From Bondage to Freedom in Christ Jesus (Charlie McNeill)

I was asked a rather novel question about a year ago, and the question popped up again in the last few weeks.  One of the saints within the congregation asked me if I thought the Covid19 virus was a plague?!

I answered the question with a question.  Did she use the word plague in the Old Testament Biblical sense of God visiting plagues on the Egyptians to free the people of Israel from bondage?  She indicated that was exactly what she was asking!

A year ago we talked about it. I thought we concluded the conversation when I honestly said I didn’t know!  In saying I didn’t know I suggested that I wouldn’t presume to be able to plumb the depths of the divine mysteries!  Such weighty questions calls us to seek God out in prayer and be asking God to unpack rather involved and complex questions!

In fact I don’t think upon reflection that sort of question can be answered in 50 words or less!  I am not sure that God would give a simplistic and partial answer to such a weighty question!  To be fair to my friend who asked the question I doubt she would expect to sit down with God for 5 or 10 minutes and get the Coles Notes answer to that question!

My friend is the sort of person with an inquiring mind and heart!  She adheres to the gospel admonition to seek, ask, and knock.  If she doesn’t get an answer right away or if she doesn’t receive an answer that satisfies she keeps looking!

So the year rolled by and again the question was on her mind and heart!  Was the Covid19 virus a plague?!  At the end of a Bible study, which had nothing to do with plagues, she raised her question again!

Again I asked if she meant Old Testament liberating plagues?  She indicated that was exactly what she meant!  We unpacked it a bit more, and I am thinking that before too long we will talk about it again!

There is a pastoral, theological and Biblical need within this sister in Christ, and so we will continue to wrestle with the weighty question!  If nothing else she has made me wrestle with the question, and carry the question around with me as I go about God’s business through the work done!

In being called to journey with her a thought crossed my mind the other day!  The act of liberation which God enacted for the people of Israel in freeing them from Egyptian oppression was revolutionary!  It took a people, who had long forgotten how to be a people, and forged them through the fires of bondage, the plagues, and finally the journey to recreation into God’s people!

The recreation was not instant.  It took time and in fact for God’s people, then or now, we are a work in progress!

In the Old Testament context God was freeing the people both physically and spiritually!  God was also speaking truth to power – most notably the powerful and power of the then Egyptian empire!

With that in mind if Covid19 can be likened to a plague are the powerful these days being called to critique their use of power and to transition to a Godly template of power for service?! By the same token are those people who have the ways and means to more readily weather the storm of the pandemic being taught anything?  We aren’t the powerful in society but we are the more fortunate who benefit from our society’s largess.

Is God critiquing us?  If so what is the critique?  More to the point are we willing to embrace God’s critique and run with it?  Or do we need more severe plagues to get our attention?!

The Old Testament Exodus plagues spoke to everyone, critiqued everyone, and called everyone to listen and respond to God in kind!  If this is what we mean by the Covid19 virus being a theological plague – then maybe it is!

Whether it is or not isn’t so much the point!  In doing theology its not so much about other people and their behaviour but our own!  Theology at its best has nothing to do with finger pointing!  Rather it has to do with wrestling with God and God’s truth for our own lives, contexts, realities, and then taking and living God’s remedies!

Those remedies lead from bondage to freedom in Christ Jesus!

The Rev Charlie McNeill
Knox Presbyterian Church, Lloydminster