Is Covid-19 God's Judgement? with N.T. Wright

when we find ourselves at the tomb of our friend literally or metaphorically the tomb of lots and lots and lots of friends or these neighbors in this pandemic then it's appropriate to lament and not say it straight away oh we have the answer to this we've got the key in our back pocket we're Bible reading Christians so we can tell you what this is all about no lament if it was important for Jesus it's important for us Cobin nineteen has killed more than 400,000 people worldwide in less than a year it's devastated families economies and entire cultures when tragedies like this occur it can be really tempting for us to try and immediately understand why God sent it and what he's trying to show us through these losses in the suffering but NT Wright who's one of the world's leading New Testament scholars cautions us against them in his newest book God in the pandemic professor Wright advises us not to assume that God is punishing us from moral failures or that God is trying to warn us about the end of the world instead we should lament and mourn with God that such suffering even exists and then do our best to try and alleviate it so let's listen with love as professor Wright response to the question the God caused the pandemic one of my favorite parts of the book was when you really talked about how the cross is the ultimate sign and yeah the ultimate way to interpret can you talk more about how the suffering and it's her bananas punishment is almost an incomplete understanding of the gospel yeah yeah well again we have to track back to the Old Testament because it's quite clear that in Deuteronomy here is the Covenant charter and Deuteronomy 27 28 29 say if you obey this is to Israel before they enter the promised land if you obey well and good and you will flourish and if you disobey bad things will happen and eventually you'll be kicked out of the land and of course we know what happens they disobey so in a moss in lamentations in Jeremiah all over the prophets are saying there you are you disobeyed and now these bad things are happening in consequence at the same time there is a whole other strand in the old which is what you find in the book of Joan it's what you find in Psalm 44 it's what you find in Psalm 88 it's what you find in the second half of Psalm 89 which says so what's gone wrong we haven't played false we have not worshiped other gods we have our hearts has been true to you and yet all this has come upon us and you've reckoned us as sheep to be slaughtered we have to see those two strands of Old Testament thought coming together in the person of Jesus who takes upon himself the curse of exile and death that's what Galatians three says but who also is the innocent sufferer the one who didn't deserve this and those Old Testament narratives only make sense seen retrospectively in the light of the cross so then when I look at terrible things happening in the world I say the only way I can make sense of this is not by taking this bit of the Old Testament or that bit of the Old Testament by itself but taking the whole thing as it is called together and held together in Jesus and then I notice very interestingly that in the New Testament when they want to say here's a call to repent they don't say because look there was a famine last week or look son something Bad's happened has been earthquake to your city look you just lost a war no the call to repent as with Paul in Athens is the cause of Jesus God has fixed a day on which he will call the world to account by a man whom he's appointed and he's given assurance by raising him from the dead he doesn't add to that more is less if you try to add to the message of meaning of the Cross you take away from it that's a lesson we need to learn now as much as ever and much of the stream that I grew up in within Christianity sovereignty and control are synonymous you know God causes all things good bad every atom every decision it somehow is married to freewill I never understood that but you did a lot of work reframing sovereignty within this book in a way that was that was new to me and I really it seemed obvious once I read I was like oh that makes a ton of sense can you if you unpack that what sovereignty is yeah sure it's very odd because you would have thought that when Protestantism said Sola scriptura the Bible is our key text that they would have privileged Matthew Mark Luke and John and they would have said everything we need to learn we will learn they're sitting at the feet of Jesus if you like and then we will see how Paul develops it etc they didn't they said we will learn our gospel from Paul particular Romans and Galatians and we will treat the Gospels as kind of back story to give us little illustrations here and there but the real thing takes place in Paul I mean of course nobody actually said it like that but they factor that's how it's come through and so we've then had an almost stoic notion of divine sovereignty and causation everything is going to happen because this is the way God wants it and everything is interconnected and so on and then I look back at the Gospels and I say hang on Jesus spends a lot of time talking about the kingdom of God what's that about and the answer is people who thought like that have often thought that the kingdom of God meant heaven when you where you go when you die and that's precisely not what kingdom of God is all about kingdom of God is something that God wants to bring about on earth as in heaven but what will it look like and people say oh if God was in charge if God was really king then God would just stop this pandemic or God would have stopped the Holocaust or whatever and that's that simply as a Mis reading read the Sermon on the Mount