Life in the pandemic III: The ultimate act of self-isolation.

So much that might once have seemed strange now seems normal. I used to work in an office in a building in the middle of a busy city centre University campus. For the last few weeks I have been going to work in my dining room. In previous years, we would have gathered on the morning of Good Friday with about three hundred other people, in Bridge Chapel, to reflect on a pivotal event in the history of humanity – the death by crucifixion of Jesus 2000-ish years ago. Yesterday we sat in our front room, viewing prayers, songs and talks on the interweb. Today, a bright, warm, spring day, we might well have headed off somewhere to have a meal or a walk. We actually spent it at home, only going out for our one-hour, Government-mandated exercise (cycle ride for me, walk for my wife). We are of course “self-isolating”, our contribution in the fight against the Covid19 pandemic.

Self-isolation for us is far from intolerable. There are three of us in a large, comfortable house in a pleasant street in a quiet neighbourhood. And as there are three of us, we’re not that isolated. We see other folk from time to time walking past, and when we’re out and about for our walks or bike-rides. We’re in contact with our family and friends by means of the wonders of modern technology. We are safe, and well fed and watered. Solitary confinement this is not. I realise these are not the happy circumstances of everyone. Calls to the National Domestic Abuse helpline have increased 25% since the start of the lockdown, prompting the Government to announce today an extra £2M for domestic abuse services. Staying at home for some does not equate to being in a place of safety. For the old person living on their own, self-isolation might well be more like solitary confinement, particularly if they have no family or neighbours to keep an eye on them. Never-the-less the experience for many of us, at least in the short term, while trying, is far from tough. And of course it serves a purpose.

We have all become used to the mantra of “stay at home, save the NHS, save lives”; that’s the UK version, but it has its equivalents across the globe. The aim is to stop the transmission of the virus, so that fewer get infected at any one time, fewer are hospitalised, fewer need access to intensive care, and the whole system copes. My inconvenience makes a small, but I hope, tangible contribution to the overall effort. It seems incomparably insignificant to the efforts being made by so many on our behalf on the healthcare frontline. But the message is clear: isolation (even if it turns out not to be that isolating) saves lives.

Isolation is, of course, the central point of what transpired on that first Easter, and is one of its more controversial aspects. Easter really has not got a lot to do with pastel outfits, chocolate eggs (and the hunting thereof), and roast lamb rather than beef for Sunday lunch. Much as tinsel and trees obscure the meaning of Christmas, the aforementioned distract us from a supreme act of self-isolation that saves lives.

There are four accounts of the death of Jesus to be found in the Gospels and all of them repay close attention. Among many things that are striking about them, one is that they are all relatively matter-of-fact about the detail of what was done to Jesus at the cross – you won’t find much blood and gore. There are a number of reasons for this. First of all, the original readers of the Gospels were familiar with crucifixion; they needed no reminder of the suffering endured by those condemned to die in this fashion. It was a cruel punishment, certainly; unusual it was not. But secondly, brutal as the physical suffering of Jesus was, in and of itself this could achieve little. If this was simply about the untimely albeit brutal death of a man for some political or religious but ultimately human cause, it would have been then, and would remain now, obscure. Far from unique. But the key to what was going on, and what makes it unique, was not what could be seen. It was something that was unseen, but was evidenced by that most desperate and devastating of all the statements that Jesus made during His suffering. After three hours of darkness, lasting from noon until 3pm, He is recorded as crying out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”. A cry of dereliction; a cry of isolation.

There is much about the mechanics of what transpired in those hours of darkness that I’m not capable of understanding. But this much is clear, in the darkness something fundamental changed. Just a few hours previously, Jesus had prayed in Gethsemane, addressing God as His Father, His Abba. But now, that relationship is broken; He can no longer address God as Father, but only as God. With the help of the rest of Scripture, we can reconstruct what has happened, and it is breathtaking. “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us” is how Paul puts it in 2 Cor 5:21. As such, He is cut off, abandoned, isolated.

This state of affairs could have been avoided, and could not have been imposed. As you track through the events that preceded Jesus’ death on the cross, all the way from His arrest in the garden where he had prayed, via His show-trial and abuse, to the cross were he suffered, it’s clear that He is not being driven by events, but that He is driving events. His arrest, His trial, the procession out to Calvary, perhaps right to the very point of His isolation, a halt could have been called. So this was something He did and to that extent His isolation was self-isolation.

 Just as His suffering was qualitatively and quantitatively, breathtakingly, different from mine, so also is what was won by it.  His being isolated from God, His being cut-off, and as sin-bearer also bearing the answering anger of God for sin, wins for me the end of an isolation that is naturally mine. In my natural state I am isolated from the God I was made to know, with all the consequences that flow from that isolation. But that isolation was ended the moment I came into the good of His sacrifice for me. Does sin make God angry? You bet. And I was a target of that anger, until a great transfer took place – my sin to Him, His righteousness to me (that’s the other half of 2 Cor 5:21).

Our self-isolation in the great pandemic is endurable, partly because of that greater act of self-isolation that restores me to the most basic relationship I was created to be in. And the best bit? Have to wait for Sunday for that.

