Whether we are enjoying sunshine and tacos or experiencing ‘Threat Level Midnight’ anxiety because of Coronavirus, there are two realities Christians need to consider. One, this world is not our home, we have always been exiles (Hebrews 13:14) and two, we are saved through faith and not work (Ephesians 2:8-9). Oddly enough, the thread that runs through both of these spiritual realities, is courage.
Courage is essential for life as an exile. Eugene Peterson defines exile this way, “The essential meaning of exile is that we are where we don’t want to be. We are separated from home. We are not permitted to reside in the place where we comprehend and appreciate our surroundings. We are forced to be away from that which is most congenial to us. It is an experience of dislocation – everything is out of joint; nothing fits together… life is ripped out of the familiar soil of generations of language, habit, weather, story-telling, and rudely and unceremoniously dropped into some unfamiliar spot of earth.”
Our exile is not political and geographic like the Babylonian captivity Peterson was referring to in Run with the Horses. Ours is medical and experiential, but it is disorienting just the same. As helpful as test kits and a competent federal government would be, it’s actually courage that is required to navigate all this uncertainty and pain. The prophet Jeremiah’s charge to the panicked exiles of his day was not to look for shortcuts or buy into naïve optimism. Instead, it was to build houses, plant gardens and raise families. In other words, have the courage to be a faithful presence where you are, not where you wish you were, whether that’s scrolling through Twitter as a quarantined citizen or swimming against the current as a theological minority.
Courage is a wildly appropriate attribute for existential crises and global pandemics but it is also simply foundational to the gospel itself. Bravery has always been closely tied to faith because faith, rightly understood, is something closer to an act of courage rather than simply the accumulation of correct theology. Think of the heroes described in Hebrews 11, what was credited to them as steps of faith were actually acts of courage. Saving faith is not just properly articulating doctrine, it is a faith that leads to action. Something must be risked because the conviction warrants it. James reminds us, “Faith, without works is dead (James 2:14-26).” Believing that a bridge exists is not faith (it may or may not be true) but simply holding the belief is not faith. Faith is the courage to walk on the bridge, trusting that it will hold you and accepting the possibility that it won’t. Courage is not a rare characteristic displayed by a handful of spiritual heroes during a crisis, courage is at the root of all genuine gospel faith.
The good news (in a broad, Old Testament sense) that was preached to the slaves in Egypt, the wanderers in the wilderness and the exiles in Babylon was this: take courage, you don’t have to be afraid anymore, God is with you and He will not forget about you. That same message (in a specific, New Testament sense) is the Good News. Jesus is with us, in the flesh. We don’t have to be afraid anymore.
As we enter into a new normal and begin to deal with the deep realities of the anxiety and disorientation caused by this global health crisis, I pray that we would have the courage to a) stay at home when everything in you screams to go out b) remember that God is still with us in this exile and c) remember that on the surface, Jesus’ death on the cross was considered a chaotic, governmental miscarriage of justice and a pretty justifiable reason to panic, and yet, in actuality, it was the greatest act of love the world has ever known.