McPhail Baptist Church

Sunday March 29th 2020

Fate, Facts, and Faith
Rev. Ernie Cox

                                                               
Some weeks ago before we were all told to self-isolate, I was in a store and overheard two persons discussing the threat of the Coronavirus. One said to the other, “Well, if you’re gonna get it, you’re gonna get it, it’s fate.” I’m always surprised at the number of persons who seem to believe in the hand of fate, some unseen force that decides how one’s life unfolds with a mixture of good and bad.  Fate is generally understood as some kind of force outside of our control that makes things happen. For example, you step outside your house, slip on the ice and end up in the hospital for a month. It was your unfortunate fate to slip on the ice.  Or, on a more positive note, you run to catch the bus, but missing it  you end up talking to someone at the bus stop who later on becomes your spouse! Some people see these things as the hand of fate for good or bad. Others, Christian or otherwise,  see these things as mere circumstance, although some Christians who believe in a rigid determinism would see these things as providential,  with every detail of a person’s life orchestrated by God.

The Rev. Majdi Allawi is a priest of the Maronite Catholic church in Lebanon. Father Allawi arranged for a flight in a small plane over Lebanon so that he could send down a blessing upon the nation. Before the flight began, the pilot asked Father Allawi if he had a mask and hand sanitizer.  “Jesus is my protection, he’s my sanitizer,” said the priest to the pilot.

In Texas, the televangelist Kenneth Copeland, encouraged his viewers to touch their TV screens as Copeland held out a hand for a “point of contact” claiming that under the power of God, he could cure people of the Coronavirus through their TV screens.

In Egypt, some Egyptian Muslims said they were certain God was punishing non-Muslim countries by sending them the virus. As of March 24, there were more than 400 cases of Covid-19 in Egypt, and thousands of cases in the Muslim country of Iran. So, by that twisted logic, it appears that God is smiting Muslim countries as well.

Also, in Egypt, before the churches were closed, Monica Medhat said she would not fear taking communion in  Coptic churches where the wine is administered by a common spoon. “I’m taking precautions in my life generally against the virus,” she said, “but communion is the body and blood of God, and it can’t get infected with anything.” She went on to say that “I believe everyone dies when they’re destined to die. It doesn’t matter if it’s from a virus or a car accident.”

There’s a verse in the Bible that says, “Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.” In other words, it is the destiny of all of us to die once. But the verse doesn’t say or imply that there’s a predetermined time for you to die or for me to die. There is no such thing as an appointed time to die, that's Fatalism, not Christianity.

Many soldiers in World War 1 held to the belief of Fatalism. The thinking was that if the bullet had the soldier’s name on it, then there was nothing he could do about it anyway. And so, because of that, many young soldiers took unnecessary risks, thinking that this bullet, or that bullet, wasn’t meant for them.

Fatalism is ultimately paganism, because it means we can’t do anything about our circumstances.  Some Christians who think they are acting out of faith, that God will protect them, confuse fatalism with faith. This seems to be the viewpoint of Pastor Tony Spell of the 1000 member Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Spell refused to close his church, defying the governor’s order. More than 1800 persons attended a service March 22nd and were seen in close proximity, shaking hands and embracing. Spell told CNN that people had been cured of HIV and cancer in his services, and that the church believed in faith healing.  He went on to say that he would  lay hands on anyone with Covid-19 and depend on God to heal them.

But in contrast to those who believe in fate and distort the facts, let me draw from an 8500 word letter written by Martin Luther in 1527, who was asked by his friend Johann Hess, whether Christians could in good conscience flee from a deadly plague.  The town of Wittenberg where Luther lived, was struck by Bubonic plague. Not having knowledge of how the plague was transmitted, Luther wrote, “I am of the opinion that all the epidemics, like any plague, are spread among the people by evil spirits who poison the air or exhale a pestilential breath which puts a deadly poison into the flesh.”  However, even with that limited and erroneous understanding of how the plague was transmitted, as well as seeming to believe that Christians who devoted themselves to helping those who were sick, would be protected by God, nevertheless, Luther offered up much relevant advice on what to do in the time of plague, advice that is freshly relevant for today’s crisis.