Life in the pandemic II: Between hubris and humility

In the midst of the pandemic that we continue to endure, there have been intriguing, even welcome, moments. Acts of kindness, like folk shopping for their elderly neighbours and then refusing to take payment for it; healthcare workers coming off shifts, being boosted to the front of supermarket queues. There has been the conspicuous bravery of those healthcare workers tending to the seriously ill in full knowledge of the risks posed to their own health. There have been moments of solidarity, like when us normally reserved Brits stand at our doors and in our streets and applaud all those on the front line. There’s been stupidity too of course, like the burning of 5G phone masts after nonsense on social media linked them to the spread of the virus. And there’s been the scary, like attacks on people of Asian heritage blaming them for the virus. But in general there’s been a lot to admire in the response to the pandemic (so far) and perhaps also a touch of pride. Maybe collectively we’re not as selfish or self-absorbed as we sometimes appeared to be pre-virus. Maybe we are not a “snowflake” generation, and can endure and prevail like our forebears who faced wars and disasters in their time.

The Government certainly continues to try to evoke that spirit of battling through that has been likened to the “blitz” spirit. Whether it’s the plucky engineers and manufacturers heroically struggling to mass produce medical ventilators or parents inventing ways to educate their own kids in their own homes (and quite possibly thinking wistfully of the teachers who had that burden up until a few weeks ago). By pulling together, by getting our heads down, by all doing our bit, we can win the struggle. You can’t fault them for the approach. Much more is likely to be achieved by encouragement than by coercion. And if in a few short weeks the crisis abates or even passes, if there’s a return to something that approaches normality, we will undoubtedly heave a collective sigh of relief and indulge in pats on the back all round. We’ll be proud that we did it. Don’t get me wrong. We should all be doing our bit. And we should be applauding the heroic contribution of so many. There is something genuinely touching about many of the stories emerging. There is selflessness to be celebrated, and cynicism to be avoided. But pride can quickly slide into hubris, and I do feel slightly conflicted about some of what’s going on.

Even among Christians, it seems that so far we’ve been concentrating on the practical things we should be doing and not thinking too much about what it all means. Of course, for many people the idea that there is any “meaning” to be gleaned from a pandemic makes no sense. Viruses come and go; they are neither good or bad, they’re just viruses. Occasionally a dangerous one comes along and a pandemic results. It has happened before, and will probably happen again. At least this time we have technology and science that wasn’t available to combat the Black Death or Spanish flu. But this pandemic is not a natural disaster (like an earthquake or volcanic eruption). It was caused by human activity and behaviour in a way that earthquakes are not. The spread of the virus and its effects have been enabled and amplified by human activity and behaviour. And to be fair, stopping the pandemic, or at least the speed of its stopping, will also depend on human behaviour. So at a minimum, there will be lessons for us to learn from our behaviour good and bad.

Big events, particularly big, bad events should cause us to pause, think and reflect. This is a global pandemic, the biggest of big events, so there is thinking to do. If nothing else, it is a dramatic reminder of how fragile life is - as fragile as it always has been. I don’t know how much time Boris (our Prime Minister) has for God and His ways; I suspect not much. Boris has been in an intensive care unit in a London hospital for the last few days. I am sure this is not what he was anticipating just a few weeks ago when he won a decisive election victory, and obtained the prize that he had spent years working, scheming, (lying?) and plotting for. I really do hope he recovers fully (he appears to be on the mend), and returns to do the job he was elected to do. But I also hope he returns with a changed perspective on his personal fragility, on his ability to control circumstances, and yes on the God he has probably spent his life ignoring. A bit more humility. And if Boris’ perspective should change, why not mine? But Boris is of course just one individual.  

I am emphatically not drawing a straight line either between Boris and the judgement of God, or between the pandemic as a whole and the judgement of God, although there are some Christians who are happy to do exactly this. But neither do I think that it is misconceived to look for explanations and meanings in current circumstances from a Biblical perspective (as N.T. Wright recently argued in Time magazine). Any explanation will be far from simple; any meaning will apply at multiple levels. And I claim no particular insight or authority. Indeed the Bible itself warns us about making bold explanatory claims in tough circumstances. God Himself challenged the “friends” of a man who suffered unjustly, who offered simple explanations for his predicament: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” (Job 38:2). I’m fully aware that there is a huge knowledge gap in the current situation. But not knowing everything is not the same as there being nothing to know.

I do know that these events are not just happening. Yes, there are natural and naturalistic explanations for much of what is going on. But underpinning all of these are the purposes of God. That’s a problem as much as an explanation. How a global pandemic, with the suffering and struggle implied, maps to the purposes of a good, faithful and gracious God raises difficult issues. Some will argue that it raises insurmountable arguments against even the existence of such a being. However, I also know that He is to be trusted, even when, as in current circumstances, I don’t understand His purposes either in their detail or their totality. And I also know that, given events of Good Friday, the same God in the person of His Son, endured suffering to good purpose. So there is no room for smart, slick, simple, arrogant, told you so, single Bible verse pronouncements here. No proud boast that thanks to my reading of the Bible I (or we) have it all worked out. But He knows all the things I don’t. So there is plenty of room for humility and trust.

It’s dark today, but Sunday is coming.