This absolutely fills my soul! And nearly brought me to tears when I first read it.
Rev. Matthew Roberts, a Presbyterian minister in England, is among the several hundred signatories of a letter written by clergy urging the British government not to shutter houses of worship with another possible national lockdown looming.
This is the singularly most ethical, humane and dignified response to these last few horrid months, and it’s a sandblast against the human arrogance of trying to defy death:
“Our government has rightly sought to mitigate the effects of the disease, by social guidance and medical research. But increasingly it seems to have set itself on a course of saving us from death entirely. Everything must fall before the one aim of eliminating the virus right now. The problem is that salvation from the grave is not something it is in the power of government to do. Deliverance from death is in the gift of God, not of men. But more and more core parts of our humanity are being crushed in the attempt: generations being torn apart, students ordered to stay in their rooms, jobs and livelihoods destroyed, families put under intolerable strain.”
The notion that the state can protect humans from the only other thing that’s assured them besides life—death—flies in the face of what believers know:
“No matter how many times we are told ‘together we will defeat this virus’, we will not. To attempt to eliminate death entirely is to attempt what we cannot do. But a vast amount of dehumanising damage is being done in the attempt. In trying to be God, we are making ourselves less and less human.”
Roberts gets to the heart of what has been a mass psychosis in the developed Western world triggered by COVID. As someone who recently has returned to the church after many years away, this is what I’ve been needing to hear in person for months now:
“The human race tried to be God and dehumanised itself; but God in response has become human to lift us up to God. Jesus Christ demonstrated that real humanity is humbling ourselves before God. And the Son of God came to earth to do far more than that: to reset our humanity, to suffer in his own crucified human body the full dehumanising power of our proud attempt to seize God’s crown for ourselves. And by doing so he opened the door to eternal life. When God raised him from the dead on Easter Sunday he defeated death for ever.”
I know of no church or established religious organization in the U.S. saying this.
You don’t have to be a believer to appreciate this message, which resonates with the humanity that’s been stripped from us, along with too many of our civil liberties. The church I’ve been attending is starting to reopen, but on a very limited basis, and with restrictions that have left me feeling a bit chilled.
In some churches, people cannot sing, hold hands or engage in basic Christian fellowship. They must wear masks and stay apart according to household. There is no communion. No coffee hour. No Sunday school.
Worshippers must make reservations to attend, and sit only with those in their households. This isn’t church; these are more components of the sanitized “new normal” world that religious institutions must reject.
Only members, no visitors, can come to the parish I’ve been attending. As someone who’s been a regular visitor planning to discuss membership with the clergy after Easter, that leaves me outside the church door for the forseeable future.
When I am able to go back, I hope I’ll be able to enjoy the liturgy, the Eucharist, the choir and the joy of greeting other humans as I did before March.
I realize I’m probably asking for too much, but of all the COVID restrictions I’ve had to endure, this is the hardest of all. It’s been gut-wrenching.
So thank you, Rev. Roberts, for saying what clergy in my own country needs to shout from the mountaintops:
“For the Christian church is the one place on earth that has a real answer to a pandemic. In the attempt to save from death, the doors were shut of the one place on earth where there really is salvation from death. At a time when people more than anything need hope, the one place was closed where hope may truly be found.
“Huge amounts of effort and money are being poured into research into treatments and vaccines for Covid-19, and rightly so. We must do what we can to limit the impact of this and all other diseases on human life. But we have in our midst another solution to disease and death, and one of a different and greater order. In a time when humanity is being destroyed it is God’s invitation, in his Son Jesus Christ, to have our humanity eternally restored.”
Rights Of Mind 