Luther writes against the rash and reckless, who disdained the use of medicines, failed to avoid places and persons infected by the plague, claiming that God would protect them without having to use medicines or avoid those who were infected. “This is not trusting God but tempting him,” wrote Luther. He writes that if the use of medicine and intelligence are ignored and others are infected by the those who failed to use their intelligence and what medicine was available to them, then they bear some responsibility for the person’s death.

“Use medicine, take potions which can help you; fumigate your house, yard and street; shun persons and places wherever your neighbour does not need your presence or has recovered. Avoid places and persons where your presence is not needed in order not to be contaminated and thus perchance infect and pollute others. Moreover, he who has contracted the disease and recovered should keep away from others and not admit them into his presence unless it be necessary.”

“If everyone would help ward off contagion as best he can, then the death toll would be moderate,” he wrote. Martin Luther was advocating social-distancing 493 years ago before the term was coined.

And so, there are those who seem to believe that the Coronavirus is just one card dealt to us from the hand of fate. And there are those who, no matter the facts staring them in the face, they go against the known facts and in so doing,  endanger their own lives and the lives of others. But for those of us who accept as helpful fact what is known about the virus to date, we also are trying to live by faith. Faith that things will work out in time. Faith that because the whole world is in this together, perhaps it might lead to better understanding and compassion for others, more of coming together because of a somewhat terrifying experience our world is going through together.

Faith that is thankful we live in an age where the best scientists are working round the clock to produce medications and eventually a vaccine that will target the virus and keep us safe. Faith that understands God has not promised to protect us during this crisis, but that we sense His presence in the prayers of others, the caring and compassion evidenced in the phone calls, emails and inquiries as to how we are all doing.

And we are grateful for the extreme  dedication of the medical workers who are risking their lives for us. Our faith moves us to pray in thanksgiving for them.

And to bolster our faith, let us remember the words Steve brought to us last week in his message, words from Jesus, that “In this world we will have much trouble, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” And then the words of Nathaniel Hawthorne, that “The greatest of all mortal consolations is that this, too, shall pass.” With facts and faith, we can overcome this crisis, so that it won’t overcome us.

Onward and Upward
Rev. Steve Zink

                                                           

“Jacob dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it” (Genesis 28:12)

There was nothing to lie on but the unforgivingly hard ground. There was nothing to serve as a pillow but a large stone. Certainly a far from ideal bed, yet it would have to suffice. Jacob was exhausted and the day was spent. Darkness now swallowed the remainders of daylight. As he lay upon that unyielding pillow he drifted into dreams. Jacob’s night visions didn’t transport him to a different time and place; his dream invoked the setting of the very spot upon which he lay. Yet the scene was teeming with supra-mundane elements that transfigured the whole picture. The most arresting element was a large ladder, firm upon the earth at one end but seeming to lean against pure nothingness at its upper end. The ladder simply disappeared into the endless heavens. Upon the rungs travelled spiritual presences, ascending and descending.

In the painting above (“The Dream of Jacob”), Spanish artist Esteban Murillo brilliantly renders the visionary ladder, busily infested with redemptive and transformative possibility. The ladder is a recurrent symbol in mythology, art, and in the unconscious world of our dreams. Indian shamanism employed the ladder symbol to suggest transcending the immediate confines of life. In Christianity and Islam the ladder was often used as an image of spiritual progress. Another possible suggestion of the symbol are the bursting divine possibilities that lie everywhere around us, yet hitherto untapped. The symbol links the “here and now” of the earth (the concrete situation) and the eternal and transfiguring potency of the heavens (the transcendent possibility).

We often find our lives drastically affected by not being able to think outside of the immediate situation. A particular struggle or fear of something approaching swallows our thoughts and all but eliminates the future from our horizon. We become emotionally drained as all we can think about is the immediate concern. But if fixating on the immediate situation shrinks our world, imagining in terms of the possible expands our world. The more we direct our minds to wander and dream, the more we can see that our current struggle is not absolute. Instead, the object of our concern appears a minor foreground object eclipsed by a far vaster background of transcendent possibilities and creative prospects. It is this capacity to dream or envision ladders of sacred possibility that lead Paul to declare his transcendence over the immediate situation - “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair” (2Cor 4:8).

