Easter Pandemics

It is one year since the dumpster fire of 2020 really got rolling. Pandemic fast became a part of our vocabulary and masks became a new part of our wardrobe. Every day for the last year I have opened and made a daily entry on a spreadsheet tracking the pandemic numbers in our country. The first entry 3.10.2020=474 cases in the US. Prior to beginning this draft I made the entry for today 3.2.2021-yesterday’s data. The number 28,719,998 cases in the US. This is 100.2% of the previous days total. As bad as that seems it falls short of the increase on the first day I began this process. The total on March 11, 2020 day two of this exercise 696 total cases which is 147.5% of the previous day’s total. I have been waiting for the number to stabilize at 100% of the previous days total; 0% growth. 

It has been a long, tragic, trying year. We have new wardrobe basics. Masks to match the outfit of the day. I used to pick a coordinating pocket handkerchief to top off the daily outfit. Now I pick just the right mask; one that looks good puffed in my pocket ready at hand to cover mouth and nose. 

Our human nature tells us that this is the worst that it has ever been, which is of course nonsense. This pandemic has been largely created by two of the great advances of PostModern society: apathy and global jet travel, yet it pales with the plagues which regularly rose in the pre-modern world. Europe’s bouts with the Black Death created chaos, agricultural collapse and an entire catalogues of nursery rhymes. (Ashes, to ashes…we all fall down). And while it is certainly different to have to wear a mask when interacting in public…it isn’t this. 

We are moving past it and I still hope and pray that we have learned some important lessons about life, ministry and how we should live together wisely and  lovingly.  I have repeatedly said and repeat it again if you missed it; if we come out of this pandemic unchanged we will have missed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be transformed by God in unprecedented circumstances. The “Greatest” generation became what it is and was because of the experiences of depression and global war. Lincoln was our greatest president because he grew as a leader during the Civil War. What will current generations become because we encounter and excel in this global pandemic?

Finally, this pandemic puts me in mind of another, greater, more dangerous and durative pandemic. The story begins in Genesis 3 but it stretches throughout scripture until the "vaccination" is described in the NT. The pandemic of sin and its long list of features-greed, avarice, pride, gluttony, lust, anger, envy, violence, power is still ongoing even as we fight COVID-19. The list of victims taken by the plague of Sin is larger, even overlapping the toll of victims of this and most other plagues. To die of plague is tragedy. To die in sin…eternal loss. 

The cure has been widely available for nearly 21 centuries. It is not always distributed equally nor ably. Some have been vaccinated and because of their own behavior become re-infected with another variant, another strain-because the sin-virus mutates and changes and grows and kills even as the vaccination is proclaimed.

This cure to the disease of sin is the heart of the Gospel and the centerpiece of Easter. I hope and pray that this Easter season you and your family, your church, your people not only take advantage of the opportunity to have a booster shot, I hope that you become a part of the ongoing, worldwide campaign to rid the world of this dread disease. At the end of the age the one who bore all our infirmities will come to claim His own. Those who have survived. Those who have thrived. Those who have overcome the greatest pandemic our world has ever known.