St Barnabas Anglican Church, Warrington
22 March 2020
Dear Sisters and Brothers,
Grace and peace to you from God.
This is a pastoral letter.
Who’d have thought it?
That we would communicate by letter: electronic or paper.
In Jesus’ time he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath. “Proper” worship was in the Temple, in not
very handy Jerusalem, and I think people went to the synagogue partly to share
the scrolls of the Torah, for I doubt that any of them would have had that at
home, but also to share their faith stories and the spiritual experiences of
the week. Also no doubt to complain
about the size of the fish being sold, the carpenter being behind with his
orders and what a pain the Romans were.
In the 2000y since, our faith has
developed and we have seen ages when hermits living in the desert were
considered the most holy, then there were whole communities of Monks and Nuns
who lived in convents, out of the world so that they were not distracted from
their spiritual journeys by the necessities of living. But that changed. The realisation grew that being in the world
was part of the journey to Christ.
Retreats are good for us as individuals, to clear and strengthen our
spirits but knowing Jesus is about accepting others and sharing our lives. We meet Christ when we share bread and wine,
but there he is again when we have a cup of tea and see how Christ reveals
himself in others’ lives. Funny how he
is there in other people who are full of human flaws and weakness: When we behave badly, that is behave like a
human being, and we look down on others, we find ourselves looking down on
Christ. We look down on others, yet we
find that they live with pain and trials which flatten us.
We are not the first generation to
live with pandemics and epidemics. We
should think of the middle ages when bubonic plague and other diseases swept
through the world in waves, sometimes killing 80% of populations. During the English civil war plague combined
with the fighting to kill 30% of the people.
(Without apparently denting the stubborn faith of either the puritans or
the traditional Anglicans).
Do you remember:
Elsie Loudon? Jessie
McRae? Eva Cooper? & Mary
Watson
Also Evelyn E Elliot? Mary M Newman? Janet Logan? Ivy Mitchell?
These women, nursed in the hospitals
of Otago & Southland just over a hundred years ago, during the Spanish
influenza epidemic that followed World War 1.
In the course of their duties they caught Spanish flu from
their patients, and they died from it.
If you are in Dunedin Hospital, (when they start letting people
in again), stop in the chapel and have a look at the memorial. It starts remembering local nurses who died
in the war, but they are outnumbered by the flu victims.
If we are frightened by Covid-19, we should remember their
example.
Although 1919 and 2020 lends to easy
comparison, the flu they treated was much worse and their resources much less. In Italy the Covid death toll now exceeds
4,000, but 58,000 have died of flu this winter.
Covid-19 is bad, worse than the winter flu, but less deadly than
measles. It is different from the flu in
that countries like Singapore, have shown that it can be contained by swift
action, if people endure the inconvenience to protect others.
We should conduct ourselves in
service to those around us
To mediate the spread of Covid to
minimise its impact.
I am shocked
and hurt by the suspension of services here.
But it is part of our service to others to endure this.
Bishop Steven has found many inspiring prayers, psalms, poems.
The prayer at the end of this is from the Book of Common Prayer,
because epidemics were parts of our forbearers’ lives and an ever present
source of fear and tragic loss. The
theology seems a little dated to us but we should never forget that God gave us
freedom, which has led to much pain, selfishness and evil. But also leaves us open to love.
Blessings
Jeremy
Rev Dr JJ Nicoll, 0274
361 481
Priest-in-Charge
St Barnabas, Warrington, NZ
The
Book of Common Prayer,
Prayers
and Thanksgivings upon several occasions
In the time of any common Plague or Sickness.
O
Almighty God, who in thy wrath
didst send a plague upon thine own people in the wilderness, for their
obstinate rebellion against Moses and Aaron; and also, in the time of king
David, didst slay with the plague of pestilence threescore and ten thousand,
and yet remembering thy mercy didst save the rest: Have pity upon us miserable sinners, who now
are visited with great sickness and mortality; that like as thou didst then
accept of an atonement, and didst command the destroying Angel to cease from
punishing, so it may now please thee to withdraw from us this plague and
grievous sickness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