We have a popular saying used as a kind of exhortation - “onward and upward!” This phrase is most commonly used in situations such as when a senior employee pats a younger colleague on the back, spurring him or her on to greater success. That particular setting also makes use of the ladder symbol - "the corporate ladder.” But perhaps we can commandeer the phrase to our own use. The expression effectively shows the linkage between two ideas - forward motion in our current sphere and upward progress toward that which is holy. This affords us a new dual insight. By thinking in terms of the creatively possible, any movement we can make to transcend our current situation (“onward”) is at the same time a kind of prayer (“upward”). At the same time, any genuine act of faith or worship (“upward”) has a corresponding transforming and advancing power in our practical life (“onward”).

                                         

Living in the End Times?

Rev. Ernie Cox

The Etobicoke Creek in Southern Ontario turned bright red March 24, which led to a number of religious references, in that the creek turned red not long before Passover, which celebrates the escape of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Ten plagues were inflicted upon the Egyptians before the Pharaoh released the Israelites. One of the plagues was the turning of water into blood. One person remarked that the Creek looked like blood. Another person said “If it starts raining frogs, then I’m out.”  Turns out that someone leaked 400 litres of ink into the creek. The ministry of Environment is investigating.

It seems that every time there’s some kind of large-scale disaster, people begin to wonder if we’re living in the last days of civilization, that the Second Coming of Jesus is at hand, and that the prophecies in the book of Revelation are being fulfilled.

But looking back in time, we note from the record of history that on November 1, 1755, 50,000 persons died in an earthquake in Lisbon, Portugal. In 1976, an earthquake in Tangshan, China, killed 750,000 persons.

Bubonic plague killed 13,000,000  people in Asia in 1894, the same plague, known as the Black Death, that killed 25,000,000 in Europe centuries earlier.

There are those who understand the book of Revelation to be a timeline for the future. That’s not my view. I don’t believe the book of Revelation to be a timeline for the future, in that I believe the events as depicted in the book of Revelation have already happened, except for the final consummation. Passages from the book of Ezekiel, Daniel and Revelation, known as Apocalyptic literature, were never meant to be understood as outlining a timeline for the future.
         
The book of Revelation was written to give the early Christians, who were being persecuted,  encouragement in the faith. Much of it was written in code and symbolic language to encourage the persecuted and outnumbered Christians to hang on to their faith, to remember that the kingdoms of Caesar and all the Roman Emperors would pass away, but that the unseen Kingdom of God,  would last forever, and that one day in the future God would ultimately bring in the final Kingdom.

And the reason it was written in symbol and code, was because Christians couldn’t go to market or pass by in the street and say in public, “Watch out for Nero and his henchmen;” but they could say to each other, “Beware of the Beast, and the Four Horsemen,” and they would know of whom they spoke.

And so, the reference to the Antichrist and the mark of the Beast, with the number 666,  is not a reference to anyone living now, or a reference to anyone who might come in the future.  In Bible times the letters of the alphabet were also used as numbers. If you take the name Nero in Latin which is Neron, and give to that name its numerical equivalent, you get six hundred and sixty six. As well, in Hebrew, the letters of Nero Caesar add up to six hundred and sixty-six. All mainstream scholarship believes the 666 reference is to Nero.

And so, there is little doubt in John’s mind,  that the Antichrist,  the one who stood against the Church,  was Nero. And so, into this, and the terrible persecutions Christians were suffering, John wrote the book of Revelation to encourage the Christians to hang on to their faith.

But as for speculation on the future, and when God would bring in the final Kingdom with a new heaven and earth, Jesus said that no one knows when that will happen, not the angels, not the Son, but only God knows the day and hour.