what does it look like when God becomes king jesus is blessed are the poor in spirit the meek the mourners the humble that because instead of sending in the tanks and blasting out all opposition God's way of becoming king over all the earth which is what sovereignty is after all all about is that God sends in the humble the meek the mourners the hungry for justice people the peacemakers the people who are ready to suffer so that God's justice can happen and that's how the world gets changed and when we look at church history there there's been much muddle and folly and stupidity and downright sin there has also been millions of ordinary Jesus loving Christians who have gone to work building hospitals and schools and orphanages and teaching people everything from reading to mathematics to whatever to building new farms all sorts of things particularly working with the poor and they have transformed God's world not nearly enough yet there's much more to be done and when Jesus returns to complete the process there'll be all sorts of transformations that we ourselves can't do as even with the help of the Spirit in the present but that's what the kingdom of God looks like and so sovereignty instead of being a philosophical idea projected onto a would-be biblical faith sovereignty has to be relearned from Jesus parade example mark 10 James and John come and say we want to sit as you're right in your left and Jesus's you're crazy you don't know what you're talking about there are gonna be people at his right and his left but it won't be James and John thankfully for them but then he says listen the rulers of the Gentiles do it by bullying by control by forcing everyone to do their well we're gonna do it the other way let the one who wants to be great among it be your servant the one who wants to be number one become the slave of all because the Son of Man didn't come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many that my friends is the redefinition of sovereignty of control it's what you see on the cross Paul learnt that lesson and expresses it in 2 Corinthians amazingly when I am weak then I am strong it's hard it comes out of tears and wrestling with difficult issues but that is what authority of divine authority at the sonic Authority that's what it looks like something you didn't really touch on in the book that I know a lot of people are wondering about this in general what role if any do demons and Satan or evil personified play and things like that pandemics earthquakes big big tragedies that's a good question and in the nature of the case we do we don't know the answer to that there are some things that happen with individuals and with societies where I think tremblingly one wants to say there are particular evil forces at work here I think many people who studied Nazi Germany felt the only way of explaining this extraordinary horror is that evil was rampant that there was an idolatry present which as it were opened Pandora's box and all sorts of unpleasant things came out and made ordinary humdrum people do seriously wicked things now there is a continuum it's not just that everything is lovely over here and everything is demonic over there no evil is much more subtle than that as for earthquakes tsunamis etc I would say no I would say we live in a world which is in the process of being made and of making itself etc and to label it as evil or to say that was demonic I think would be it would be a category mistake it may be evil to force people to live on the slopes of an active volcano that's a whole other story you moved into Romans 8 and the groaning of the Spirit yeah and how it groans with us and we groan with that can you condense that somewhat for us you know what what does it mean to be groaning with the spirit we touched on the world as not as it should be but what were the implications yeah I have I've been I've been struggling with this for years and years and years I think I first preached on that passage in the middle of Romans 8 at the start of the first Iraq war in the early 1990s when suddenly we were plunged into this adventure and we didn't quite know what was going on etc and I had to preach a big sermon in London for some occasion and I went for Romans 8 and and I talked about then and I've gone back to it again again since there's this 3 level of groaning the world is groaning in travel well of course it is we know that it's not just the people in pain people getting sick and dying but it seems as though the systems are out of joint the times are out of joint and people are doing crazy foolish things and a lot of people are getting hurt and there's a lot of mess there where should the HP when that's going on some people seem to think the church should be standing back from that saying well we're alright because we know we're going to heaven too bad the worlds in a mess but never mind pauses absolutely not we ourselves groan inwardly as we wait for our adoption the redemption of our bodies we are not yet raised from the dead and we know in our bones that we were made for more than this and it ain't come yet and so we are in this in-between time caught by Jesus in drought by the spirit and yet longing for the ultimate future and then we say well okay the church seems to be stuck in the middle there where is God in all of this and so many theologians would instantly reach for well gods of course in control God sits upstairs and he's pulling the strings he's pressing the buttons so he's in charge and then they will go to Romans 8:28 and they will say that all things work together for good to those who love God which is tipping over into stoicism that's the King James translation the RSV translation is that God works all things together for good through those