For to him, we are all alive

By John Pearring

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/112120.cfm
Revelation 11:4-12
Luke 20:27-40

“The jury has spoken, and we’re all going to die!”

The headlines don’t say it as bluntly as this, but the truth behind every scary update on COVID makes that claim — death’s inevitable arrival sits on the steps of our porch. Beware not to awaken him. Death is out to get you!

The fear isn’t unwarranted, though. It’s on the nose. While desperate hiding tactics — masks, social distancing and quarantines — appear to be survival’s winning defense moves, they’re just tampering techniques to make sure the hospitals don’t burst at the seams. We’re basically being told to hold off on getting sick until it’s our turn.

There’s no escape, really. This ominous and oddly unbridled enactment of death’s trial is being told all over the world. It’s a horror story of global fear, and God is allowing it to play out to everyone’s surprise and dismay. COVID-19 has reached a level of pestilence on par with only eight other plagues in recorded human history.

In seven short months COVID’s death count leapt over 13 other pandemics. These other well-known plague are now pikers, nowhere near as deadly as COVID-19 — SARS, Ebola, Asian Flu, Yellow Fever, MERS, Hong Kong Flu, and Swine Flu. God didn’t cause any of them, as we Christians can attest. But he has allowed, and is allowing COVID’s transmission to continue almost unabated.

COVID may yet overtake the 17th Century Plagues of 1600; with awful plans to match the Antonine Plague of 165 AD. Then, it’ll be number looking to leap over number six, the Third Plague of 1855. We’re in the midst of an historical sweeping epidemic. 

Uncounted by many is that HIV is still killing more almost 2 million people a year. Malaria repeatedly kills 1 million a year. Upwards of 13 million will die this year from all communicable diseases, including Rabies, Tuberculosis, and Flu. So, death by disease isn’t foreign to us. It’s just no longer shocking. None of these, however, has had the international lockdown affect of COVID. It’s simply stunning. The effect on churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques has been thorough — little to no attendance at services. Religious practice is confined to the home. 

God’s place in our lives during a pandemic war remains the same during peacetime. Our interpretation of God’s presence, though, differs drastically. We can hone our health habits, communicate regularly by phone & internet, and pray more steadily. God’s relationship to us remains the same. Hopefully, we are more in tune with him personally, aware more of what his interaction entails.

God's allowance of COVID should awaken us to the reality spoken about in Luke’s reading for today. God treats us as alive now, and in the next life. From God’s point of view, we die, but we then resurrect. Moses attributed eternal life to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

That the dead will rise
even Moses made known in the passage about the bush,
when he called  ‘Lord’
the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob;
and he is not God of the dead, but of the living,
for to him all are alive.
Luke 20:37-38

Death is endemic, natural to our existence. It’s inevitable. Most of us will die of old age. Opioids, sexually transmitted diseases, car crashes, morbidities (heart disease, cancers, etc.), and murders take the bulk of us out of the population. COVID tags onto all of these things, accelerating our “inevitable” path toward death.

The COVID global map captured every day so far in 2020 can be traced as it continues to spread unheeded into virtually every country on earth. Herculean lockdown efforts only available to small island countries — or despot controlled nations — have ‘so far’ avoided rampant outbreaks. We’ve only just entered the second wave, and predictions of a third wave in the Spring will certainly not be stopped in time even with the successful implementation of the vaccines this winter.

What can we say that God is doing? How can we see his hand in this pandemic? Likely, in our personal view we can see and encounter him daily. Not in our survival, but in his interactions, the mirrors of what our life will be like with him in eternity. We are contacted by friends and family when we sob. We receive food when we are hungry. We get a good night’s sleep when we are exhausted.

On a larger scale, God is surely speaking to us also. Strange and contradictory realities mark this pestilence as unique to all other viral diseases. Lots of us see God’s interrupting hand in these statistics. I bring up just three:

• Ninety percent of deaths from COVID strike only the population over sixty years of age. Yes, 90%. This age group accounts for just 20% of the population, and 18% of the total number of cases.
• Conversely, a mere one percent of deaths strike the under thirty year old population, which accounts for about 40% of the population, and 25% of the cases. 40% of the population accounts for 1% of deaths.
• That leaves 9% of COVID deaths for those in their 30's, 40s and 50's. Fifty-five percent, 57%, of all cases fall into this 40% of the population. Yet they only account for 9% of those who die.

Time will tell if these characteristics can stay on track. As the infection rate runs up against the growing immunity from COVID survivors, they should, but we have to be cautious. God’s presence doesn’t mean we can expect he’s fixing everything just now.

Also, and more to the point of this pandemic, almost all of the folks who die in every category of age groups have one or more co-morbidity problem. Once infected, those of us with underlying, potentially deadly health conditions must struggle harder than others to stay alive. Almost all healthy infected folks survive. Have diabetes, heart disease, obesity, or lung ailments? Well …

Again, almost all already healthy folks who get infected survive.

Besides the doomsday arguments that some healthy young are still dying, and Pollyanna quips that some very ill elderly survive, the overall stats are astounding in their focus primarily upon the aged and ill. 

All of this is uncanny, unwanted, and freely published advertising that everyone is at death’s door. God knows we all see the fog of COVID in our spheres of contact. He knows each and every family that suffers from the deaths. We cannot ignore that he knows these things. 

Still, we wisely search for escape routes. The pestilence that successfully attacks the elderly and those with co-morbidities spreads at an ever increasing pace. 

COVID rudely dismisses the assured herd immunity wall because immunity’s unknown number eludes us — ie., an estimated low 25% of the population, or 2 billion people, need to survive an infection to cause herd immunity. We are still many hundreds of millions of survivors away from that. The stark percentage of how many survivors it takes to outnumber the infection rate is simply not known.

Vaccinations will stop it. Yes. Getting 4 or 5 billion people vaccinated, however, has never happened. Could this be accomplished in less than a decade? One year would be incredibly fast. So, how many more will die in that time? This pandemic still has persistent legs.

Old people and ill folks die at a rather steady rate, according to statistics, whether COVID exists or not. Dying early and painfully from COVID is no consolation to the dead’s family and friends. Though I’ve heard people say, “He was already very sick before he got COVID,” no one is relieved by that. 

Heaven has welcomed larger quantities of killed people in short periods of time. No believer has told me a regular purging of the world’s population is necessary for the health of the human species. The one unchurched person I know who did suggest that notion quickly apologized for even thinking it.

In truth, the entire world’s population has been traumatized and pummeled into facing our human mortality. Is this why God allows pandemics? It will take 50-75 years for the world to recover from this trauma. 200 years passed before the world’s population reset properly after the Black Death of the 14th Century.

Our children must confront the fear of death like we were living in the days of the Black Death. Young folks in their 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s must consider their presence among the sick and elderly as an unwanted, probably lethal, weapon. The elderly consign their survival chances under COVID’s attack to that of a soldier heading into gruesome battle. Some are frightened silly. Others hesitantly volunteer that God takes them rather than someone young.

Prayer remains our answer to fate. God calls us to him from every calamity, but he does so permanently from the successful scourge of death. 

They can no longer die,
for they are like angels;
and they are the children of God
because they are the ones who will rise.
Luke 20:36