Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning?[1]” a song penned by Alan Jackson after the events of 9/11, 2001, has been echoing through my head for the last several days. As I write this on the Ides of March, 20/20, the Coronavirus has spread to Alabama with at least 6 cases today and more, I’m sure, to follow. The Governor has closed schools,[2] Wal-Mart is out of bathroom tissue, and Nick Saban has canceled football.[3] In other words, “It’s serious.” About Thursday was when it all began to settle in on me – and I started getting scared.
As a former public health official and specifically as one trained by the CDC, the FDA, and the NTSB in disaster management, I know the drill quite well. Be that as it may, my first reaction was to make light of the seriousness of the situation. Our family exchanged memes and funnies we had seen on Facebook.®
That lasted a while until I realized and confessed to my wife, Susan, that I was genuinely scared. Our talk helped me to calm down a bit, but fear, like the spring cold I have, seemed to linger longer than one would wish, like an uninvited guest who won’t go home.
With that training in mind, I executed my disaster plan. I went out to exercise in my driveway. My usual practice is to go through a stretching routine resembling . . . umm … (Yoga) accompanied by my cell playing an Audible® book or some music on YouTube.® Today, I listened to a lecture by Anglican Bishop The Reverend Dr. N.T. Wright[4], one of my favorite Christian authors who was lecturing at Wheaton College on the subject of the “Jesus and the People of God.”[5]
A line he said began to auto-repeat in my head joining the chorus of the song referenced supra. Bishop Wright said that while it is true that Jesus came to save each of us, He also came to save the collective “us” – humankind. The Bishop said that Jesus came not only to save the “me’s” of the world but to save “the World.” “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal like.” John 3:16.
Somewhere in my South Alabama Evangelical upbringing, I missed the Bishop’s point. I’d believed what I had been told, or at least surmised, that “If I were the only sinner on earth, Jesus would still have come to save me.” As, I suspected, “it’s all about me.”
This is not to trivialize that point or to deny the truth of it, but to proclaim that there’s more to it than that – much more.
Later that evening, I watched a movie on Amazon Prime®, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,[6]” with Tom Hanks.[7] According to Rotten Tomatoes®:
. . . A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD, [is] a timely story of kindness triumphing over cynicism, based on the true story of a real-life friendship between Fred Rogers and journalist Tom Junod. After a jaded magazine writer (Emmy winner Matthew Rhys) is assigned a profile of Fred Rogers, he overcomes his skepticism, learning about empathy, kindness, and decency from America’s most beloved neighbor.
It is said in the journalism business that Fred Rogers was a particularly difficult interviewee in that he had such empathy for and love for the interviewer that interviews frequently became counseling sessions. Such was the case with Tom Junod, the interviewer in the movie.
Mister Rogers’ pure love for and interest in this broken man, Mr. Junod, led Mister Rogers to become involved in Junod’s family troubles and to visit him and to minister to Junod’s estranged and dying father. As you may remember, Fred Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister.
After the movie was over, and after I wiped away the “feel-good” tears, and conjoining Wright’s and Rogers’ words and deeds, I began to understand an inkling of what Bishop Wright was talking about concerning the love of Jesus for the world.
Moreover, I was convicted that I did not possess a speck of such a love even though Jesus told us in John 13:34, “A new command I give you: Love one another.” Further, He said, “If you love me,” keep my commands.” John 14:15.
I don’t love the world. Some days, I don’t love my neighbor even as the Pharisees defined the word. This thought bought me down. But then I remembered something else Bishop Wright said.
He was commenting on the colloquy between Jesus and Peter by the seashore after Jesus’ Resurrection. Jesus asked Peter if Peter loved Him. Jesus used the Greek word agapeo, but Peter answered that he, Peter, loved Jesus, using the word phileo.
Again, Jesus asked Peter the same question, using the same word, agapeo, and again Peter answered with the same word, phileo.
Finally, Jesus descended to Peter’s level of love and asked, (please forgive my terrible construction here) “Peter, do you even phileo me?” When Peter, full of shame for his lack of agapeo, answered affirmatively, Jesus, did not lecture, did not condemn, did not chide. Instead, Jesus gave Peter an important mission.
May I submit that such is what Jesus does with us. He descends to the level of love we have, and He works with it. If we will but work with Jesus at that level, Jesus will, no doubt, raise our level of love.
Now, perhaps more than ever, we have a mission. The “World has stopped turning” for many people. We cannot just make it start turning again, but we can show the world who can make it start turning again.
Perhaps, we should not cavalierly deny that anything has happened, that anything is wrong. Perhaps, we should not self-pitifully wallow in our world-stopping sense of “poor me’s.” No, rather, we should begin to just love, agapeo, the world in the same manner as did Jesus.
In the live-streamed and televised (only) service of First United Methodist Montgomery Church today, Pastor Gillian prayed for us as we should pray for the world. (As I remember it, thus a paraphrase,) she admonished us through her prayer to remember that:
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if we are quarantined or hiding out at home, many people don’t have homes at all;
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If we can’t go to our jobs, some people don’t have jobs;
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If we are wondering if our insurance will pick up Coronavirus testing, some people don’t have insurance at all;
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If we are wondering how we’ll manage our children at home with schools closed, some families will have no choice but to leave their children at home unattended and go on to work, if they can find it, even if ill because they need the paycheck to survive.
If we are wondering if the food we have hoarded will hold out, some people didn’t have food in the first place.
These are serious times, but Jesus is a serious Savior. We, likewise need to be serious Christians in these times and seriously (but compassionately) show the love of Jesus to the people on the wrong side of the comma.
Perhaps, we need to become difficult interviewees in our conversation with the world in that we have become more interested in the other person than in telling our own story.
Aristotle was the first one to say, “Nature abhors a vacuum.” In this world where I submit, there is an abhorrent vacuum of leadership, we Christians need to show the world who the real leader, Jesus, is and always will be.
The chorus of Alan Jackson’s song paraphrases the Apostle Paul writing in 1 Corinthians 13. Maybe we should take one minute, as Mister Rogers would, and reflect on it.
And the greatest of these is love.
Remember that I am praying for you. So let it be written, so let it be done.
johnthebaptist15 