The Edge of a Precipice
Beloved Christ Church Anglican,
The year is 1939. Rumblings of war are shaking the earth for the second time in the 20th century, and the congregation is gathered at an Evensong at St. Mary the Virgin Church in Oxford, England. By the time the preacher ascends the pulpit, the dreaded “international emergency” that had been threatened for years is unfolding in their midst. Wartime has come. Oxford students scramble to give up their classes either to escape the threat of war or to enlist. Professors give up their studies of philosophy, literature, and theology because there is little sense in starting a task they are unlikely to finish. Canon Milford of St. Mary’s has invited a guest preacher, a former soldier and Christian professor, to place all this turmoil in the proper perspective.
Preaching to the anxiety-ridden congregation at St. Mary the Virgin, C.S. Lewis makes this statement: “Do not let your nerves and emotions lead you into thinking your predicament more abnormal than it really is.”
Praise the Lord, in 2020, we are not in wartime. But the term “international emergency” is more than appropriate as we watch the number of COVID-19 cases grow daily on an international scale. There is no distinction now between the East and the West, the elderly and the young, or the rich and the poor. In fact, the advent of this coronavirus has told us what we have known all along: There is no human life that can stand in the face of death.
As Christians observing the season of Lent, death is on our minds, at least liturgically speaking. This is true in times of prosperity and war, feast and famine, health and plague. This Sunday’s lectionary readings prove that the Church calendar is immune to external tampering—we are reading about the Valley of the Dry Bones in Ezekiel, our slavery to sin in Romans, and the death of Lazarus in John’s Gospel. Had the coronavirus lost its stamina and never crossed the boundaries of the United States, our liturgy for this coming Sunday would remain unchanged.
I do not mean this to depress you; rather, to encourage you that our times are not as abnormal as we might think they are. Lewis writes, “The war [or, in our case, the pandemic], creates absolutely no new situation; it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice.” You and I are inevitably poised on a precipice of life and death, of heaven and hell, of love and hatred. Though the particularities of this precipice indeed manifest themselves differently in different eras, its reality remains. And it is in this reality, wherein we are perpetually suspended in the liminal space between life and death, that the Lord God speaks: “Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people…and I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live” (Ezekiel 37:12, 14a).
Lest our nerves and emotions preclude us from seeing and tasting God’s promises, recognizing their timeless veracity, and living in their unfailing sustenance, Lewis identifies three enemies we must avoid.
The first enemy is excitement—to allow our preoccupation with the pandemic to become the center of our lives. If our obsessive attention to news outlets, social media, and even negative friends and family members becomes the air we breathe, we suffocate our hope, which rests in the One who has conquered death.
The second enemy is frustration. I know of many individuals and families in our congregation who have suffered deep personal losses and offered unexpected sacrifices as a result of this world-altering event. Still, our present contentment cannot hinge on a future hope for happiness or fulfillment. When we pray, we ask only for our daily bread. As Lewis says, “The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.”
The third and final enemy is fear, most notably the fear of death. These are uncertain times. Headlines declare mounting death tolls and horrifying statistics. Still, death is no more frequent now than it was at any point in human history. What has changed is our awareness of its immediacy. “[Plague] makes death real to us…in ordinary times only a wise man can realize it. Now the stupidest of us knows.”
Before calling Lazarus from his grave, Jesus declares to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” Friends of Christ Church Anglican, do you believe this? Are you beloved by the One who spared not his own Son so that we might live for eternity with him? Is our hope in an immunization or cure for COVID-19 or the resurrection and the life of Christ Jesus?
Lazarus emerges from the tomb, still covered in his linen burial clothes. Jesus bids his sisters, “Unbind him, and let him go.” Be unbound, brothers and sisters, from the enemies of excitement, frustration, and fear. The Lord God will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. Amen.
Yours in Christ,
Bree Snow
For your reading pleasure:
https://bradleyggreen.com/attachments/Lewis.Learning%20in%20War-Time.pdf