Chapter 5: Where do we go from here?
As we have seen over the last four chapters, the questions about God and the pandemic don’t have easy answers. I think that N.T. Wright has done an admirable job navigating these questions, and that leaves us in the position of having to figure out the Church’s response to the pandemic. Considering Jesus’ call and his ministry, how are we to be acting during this time? What do we do? As the shepherd of a flock of beloved people, this has been the question that has kept me up for many many nights. As Wright puts it, “[God] called a human family – knowing full well that they were as flawed as the rest – to be his partners in the work of redemption and new creation.” At St. Timothy’s, our vision since the beginning has been to further God’s mission of rescue and redemption, so this speaks to us at a foundational and fundamental level. And as a part of this mission, we are firstly called to follow in the footsteps of “the Jesus who wept at the tomb of his friend, who agonized in ...