But because so much is unknown about Covid-19, and because the infections have spread right around the world, many people, including Christians, remain uneasy. Raised to believe that God is in charge, many Christians are asking,  “Why was it allowed to happen?”  “How can God be in charge when the virus in some places seems to be almost out of control?”

In answer to this, I think of something that comes from the great preacher Leslie Weatherhead. He writes of how some pessimistic Christians remarked to him that the world was going to hell in a hand-basket, and that in a world like ours, where sometimes things look very bad, “anything can happen.”

In answer, Weatherhead replied, “No, you’re wrong, it’s not true that anything can happen." And then he gave an illustration of how when parents put their child in a nursery the child is allowed to stumble and fall. Things happen, a child can get hurt, the parents know this, but that doesn't mean they pad the walls, or put mattresses down on the floor. However, they do make sure that in the nursery there's no sulphuric acid or razor blades. In other words, they have guarded the nursery, and so it wouldn't be fair to say that anything can happen in that nursery.

In the same way, says Weatherhead,  in the world nursery, many terrible things can happen,  and they do happen. But not just anything can happen, he writes, because "Nothing is allowed to happen that could ultimately defeat the purposes of God."

It was Dostoevsky who wrote, “Without God, everything is permitted.” James Wood, the writer and literary critic, writes in one of his books that it’s stupid to say something like that because even with God “everything already and always has been permitted—crusades, executions, wars, uprisings, regicides, papal decadence, burnings, inquisitions and immoralities of every kind. All of this happened with God, so what was there left to be ‘permitted’ without God?” Wood goes on to include Stalin’s purges and the Holocaust as further evidence of what has been permitted.

It’s patently obvious to all of us in this troubled world, that pretty well everything nefarious, soul-destroying and evil, has been permitted. But faced with a world-wide potential cataclysm, and even if we come out of the current social upheaval without catastrophic consequences, we can’t help wonder about the future of the world.

Scientists tell us that eventually the world will burn up in about 5 billion years. That’s not something we need worry about now, of course, but how does this scientific fact square with the Christian belief of divine creation?  John Polkinghorne, the former Cambridge physicist, now an Anglican minister, poses the question of where God fits into the picture if the world and the universe are going to end in decay?

We can progress all we can as human beings, writes Polkinghorne, and in the centuries and ages ahead, no doubt much progress will be made, but “if there’s an inevitable futility to the world and to the universe, if it ends up in decay, then it’s no more than a stay of execution.” Polkinghorne suggests that they are two ways of thinking about this. The oft-quoted words of Bertrand Russell come to mind: “That man’s origin, his growth his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave, that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system…”

But in answer to Russell’s gloomy vision, Polkinghorne tells us that the death of the universe on a time-scale of tens of billions of years is not a radically different problem from the even more certain knowledge of our own death in terms of tens of years. Because, in each case, the issue is whether hope is an illusion, and whether there is Someone to be trusted with our destiny, and the destiny of the Universe.  Evolutionary optimism is not a real hope, neither is technological progress, or sociological development, rather, for there to be a real and certain hope, our hope must be found in God, who is more than the Universe, who holds the whole world and the Universe in His hands, that God if He is God at all, is “God of the whole show,”  as Polkinghorne so strikingly puts it.  The just as God was there at the beginning, God will be there at the end.

This is why as we move into the Easter season, the resurrection of Christ is so vital, so key to everything. For the Resurrection tells us that not only do you and I have a destiny beyond this life as we know it, but that in a final sense, in the ultimate End Times, there will be a destiny for the world and the universe.  And as unsettling as these times are, Weatherhead is right, that “not just anything can happen.” For let us never forget, that “God is God of the whole show.” Alpha and Omega. Beginning and end.

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“The night is far gone, the day is near”

Romans 13:12

“While pleasure can be entire and perfect, sadness is always partial” 

Thomas Aquinas 

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Did you know you can mail in your regular financial contributions to McPhail? Faith communities, along with cultural institutions and many businesses have had to close temporarily. Nevertheless, normal operational expenses continue as usual. In the light of this, do please consider continuing your support of McPhail by mailing your offering to: 249 Bronson Ave, Ottawa, ON. K1R 6H6