"I was sick and you visited me", eh.

I was watching Babylon 5 recently, which is a science fiction show set about 230 years in the future. At one point Lennier (a Minbari character) is explaining to Captain Sheridan (a human) some of the features of the Minbari-built White Star ship, and explaining in really too much detail. Sheridan sarcastically replies, “well, as my great-grandfather used to say, ‘cool’”. That’s a pretty good line.

Well it is actually cool how the Bible can speak to a cultural moment even in passages that are not, in any explicit way, connected to that cultural moment. Our sermon text from yesterday included this passage from Matthew 25:

Then the King will say to those on his right, '“Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me a drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”

“I was sick and you visited me” is a word for our times. Notice that is not “I was sick so, as a sign of your virtue and love for all mankind, you took extraordinary measures to isolate me from all human contact”. The ancients did not have our understanding of germ theory, of course, but they were not ignorant of the fact that many diseases had some sort of communicable nature. It was obvious enough to them that little Peter’s friend was sick, and then little Peter got sick, and now the whole family is sick. And no doubt many parents, just as today, would care for their sick children knowing I’m probably going to pay for this - but they did it anyway, without hesitation, because their kid was sick.

Until 2021 that is, because now we’ve advanced past all that. When I heard that scripture text read yesterday, I thought of some tweets making the rounds from a science reporter for the Toronto Star whose daughter - and it sounds like quite young daughter, since she was in daycare apparently - tested positive for COVID. Her commentary on how her family life changed was quite remarkable:

Genève Campbell @bergerbell

This is a science reporter at the Toronto Star, entirely on the coronavirus beat.

There is much that could be said about that thread. So your daughter caught a disease of no particular consequence to children at all and which they also spread extremely poorly to others, which disease would also almost certainly be harmless to you if you did catch it… and you’ve reworked your entire home life like you’re trying to avoid the Black Death. Because that’s sane.

But the line a lot of people on Twitter (many of them parents) triggered on was the note about how her daughter “cried to be held”. That in particular, and the whole thrust of the thread generally (with notes like “we eat and sleep in separate rooms”, preparations to move into the basement), rather strongly suggests that she is isolating her daughter from human contact as much as possible, to the point of tears, because must not spread disease, not even from child to parent in the interest of caring for the child. How topsy-turvy is our moral reasoning in 2021, our moral priorities in 2021. A better praise would be “I was sick and you visited me”.

We needn’t be careless when dealing with disease, rushing in foolishly when some sort of caution or protection is warranted… but careless would actually be preferable to the above. I’ll close with a somewhat related comment from Lutheran pastor Hans Fiene, this from a thread about how some Lutheran churches shamed themselves through their unwillingness to serve communion during COVID (and the whole thread is worth your read). But he ended:

Hans Fiene 🦬 @HansFiene

And for all the errors and deception of the prosperity gospel, the person who says "I'm not afraid of getting COVID at church" is much closer to the kingdom than pastor who says "it's communion time. Please put on your hazmat suit before opening your prepackaged communion kit."