This is part of a series of devotions based on the Daily Office, which is found in the Book of Common Prayer.

This morning’s Scriptures are: 
Psalm 119:145-176; Exodus 7:8-24; 2 Corinthians 2:14–3:6; Mark 9:42-50

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 14 (Prayer of Manasseh, BCP, p. 90); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 16 (Luke 1:68-79, BCP, p. 92)

Plague One: Water into blood. The beginning of the plague narrative in Exodus, a narrative that will take us through the rest of this week (even with the lectionary skipping some of the plagues). Next week during Holy Week, we will be reading Lamentations, and then we will return to the Exodus story during the first week of Easter. 

For today, though, let me offer a Sidebar on “Plagues & Judgment.” Clearly, in the biblical story, Exodus is providing an interpretation of the point of its ten plagues: they are an instrument in the hand of God to redeem his people and punish those who resist his will. A question for our day is whether we are supposed to treat the present worldwide health crisis along similar lines, as a tool in God’s hands by which we can discern God’s rewarding and punishing hand.

The answer is NO.

COVID-19 should be put in the category of what theologians call “common grace.” As Jesus says, “He makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and he makes the rain fall on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45). More to the point, the destructive swath being cut through the human family is a function of a general state of “futility” or “decay” that all humans share.

We live in world simultaneously subject to God’s permanent care and yet subjected to temporary dissolution. The Bible’s premise is that God has not, for a single moment, abandoned his world. Yet something broke in the relationship between our original parents (Adam and Eve, stewards of creation) and their Creator. That break we call the “Fall.” As a result, all the world looks for redemption, an end to the grief and pain brought on by that broken relationship between God and humanity.

The Apostle Paul says, “For the creation waits in eager expectation … subjected to futility … [in] bondage to decay … groaning in labor pains…in hope…of the glorious liberation of the children of God” (Romans 8:19-21, my rendering). Paul is describing a drift that is the result of sin—a bent to decay, dissolution, disease, and death that has come to characterize our world. A pestilence like COVID-19 is a function of the Fall, a manifestation of what Paul elsewhere calls the reign of death (Romans 5:17). Through centuries of pestilences, earthquakes, floods, and other disasters, the great hope and expectation of Christ’s church has been the coming of Jesus Christ to reverse the Fall and make all things new.

Why do I go into all this? Pick your favorite hot button issue, and you will find an online know-it-all who, hoping to keep a fire of animus lit under his constituency, will blame the coronavirus on people who get his special issue wrong. But the sin problem runs so much deeper than any group’s foibles. COVID-19 is not spreading because God is exacting payment for global warming or materialism or tolerance/intolerance of LGBTQ+. At the moment, we are experiencing worldwide evidence of a creation “subjected to futility” and in “bondage to decay.”

In the Exodus story, God uses fallen creation to redemptive ends. In that story, by means of ten plagues, he rescues his people from their enemies and manifests his glory in the face of stubborn unbelief. With what’s happening now, no one should presume to “keep score” the way the book of Exodus does. A wiser course is to recognize that ours is a fallen world, one that longs for release—a release that will come with, and only with, what Paul calls, “the glorious liberation of God’s sons and daughters” (Romans 8:21, my translation). And that’s the story we need to keep before our eyes, and the story humbly to keep telling the world.

From the Great Litany (BCP, pp. 148, 149) Remember not, Lord Christ, our offenses, nor the offenses of our forefathers; neither reward us according to our sins. Spare us, good Lord, spare thy people, whom thou hast redeemed with thy most precious blood, and by thy mercy preserve us for ever. Spare us, good Lord.

From lightning and tempest; from earthquake, fire, and flood; from plague, pestilence, and famine, Good Lord, deliver us.

From all oppression, conspiracy, and rebellion; from violence, battle, and murder; and from dying suddenly and unprepared, Good Lord, deliver us.

By the mystery of thy holy Incarnation; by thy holy Nativity and submission to the Law; by thy Baptism, Fasting, and Temptation, Good Lord, deliver us.

By thine Agony and Bloody Sweat; by thy Cross and Passion; by thy precious Death and Burial; by thy glorious Resurrection and Ascension; and by the Coming of the Holy Ghost, Good Lord, deliver us.

In all time of our tribulation; in all time of our prosperity; in the hour of death, and in the day of judgment, Good Lord, deliver us.

Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+