who love God that has been forgotten in the discipline and in my book I've referred to two or three scholars who have brought that interpretation back in and actually it makes much more sense of the Greek I have to say because the bit in between says where is God well the Spirit is groaning within us with inarticulate groanings and then Paul says verse 27 that the one who searches the hearts I II God and this is an allusion to Psalm 44 one of the great Psalms of lament the one who searches the heart knows what is the mind of the Spirit and this is fascinating thing I think I say in the book that the mind of the Spirit which the father knows is the mind that doesn't have any words to say how bad it is that let's just extraordinary and so we are caught up in this divine dialogue between the father and the spirit and Paul says in verse 29 this is how we are conformed to the image of the son Wow we are in the middle of a trinitarian suffering in conversation and Paul's point I think and you get exactly the same in first Peter and in Revelation and so on and in Colossians 1:23 for me is that somehow the suffering of the church turned into lament invoking the spirit to lament within us is part of the means by which God is working out his purpose God wants to work through human beings that goes all the way back to Genesis 1 and when the world is in a mess God wants to work his will through those who share the sufferings of the ultimate human being Jesus himself these are very profound ideas in Romans 8 and I've read many commentaries on Romans 8 and most of them don't get into that depth and I suspect because I've lived with it all my life and I keep seeing more and my students keep showing me more I suspect there's more yet to find but that's where I think we have to be focused yeah that interpretation of 8:28 of God working all things together for good as we usually have been taught the way you understood it in the way you wrote about it really filled out Genesis 1 and Psalm 8 for me go except exactly doesn't the ways of right we're being crowned with glory we are kho-kho rulers with God essentially if Romans 8:28 has focused more on us working with God to bring about good good we can go looking with us interestingly yes yes yeah so rather than him making things good for me as an individual or you as an individual so what are the questions that we should be asking ourselves the actions that we should be taking as a church as individual believers within the specific context of pandemics and coronavirus it's the death of Jesus and nothing else which can bring healing to the world and that doesn't come by a mechanical oh here's the gospel this is how it works a plus B equals C therefore there you are it's much deeper and richer and stranger than that but I really do believe that if we learn how to pray and how to lament and how to fold that lament into our liturgies I have no idea this is part of the fun of being a Christian that when you really pray and wait and lament God can and does do new things which were not on our radar before I've seen it happen again and again and I think that's what as a church worldwide we need to be doing right now yeah you you wrote about the matrix of who who's most at risk what can be done and who can we send who can we send yes yes that's in acts 11 it's one of the things that struck me when people first come to ask me about the pandemic is this a sign of the end as it were hang on there was a great famine they heard about it in acts 11 and they didn't say oh this must be the sign that Jesus is coming back nor did they say oh this is because we've been very naughty and and done something wrong and God is punishing is they just said who's gonna be at risk what can we do about it and yes who should we sin and that's a great feet on the ground spirit-led practical thinking yeah can we do you think that we can use those same questions for for most suffering like right now in America I know I'm sure it's it's international news you know we're having protests riots all across America right now its birth out of out of people's pain their experiences of injustice and again within us Christianity we're having the same internal discussion of do we lament and mourn with them do we ask how we can help how do we join with them or the other side of it is also saying oh yeah but they're not doing it the way they should do it yeah yeah well I do know if you've heard but as we've been talking there's been the throb of a helicopter which I can hear I think it's gone away just at the moment but the reason that there's a helicopter hovering over Central Oxford right now is that there is a protest march going on as we speak what I see in the in the hole that the black lives matter movement and the terrible terrible thing that's sparked this off which were all sickened by watching that scene in Minneapolis it's been shown on our television screens again and again um but but but people are saying now in the churches oh dear we too are racist how naughty of us we shouldn't be racist you've got to stop being racist and I want to say the real problem here is that the church has forgotten its vocation the church's vocation is to be a place where there is neither Jew nor Greek neither slave nor free no male and female because all are one in Christ Jesus and that was the vision that inspired Martin Luther King 55 years ago and and but the churches have forgotten that that's what church life was supposed to be like and we thought that as long as we're preaching the gospel and taking people to heaven we don't need to worry too much about what happens down here because that's just kind of social work or table manners or something and I want to say absolutely not read Galatians 2 and see what's