Streams of Mercy

Ken Rummer, a retired pastor, poses the question: Which verses of scripture best fit our situation? Which Bible story parallels the present moment? Just what word of God should we be “living out?” Here are some of the possibilities Rummer considers:

“Are we wandering in the wilderness with Moses as he deals with people who are finding it hard and wanting to go back to Egypt (Numbers 14)? Or are we waiting for the edict of Cyrus that will let us exiles go back home and worship as we used to (Ezra 1)?

Are we being called with the prophet Jeremiah to symbolic action? And which should it be? Smash a new pottery jar to show that worse is yet to come (Jeremiah 19)? Or buy a field just overrun by the enemy as a sign that normal times will come again (Jeremiah 32)?

Do we sing with Avery and Marsh, “The church is not a building,…the church is a people”?

Or can we sing the Lord’s song at all in this strange land (Psalm 137)?

Are we being challenged to amend our ways and our doings (Jeremiah 26)? Could this plague be underlining a let-my-people-go message addressed to hardened hearts, both ours and Pharaoh’s (Exodus 9)?

With the preacher of Ecclesiastes, is it time to mourn (Ecclesiastes 3)? During the farm crisis of the 1980s, people hammered crosses into court house lawns to mark farms lost to bankruptcy. Do the deaths of these days cry out for a visible memorial?

Jeremiah wrote to the exiles in Babylon that their return would not be soon. Is this the word we need to be living out: to plant vineyards and build houses and form families and settle in to this strange COVID world because we’re going to be here awhile (Jeremiah 29)?

Is it time to turn to science? To reprise the Dr. Salk polio story of the ‘40s and ‘50s by donating our dimes toward a vaccine against the virus?

Do we lift up Martin Luther’s advice to pastors in German cities ravaged by the plague: carry out your calling, take care of your neighbors, and utilize all available measures of protection and prevention. (c. AD 1500)

Should loving our neighbor be the mandate for our moment? Jesus lifted up this Leviticus contribution to the divine teaching as the second greatest commandment in the Torah (Leviticus 19, Matthew 22). Is it time to remember that Jesus healed the sick and to believe that Jesus can do it again (Luke 4)? Is it time to channel the ministry of the apostles as recorded in the longer ending of Mark, praying for the sick and seeing them recover (Mark 16)?

Or, when all is said and done, do we cling to Romans 8, believing that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, not even a deadly virus (Romans 8)?”

I’m grateful for ideas of new ways to deal with the ongoing struggles of our day, and pray we all will continue thinking of scripture passages that speak to the times through which we’re passing- ever giving thanks for those streams of mercy, never ceasing.

Elizabeth