Rev. Dr. Carl E. Braaten: Faith Active In Love During This Deadly Pandemic
Rev. Dr. Carl E. Braaten shares this letter, Faith Active In Love During This Deadly Pandemic. Braaten also recently published a book, The Christian Faith: Ecumenical Dogmatics.
How should we as believers in Christ and members of his church act during this deadly pandemic?
I have heard people say this pandemic is unprecedented; we’ve never encountered anything like this before. It’s true, we haven’t, those of us living here and now. But history tells us that plagues and epidemics have been around since time immemorial. The Book of Exodus tells about the plagues that hit Egypt so hard that Pharaoh had to let Moses take the Israelites out of slavery. And as recently as 1918 there was a severe flu pandemic caused by a virus carried by birds. It is estimated that about 500 million people, a third of the world’s population, became infected with the virus. About 50 million died worldwide, over 500,000 of them occurring in the United States. Just as today there was no vaccine to combat the viral infections, so the medical advice was similar to what we are doing to deal with this pandemic — isolation, quarantine, personal hygiene, avoid large gatherings, etc.
In the 14th century the Black Death, also called the bubonic plague, travelled all over Europe and killed over 200 million people, one third of its population. In the 16th century the plague recurred, hitting Germany, including the town of Wittenberg, where Martin Luther was a professor of Old Testament at the the University’s faculty of theology. It was deadly, everyone was vulnerable. Duke John, the highest civic authority, ordered Luther and his fellow professors to leave and go to Jena where it was safe. Many chose to leave the city, but Luther refused. A fellow pastor, Johann Hess, wrote a letter to Luther asking him if it was okay for a Christian to leave. Luther answered in a letter, “Whether One May Flee From A Deadly Plague.”
I have taught Christian theology and ethics ever since I was ordained in Minneapolis in 1958 and so I have been asked by friends, family members, and former students what to make of this devastating scourge that is affecting us in every way — personally, socially, economically, and politically. My response to this point has been something like that of the Psalmist who said, “I am like a dumb man who does not open his mouth.” (Psalm 38: 13b) This terrible scourge has rendered me dumbfounded. Then someone sent me the letter Luther wrote and that got me thinking.
Luther lived in a late-medieval pre-scientific age, before the germ theory of disease was universally accepted as scientific truth. Nevertheless, it was commonly thought that the disease was transmitted person to person. People were urged to avoid contact with anyone infected. That is why Luther’s letter addressed the question whether it was okay for a Christian to flee the deadly plague. At that time healthy people would flee the crowded cities for less sparsely populated areas. The cities would shut down, shops would close, doctors were loathe to see patients, and even priests refused to administer last rites, while the sick and the dying would be left behind. So Luther’s question was an existentially serious one for a Christian, for a pastor, and for those whose calling was to care for people suffering from the disease.
In the pandemic we are facing now the most crowded cities are the hot spots where most of the cases occur. People living in sparsely populated states are not hit has hard. But most of us are not in a position to leave our homes and look for a safe haven. Like Luther we are staying put and do whatever we can to care for ourselves and those around us. As a pastor he was asked for advice: how should a Christian behave during a pandemic? Luther’s responded with some words that are perennially true and worth contemplating in our situation. Luther knew he had no direct word from God to deliver with authority, so he humbly told his Christian readers that after considering what he had to say, they would have “to come to their own decision and conclusion.” Luther commends those who choose not to run away from a deadly plague. They seem to have a strong faith, willing to put their trust in God and patiently await whatever consequences God has in store for them. However, Luther is realistic — “it is generally true of Christians that few are strong and many are weak.” So it is okay for Christians to flee the risk of death unless “they are engaged in a spiritual ministry such as preachers and pastors. . . .For when people are dying, they most need a spiritual ministry which strengthens and comforts their consciences by word and sacrament.”
But not only pastors have a duty not to flee if they are needed, Luther said; there are other essential persons like “all public officials such as mayors and judges who have the responsibility to remain. . . .To abandon an entire community which one has been called to govern and to leave it without officials or government, exposed to all kinds of dangers such as fires, murder, riots, and every imaginable disaster is a great sin.” The obligation not to flee applies also to other essential persons who are responsible for others, like employers for their workers, parents for their children, and public servants such as city physicians, city clerks and police, or whatever their titles.
Luther’s refusal to flee the city was based on Scripture passages that say that “anyone who does not help his neighbor, but forsakes him and leaves him to his misfortune, becomes a murderer in the sight of God.” Christ also will say on the Last Day, “I was sick, and you did not visit me.” So also on the Day of Judgment what will happen to “those who failed to visit the sick and needy or to offer them help and to let them lie there by themselves like dogs and pigs?” Luther had in mind especially those whom we call heroes today, those who work in hospitals and care centers staffed with people to tend to the sick — doctors, nurses, and their assistants who risk their lives so that others might live. He cited Scripture: “Whatever you wish that people do to you, do that to them.”
Today our smart leaders say, “We are all in this together.” We are one people, one nation, and we live in one world. Luther knew that, so he said, “Now when a deadly epidemic strikes, we should stay where we are, make our preparations, and take courage in the fact that we are mutually bound together, so that we might not desert one another or flee from one another. . . patiently serve our neighbors, risking our lives in this manner as St. John teaches, ‘If Christ laid down his life for us, we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.’” Yet, Luther’s admonition to serve one’s neighbors in need is balanced by his warning not to act “too rashly and recklessly, tempting God and disregarding everything which might prevent death and the plague. This would mean not using medicines, not evading places and persons infected by the disease; joking about it and wishing to show that one is not afraid of it . . . .It is shameful for a person not to take care of his own body as he should have. . . .Use medicine; take treatments which can help you; fumigate your house, yard, and street; keep away from persons and places wherever your neighbor does not need your presence or has recovered.”
In the end Luther donned his pastor’s hat and doled out counsel specifically for Christians facing a deadly disease. The best defense against the plague is to continue our worship practices, hearing the Word of God and receiving the Sacrament of Christ’s body and blood. He admonished people “to attend church and listen to the sermon so that they learn through God’s word how to live and how to die.” What most churches are doing today in an age of technology — participating in virtual worship online as we do at Lord of Life — was never an option for Luther. But the point is the same. Worship is even more important at a time like this, receiving the promise of life by the means of grace in the midst of so much suffering and death. True worship is the secret weapon God has given the church as the means by which we are sustained and strengthened by the Word and the Sprit, by the Body and the Blood of Christ. This is most certainly true.
