Practising hospitality during the pandemic

Practising hospitality when we could be killed by (or kill) a person standing a few feet away boggles the mind and wearies the soul. Psalm 150:6 declares, “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!” But we live in a world where the very act of breathing is dangerous.

Christians must look to God—and his glory—more than we look to the physical danger around us. As John Calvin writes:

God expects a very different kind of practical wisdom from us [Christians], namely that we should meditate on his judgments in a time of adversity and on his goodness in delivering us from danger. For surely it is not by mere chance that a person falls into the hands of enemies or robbers; neither is it by chance that a person is rescued from them. But what we must constantly keep in mind is that all afflictions are God’s rod, and therefore there is no remedy for them other than God’s grace.

Precautions, medical interventions, and vaccines have value, but our ultimate hope is not in any of them. God is sovereign over every breath we take, even the breath of someone who carries disease and enters our six-foot bubble. If “all afflictions are God’s rod,” our task is to fear God more than man and the virus he may carry.

Christian ethics during plague years requires Christian wisdom and much of it. And Christian wisdom often looks different from the world’s wisdom. While the world screams “run and hide,” the Lord often calls us to stay and help.

In 1527, Martin Luther authored an essay entitled “Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague.” Its practical wisdom is a balm for our day. Luther writes:

“Since it is generally true of Christians that few are strong and many are weak, one simply cannot place the same burden upon everyone. . . . It takes more than a milk faith to await a death before which most of the saints themselves have been and still are in dread.”

Pastors and other people in leadership, says Luther, must not flee the plague, but instead should remain in the community to help others until the dread has passed. Because we fear God and live before his face, we will often prioritize unseen and spiritual things—things our world knows nothing of. Christians know that the dread of death can only be met by the redemption in Jesus Christ, so we need to proclaim Christ to a COVID-19 world with urgency, fervency, and compassion.

Luther understands that the physical and spiritual stakes are very high—and we should too. Should we risk bringing people into our home who are stranded?

Christians will arrive at different positions on this based on our circumstances. One family will make phone calls, another will deliver groceries, another will welcome the stranger to sleep on its couch. Each household may serve its neighbors in different ways, but each household should be intent to serve. Faced with temptation to fear men, we seek to grow our “milk faith” into a “meat faith” that looks to God alone.