After the Apocalypse

by

One of my former pastors always insisted that the Bible is “a mirror, not a model” of human behavior, and I’ve found her observation to be correct, especially now. We’re living through one of those times in human history that resembles some of the Bible’s “apocalyptic” books such as Daniel or Revelation: the world is in chaos and our future is fearfully uncertain.

“Apocalypse” is a Greek word actually meaning “to reveal.” The moral corruption of our society and our complicity in it have been revealed by the COVID-19 plague. What we’re learning about our human systems – and about us, their creators – rivals any of the fanciful, horrific images that prophets and seers of old have written. Here’s what I mean.

One of the many online meetings in which I’ve participated recently involved an ad hoc group of clergy, chaplains, and other spiritual caregivers confronting a dismaying reality: the “hospital incident protocol” from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t include spiritual support as essential care. In other words, hospitals needn’t put a priority on spiritual care for people who are dying in isolation from COVID-19. The guideline utterly ignores the fact that dying is a spiritual event, not a medical event.

Thankfully, our panelists gave evidence that pastoral care isn’t left out at all hospitals. Some enlightened, often faith-based, medical systems have strong pastoral care units that tend to both patients and staff. Yet since the 9/11 attacks on America, hospitals have been instructed by the CDC to use a protocol that omits spiritual care at precisely the moment it’s most needed.

Before we begin clucking at the godless CDC, we must ask ourselves: Why did we let such a protocol go unchallenged for so long? Was it merely ignorance of hospital procedure? Or have we left care of the sick and dying to a few pastoral professionals while the rest of us went about our busy lives? Why haven’t we built relationships with chaplains and health care workers that would allow us to help both them and their patients in crisis?

The same scenario plays out in America’s prisons, some participants said during our online discussion. We learned that jails are excluding chaplains along with families and other visitors during the COVID-19 lockdown. Only now are prison ministers beginning to push back against these restrictions, being allowed in some cases a minimum of access through digital means.

These are only two examples of Christians failing to follow Jesus’ instructions in Matthew 25 that have been exposed by the coronavirus pandemic. This modern plague has stripped away the comfortable veneer of deniability that we built into our institutional systems. Our society’s oppressions, which those of us with privilege have managed to avoid, have been uncovered to show the church’s complicity in unjust systems. We're looking into an uncomfortable reflection!

Yes, the Church has proven responsive and resilient in adapting technologies to provide online worship and administration while in-person gatherings are restricted. But what will happen when we are able to gather again, even with six feet of social distancing between us?

  • Will we forget the heartbreak we’ve seen? Will we remember the health care workers so emotionally burdened that some choose to die by suicide because they can’t do more to save lives?
  • Will we recoil from the glaring economic disparities affecting communities of color that have led to blacks and Latinos and Native Americans sickened and dying at much higher rates than white people richer than they?
  • Will we rationalize away the new slavery faced by “essential workers” who face infection in order to keep our society working?
  • Will we compartmentalize the ineptitude of corrupt political leaders who have squandered precious time and money in the pandemic response, pretending to ourselves that working for the common good isn’t our Christian duty?

Bringing these revelations home, will The United Methodist Church a year from now still be squabbling over remnants of power in a denomination that has crumbled into rubble? Will we continue to waste our admittedly dwindling resources on such battles?

The postponement of the 2020 General Conference has proven both curse and blessing. For some, rescheduling the global legislative assembly brings more angst over delay of a political aim: setting up a power structure in which certain like-minded people get to determine who’s holy enough to be enrolled as a United Methodist. Advocacy groups from different perspectives have announced their intentions to keep campaigning for their particular viewpoints, while outside the institution so many people are dying from this new plague that bodies are being stored in refrigerated trailers. Why are we not talking – in plain language, not “churchspeak” – about how a reformed United Methodist Church can be more effective in caring for and comforting a stricken world because that’s what Jesus said we’re to do?

Thankfully, at the grassroots, delaying General Conference has given countless congregations and annual conferences the opportunity to help those most impacted by pandemic restrictions. No one has needed a General Conference decree to make a casserole or some sandwiches for a family whose parents have been laid off. No one has needed General Conference legislation to telephone aging parents, widows and widowers, elderly aunts and uncles and neighbors, to check on them in isolation. No one has needed a legislative committee to approve a video conference call to read a story to children whose parents needed a respite.

The blessing of this seeming coronavirus curse – the very essence of apocalyptic interpretation – has come to us in these new, often painful understandings. Stripped of our pretensions, plunged communally into vulnerability, we have rediscovered a timeless, immutable truth: love of God and love of neighbor redeem us. This cruciform spirituality – a cross-shaped love – saves our lives.

My greatest fear at this time isn’t that I’ll fall victim to COVID-19. No, far more than infection I fear corporate spiritual amnesia – that we will forget these priceless revelations when (if) we return to a comfortable “normal.” Without remembering, we will continue to uphold a society that consolidates power in the hands of oligarchs and sacrifices its most vulnerable people on golden altars.

In apocalyptic terms, now is our tribulation. The trumpets have sounded, the scrolls have been opened, and we face the demons of pestilence, famine, war, and death. We cannot “unknow” what we have discovered about ourselves and the world we have created unless we choose to forget our new knowledge. The question now before us is: Will we abandon everything that separates us and join the Risen Christ to bring about a new world where salvation – wholeness of life – abounds?

Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, which she founded in 2011.