Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world..God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgement, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because God first loved us. Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.
Our calling--in this season of unseen viruses and manifest panic--is, first, to "test the spirits" and, then, to love our siblings, our neighbors, our beleagured contemporaries with a kind of "fear-less" love. We may be anxious. The news coming out of Washington may unnerve us. But we must love one another with a fear-less love. We may get sick. We may even contract the virus itself at some point, and that will be terribly scary. But we must love one another with a fear-less love. We may have to quarantine ourselves. Our routines and institutions may be disrupted mightily. But we must love one another with a fear-less love.
The enemy here is not death; it's not even the novel coronavirus itself. The enemy is apathy, a fearful spirit that masquerades as wisdom, the withdrawal of empathy. The enemy is hatred and the closed and self-centered heart.
At least, that's what my faith tradition says. That's the soul of the gospel. I am invited--by the Sweet Son of Grace--not to fear my own death, and not to fear illness and weakness, and not to fear the despots whose meanness and greed are poison to us all. I am invited to live: to live tomorrow as if the Kingdom of Heaven has come near, to live tomorrow as if the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, to greet the new day in which God is fully and magnificently embodied in the frenzied neighbor, the sweet beggar, the wise crone and every other soul I meet in the world.
There is nothing, Jesus says, nothing in this virus, nothing in my DNA, nothing in my span of days, that can separate me from God's love. And there is nothing that can separate the world from the renewing, reviving, reconciling Spirit. We have only to open our eyes, open our hearts, look for God in one another. It'll get weird for a while. And it may even hurt to watch the world suffer. But we do not suffer alone. And we can care and serve and tend and weep and love and suffer--in the deepest assurance that all will be well.
So love has indeed been perfected among us. We can love because know love. We know how to bind wounds and wash one another's feet and march for justice and plant seeds in the good earth. The Kingdom of Heaven has come near. And all will be well.
DGJ
3/14/20
