Christ > CoronaSample

Blessing #8—Teaching Us Gospel Theology Right when the Coronavirus was snowballing into a global pandemic, I was trying to get home. After an abbreviated trip to Israel, I was one Polish layover and an oceanic flight away from home. But guess who was sitting next to me on the plane? A coughing, elderly European. In the pre-Corona world, I wouldn’t have thought twice about her. Her coughs were few and far between. But in a place where the Polish military was scanning our foreheads for fevers, her situation was serious. So serious, in fact, that every time she coughed, I leaned in the opposite direction. I’m not proud of that lean, by the way. I’m guessing it’s not what Jesus would do. In fact, it’s not what Jesus actually did. “A man with leprosy came and knelt before [Jesus] and said, ‘Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.’ Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man.” (Matthew 8:2-3) In love, Jesus physically touched a diseased man. In a culture that stayed more than six feet away from lepers, Jesus broke the rules and brought a blessing. Don’t you love that about him? Because Jesus could have kept his distance from us too. As anger raged like a fever in our minds and selfish words were coughed up in countless arguments, he could have isolated himself in heaven from the pandemic of our brokenness. But he didn’t. He walked among us. He reached out his hands to bless us. He even reached out his arms to cure us. Jesus didn’t just take a chance when he was conceived as one of us. He knew exactly where his earthly life would lead. Yet, in crazy love, he chose that path so that our spiritual sickness would not end in eternal death but in life with God. Don’t you love that about him? If this virus and all our social distance make us marvel at the selfless love of Jesus, it will all be worth it. Just one more proof that Christ > Corona.