BY REV. RICHARD PELKEY
“Bear with one another in love, through interdependence.”
Last week, I came across an article, whose title caught my eye, America’s response to the coronavirus is the most American thing ever. If you will indulge me, I want to read from a couple of sections from it.
The article begins, “The US response to coronavirus has been consistently inconsistent. It’s also uniquely American. There are no national guidelines and no organized efforts to reopen the country beyond what measures states have taken. Public health officials say one thing while governors say another and President Donald Trump says something else entirely. We Americans are left to make up our own minds.”
“It’s a symptom of American individualism, a national value that prizes personal freedoms, limited government, and free will over all else. ‘It’s always been the orientation of America on balance, compared to other countries, to put a priority on individual freedom and liberty,’ says Andrea Campbell, a professor of political science at M.I.T. who studies the intersection of politics and public health…It’s in our DNA…And it’s informing the country’s unruly response to this pandemic.”
The article goes on to describe how this pandemic is reinforcing our partisan political divides. It reinforces American distrust of centralized authority. It’s reinforcing the current skepticism of science that has been front and center in the climate change debate.
The article continues with the impact of economics on the country’s response. The article says, “American individualism is the driving force behind another national value – Capitalism, which requires people to act in their self-interest. So, when weighing the tradeoffs of social distancing, many Americans make their decision with some capitalistic cost-benefit analysis. The cost is life as we know it – going to restaurants, shopping, visiting friends, working at an office. The benefit is our health, and the health of loved ones and strangers.”
“Making sacrifices to help a stranger may be a hard sell for some. ‘The issue with the coronavirus is that it’s not very visible,’ says Ann Keller, a University of California at Berkeley associate professor who studies pandemic responses. She continues, ‘You don’t know who you’re protecting, who’s avoided getting sick from your actions. That’s a big ask of people, especially when it appears that not everyone is doing it or that the criteria seems to be different in different parts of the country.’”
“Coronavirus isn’t something we can see rip through the country like a tornado. The benefits, too, are invisible. If coronavirus guidelines work, they may not seem like they were ever necessary, because fewer people will have gotten sick. But people will remember what they lost by making those sacrifices.”
So, what I want to do this morning is weigh this American individualism and the self-interest of capitalism against what Paul says in today’s passage from the letter to the Ephesians. “Lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” (Ephesians 4:1-3)
“Lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” Paul sets the bar pretty high. “Lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” Do it with humility, with gentleness, with patience. Bearing with one another in love, striving for unity and peace.
Bearing with one another in love. The sacrifices we’re making: staying at home, wearing masks when we go out, the shared economic costs; these are how we are currently called to bear with one another. They are signs and actions of love.
Bear with one another in love. Bear, lift up, carry the burden. This speaks of our interdependence. American society values independence. The Church values interdependence. I need you and you need me. We need one another.
This interdependence is born out of our baptism. There is no solitary Christian. In baptism, we are knit together. We’re joined. We become part of a body. Paul outlines a variety of gifts for building up the body of Christ and closes with body imagery. But perhaps what is more helpful, and explicit, for us today is from 1 Corinthians, chapter 12. Paul says, “Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot would say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body…There are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’” (1 Corinthians 12:14-16,20-21)
“I have no need of you,” is not in the Christian lexicon. Independence, individualism says, “I have no need of you. I can do it all on my own.” Interdependence says, “I need you. I need you.” The calling on our lives is to bear one another in love. I need you and you need me.
At the end of the article, the author makes a call for a unified response to the coronavirus, drawing on this country’s past moments of pulling together through common, or shared, sacrifice: like in the Great Depression, during World War II, or in the days following the attacks of September 11th.
I agree with this call. But I want for us, as Christians, to look to our Lord Jesus Christ as the example and source for our unified response. The more we can bear one another in love, the more we share our gifts and share the sacrifice, more we live into these practices that help us to grow and mature in our faith, the more we can witness to the world a way of being beyond individualism and self-interest. The more we can respond by imitating Christ, the more we can show the world the way of love.
+ Rev. Richard
