with everyone. The fact that there is even a perception of a lack of integrity among Christians should drive us deeper into our commitment to a wholeness of life, a congruence between the things we say and the things that we do. Christians are called to a higher standard, not simply because others are watching, but because our Lord demands it of us.

We have heard over and over again from the world the dismissive retort that “thoughts and prayers are not enough.” A life of wholeness, a life where what we believe is integrated into what we do, is the answer to that accusation. As Anglicans, we understand that prayer is an essential part of our theology. The Book of Common Prayer uses prayer to teach theological truths. But our prayers also call us to action. Prayer ought to inspire us to embody the things we believe, as the General Thanksgiving says, “not only with our lips, but in our lives.”

As I have observed the pandemic and the ways in which people have responded, the word that keeps coming to my mind is grief. We all feel worn out and disillusioned. We all are quick to snap at one another. This is the fruit of grief. We all are in the midst of processing a great loss. For some, it is the loss of milestones like a high school graduation, ours or that of our kids. For others, it is the loss of community in the isolation of the pandemic. For far too many, it is the loss of loved ones to the disease itself. Some are dealing with loss piled upon loss, and we are full of questions as to the purpose of all this seemingly needless suffering. 

The challenge to Christian faith posed by the problem of evil and suffering is by no means new but has been drawn into acute focus in recent days. How can a good God allow such suffering among those he loves? Where is God in the pandemic? These are questions that, when they are left unanswered, drive people away from the faith.

We must be very careful in the answers that we give to those who are hurting. Clichés like, “Everything happens for a reason,” can deeply wound someone who is already hurting. Sometimes Christians do not have all of the answers. Pretending that we do will only drive people away. Remember, it is when Job’s friends begin speaking that they stop being good friends.

Thankfully, the Gospel that our Lord commands us to share faces the problem of suffering head on. By preaching the Gospel, we do not necessarily offer an explanation for every little bit of human suffering, but we do proclaim that God loves us enough to send Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, into the midst of that suffering. Jesus bears our burdens on the cross for our sake. The cross does not so much explain our suffering as much as it reminds us that Christ is present with us in the midst of our suffering. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead shows us that God can make beauty out of even the ugliest of human suffering and that he is victorious over the grave. Jesus enters into human suffering and transforms it into victory.

This is the power of the Gospel for a broken world: God in his love comes and enters into our suffering, even though he himself is blameless. He then transforms that suffering into the promise of eternal life for all who will believe in him. He defeats death. This is good news! It is the Gospel that we carry to a world longing to hear it. 

Apocalyptic times are also times of great opportunity. When things are being revealed for what they are, when idols are being revealed as false hope, this gives the Church the chance to share the true hope of the good news of Jesus. Each of these three revelations bring with them an opportunity to share our faith. With wisdom and empathy, we have the opportunity to take that which is evil and allow God to use it for good. 

When it comes to repentance, it is very easy for us to expect it from others before we expect it from ourselves. We are so often like the Pharisee in Jesus’s parable, who uses his time in the temple to thank God that he is not like the sinful tax collector, even though it is the tax collector who is rightly penitent before God. What would it look like if we were open with our failures and sins? A spirit of repentance will not only look with more grace on the failures of others, it will cause others to trust us. An employee is much more likely to trust and be honest with a boss who admits her mistakes. This is also true in our relationships with non-believers. If we can admit our sins and commit to do better, perhaps our non-believing friends will be drawn to follow.

People crave authenticity. Especially in a world dealing with the realities of a pandemic, we do not have time for fake relationships or fake leaders. If our faith does not have substance, people have no reason to listen to what we have to say. But if we embrace the wholeness of Christian faith, a faith that demonstrates an integrity between our words and our deeds, there is no more effective witness for the sake of Christ. When Peter writes about giving a reason for the hope that we have in Jesus, this presupposes that people will be asking us why we are different from the surrounding world. In too many cases, Christians are living in such a way that does not draw that question. Recapturing a sense of integrity and wholeness in our faith will inspire those life-changing questions. 

Preaching the Gospel as a response to the problem of suffering represents one of the greatest opportunity for evangelism in our post-Christian world. The witness of Christ suffering with and for his beloved people on the cross is the most compelling answer to suffering that any religion or philosophy has to offer. In the Gospel, God is not distant, but present with his people. Further, he transforms and redeems suffering in the resurrection and new life, life that is available to every person. The world of the pandemic is a world in need of hope. That hope is available in the Gospel, if God’s people are willing to proclaim it. “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?”

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a revelation. Asking good questions about what it has revealed and the faithful response from the Church presents an opportunity for Christians to recommit themselves to their faith and to sharing that faith with others. Through the practices of repentance, wholeness, and proclaiming the Gospel, the people of God can respond to this pandemic and future times of struggle in ways that point to Jesus and joyfully invite others to follow him.