Lessons From Wuhan: Recalculating As We Emerge From Coronaville

There’s nothing so disconcerting as driving down the highway listening to a favorite song, only to have the Siri lady w/ the uppity-sounding British accent disrupt with: RECALCULATING! What she REALLY means is: “You are an idiot! You weren’t paying attention, & now you’ve gone off on a wrong path.” I have been thinking a lot this past week about the idea that our God often uses disruption to get our attention. When we are going off track (or perhaps we’re just stuck & not going anyplace in particular), our disrupting God awakens us, challenges us, jolts us out of our lethargy with a cosmic dope slap, sometimes of epic proportion. COVID-19 has upset our collective apple cart beyond anything we could have ever foreseen. What lessons will you take with you as we finally see Coronaville disappear in the rearview mirror? Time to recalculate the direction you are heading. We’ll talk about it more when we are back in the Book of James on Sunday morning.

Lessons from Wuhan -- Remember That Easter We All Met Online? -- April 12, 2020

One night as Easter approached during my senior year at Mizzou, Sam stormed into my room and got right in my face. He was a Jewish kid who was pretty tired of hearing about Jesus from the growing number of guys on our floor who had come to faith. Some of them had “One Way” posters on their walls with an index finger pointing up. Not Sam. He had a poster that read: “No Way” …with a different finger displayed. So there we stood, nose to nose. No social distancing. And he angrily asked, “Do you believe the Jews killed Christ?” He and his family had been branded Christ-killers more than a few times. Ever have that assurance that the Holy Spirit was whispering in your ear? I quietly responded: “Yes, Sam. The Jews back then killed Jesus. And the Romans killed Jesus. And, if I had been there, Sam, I would have killed Jesus, too.” His accusing finger was still in the air, ready to poke me in the chest. But he was disarmed. He murmured: “That’s a good answer.” And then he walked out of my room.

John Stott put it this way: “Before we can begin to see the cross as something done for us, we have to see it as something done by us.” The sacred symbol of our faith is the cross, an instrument of torture and death. That would be quite unexpected except that we’ve had a few thousand years to process the irony of it becoming our reminder of deliverance from sin and the joy of sins forgiven and the only path to life everlasting. Let us remember, as we celebrate so uncharacteristically this Easter, that our sins made it necessary for Jesus to become our Perfect Sacrifice. Some of our cherished traditions will have to be put aside this year. Instead of the new life sprouting across our city, we are assaulted with daily box scores of deaths in various parts of our planet. Such things need to push us closer to the foot of the cross, forcing us to look beyond the trappings of the season to the heart of it—Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. Newness of life purchased by His blood.

Lessons from Wuhan -- Triumphal? -- April 5, 2020

 We are going to be looking at The Triumphal Entry in John 12 when we gather on Zoom this Sunday. Traditions of this season will be set aside this time as we “shelter in place.” Seemed a good idea to depart from the Epistle of James for a few weeks in order to focus on why we celebrate Palm Sunday and Easter. I took some time yesterday to explain the meaning of Palm Sunday to a friend from another country. Can you imagine waking up in Tunisia during Ramadan later this month and trying to figure out what everyone was doing? And not doing? And why? A number of years ago, I got stranded in a Tokyo airport for what I thought would be a brief layover. All flights out were full, and I was doing standby. Turns out, it was a big three-day weekend there. Evidently, Japanese people like to go to Bangkok at such times. I still have no idea what the holiday was even called.

No time of year should provide more reasons for hope and joy and peace of mind during these days of forced seclusion than Holy Week. I found it impossible to explain THIS Sunday to my friend without also explaining NEXT Sunday. He’s heard it from me before, but he appreciated getting the historical context and insight into a culture not easily understood. Let’s draw near during the coming week, worshipping our risen Lord in a fresh, simple way. And let’s tell somebody about it.

Gary