going on there who you sit down and have fellowship with is a sign of whether you really believe that on the cross Jesus won the victory over all the powers of darkness or not because I've seen over the years the church ignoring the real imperative at the heart of Paul's gospel that the church is called to be a multi-ethnic mutually supportive gender-blind in terms of leadership etc etc etc fictive kinship group and we've thought of the church is just an accidental collocation of people who love Jesus and so get together in time to time for mutual support and encouragement no the church is supposed to be a sign to the world of a new way of being human and our Western churches have simply not done that for 400 years we've not done that that reminds me of the subversiveness of Jesus of a sovereignty power of control absolutely and that we especially and again in the States have Christian culture has sought power that's you know through democracy but that we can enforce our world will and enforce our values whereas the way of Jesus and the way that I think we're waking up to hear Lord willing is that it's from the bottom up and that we follow those who have been oppressed and marginalized yeah you know it's very difficult because I have been young and I'm old and I remember from the days of my youth when I was in my teens and twenties many many people in the Western Church is saying we're getting this wrong we've been so wicked we've got to change Martin Luther King was right to them and 50 years later West to having his problems and there's something endemic in our society and a friend said to me I was talking about this the other day a friend from Toronto said to me he said you realize Tom that we we white people and for us racism is something we noticed from time to time when there's a big crisis but for them for the black people racism is something they encounter every day they walk out of their front door and they know that people are going to be looking at them and thinking oh they're different they're this they're that and of course racism comes in other forms as well I mean it's not only the black-white thing which is accentuated of course by the United States his own history with slavery and so on but there are many other more subtle forms of different cultures and subcultures and we kind of all play this game and the church ought to be the shining light of how not to play any of those games and God have mercy on us that we've not learned that lesson yet what advice or encouragement do you have to people who've been impacted by either pandemic or racial social injustice here in America you know their pain is real how can they press forward without despair or maybe even having a crisis of faith for some of them what kind of encouragement can we give them good news I mean I think I really want to say for most Christian generations none of this would be a surprise in the early centuries of the church there were pandemics there were earthquakes there were plagues there were floods and none of the great theologians or said oh dear you know this is going to upset our faith or upset my people's faith they just took us for granted and taught people how to lament how to pray how to live through how to trust God for God's ultimate future for the City of God to come down from heaven to earth it's only really particularly after the 18th century when the the deus mood of the time was all about God being in control and so then Oh Jeff bad things happened does that mean God isn't in control because they were trying to do their theology many Christians too as though you could leave Jesus out of the equation and simply talk about God running the world and then oh well Jesus comes alongside in order to die for our sins and take us to heaven or something and we need to redo a trinny Terry envision of what the sovereignty of God is all about and that's complicated but necessary and I think we're discovering that to try to do that stuff without the complication means we get into oversimplifications which really don't help and say here's how to lament and it's okay to limit it's like at a funeral when somebody says oh dear I think I'm gonna cry the answers of course you're gonna cry because not to grieve means not to love grief is the shadow side of love and to recognize that means it's okay to lament it's okay to grieve and then actually just as in human grief when you've lost somebody you love the human system is hardwired to do that and to come out the other side sadder wiser but okay so in the same way I believe that if we learn how to lament our way through this crisis we will come out sadder wiser but we'll be okay and God will still be God and Jesus will still be walking with us walking with us sometimes through the dark sometimes through the light sometimes coming at us walking on the sea which looks as if it's going to drown us all and we need to read those gospel stories and say yes thought that's exactly where we are right now we're frightened we're about to sing please come onboard please stop this happening and then see what he's gonna do next but that's that's at the heart of it all

Channel: WAY Nation

Views: 42,370

Rating: 4.6685081 out of 5

Keywords: nt wright, god and the pandemic, systemic racism, racial reconciliation, christianity, theologian, sovereignty, Romans 8, bible, tom wright, church, covid-19, coronavirus, suffering, grief, punishment, gods sovereignty, is covid-19 gods judgement, does god punish us, suffering and punishment, pandemic, jesus, god, the gospel, bible study, corona, virus, teaching, spirit, spiritual, churches, christian, faith, the day the revolution began

Id: mqV8igW9COg

Length: 23min 50sec (1430 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 29 2020