Reflections from Ryan Mayo
In the summer of 1527, the bubonic plague visited Wittenberg, Germany. Europe had already endured four deadly epidemics in the previous century, and this plague threatened a mortality rate of 50% to 70% in urban areas.
Martin Luther, then a professor and pastor, was ordered to move his classes to a neighboring city in preparation for the outbreak. Luther, referring to his pastoral station, refused and chose instead to remain with his congregation. A fellow European Reformer, Johann Hess, wrote to Luther to ask for advice. Hess was facing an imminent outbreak in his own city and faced this ethical dilemma: what are the obligations for a Christian leader in light of an oncoming plague?
Over the next few months, Luther formulated a reply, which was later entitled “Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague.” (Thanks to the Davenant Institute for making it available). While the current COVID-19 pandemic is not currently as severe as the bubonic plague, Luther’s instincts about our duties to love and serve our neighbors are timely and instructive.
In his reply, Luther is both practical and profound:
I shall ask God mercifully to protect us. Then I shall fumigate, help purify the air, administer medicine and take it. I shall avoid places and persons where my presence is not needed in order not to become contaminated, and thus perchance inflict and pollute others, and so cause their death as a result of my negligence. If God should wish to take me, He will surely find me…
If my neighbor needs me, however, I shall not avoid place or person but will go freely as stated above. See, this is such a God-fearing faith because it is neither brash nor foolhardy…
He proposes that during a crisis, our love for neighbor is measured by our willingness to serve, and thus is critical of those who would forfeit their station by neglecting those who are weak. Reminding us that “Christ does not want his weak ones to be abandoned,” he speaks to pastors directly:
Those who are engaged in spiritual ministry, such as preachers and pastors, must likewise remain steadfast before the peril of death… When people are dying, they most need a spiritual ministry which strengthens and comforts their consciences by word and sacrament and in faith overcomes death.
He does add a reasonable exception, for a situation “where enough preachers are available in one locality and they agree to encourage the other clergy to leave in order not to expose themselves needlessly to danger.” It would be foolish for all the preachers to perish for the sake of a single congregation.
Further, public officials are also constrained to their citizens and obligated to remain:
This, too, is God’s word, which institutes secular authority and commands that town and country to be ruled, protected, and preserved, as St. Paul teaches in Romans 13… To abandon an entire community which one has been called to govern and to leave it without official or government, exposed to all kinds of danger such as fires, murder, riots, and every imaginable disaster is a great sin. It is the kind of disaster the devil would like to instigate wherever there is no law and order.
Luther’s common link across all his convictions is a thick understanding of obligation to neighbor and brother, whether in the form of Christian fellowship or of civil government. Fathers are bound to mothers and to their children, servants and masters are bound to each other, city clerks are bound to the needs of the public, and Christians are bound to both neighbor and congregation. He warns that “no one should dare leave his neighbor unless there are others who will take care of the sick in their stead and nurse them.”
However, Luther allows that this sense of duty may also compel some of the faithful to leave. If a man is free from being the sole caretaker of another, “let him commend himself and say: Lord God, I am weak and fearful. Therefore I am running away from evil and am doing what I can to protect myself against it.” If there are others doing the work, Luther argues, then that man is released. If the sense of love and duty compels a family to escape the city intact and lessen the burden on those remaining, Luther commends this. Whether staying or going, his critical argument is that service to others, not fear, ought to be our motivating impulse.
When fear and self-preservation lures us into selfish neglect of our neighbors, we are in sin and we obscure the light of Christ. Luther is especially candid in exposing the source of this neglect:
When anyone is overcome by horror and repugnance in the presence of a sick person, he should take courage and strength in the firm assurance that it is the devil who stirs up such abhorrence, fear, and loathing in his heart. He is such a bitter, knavish devil that he not only unceasingly tries to slay and kill, but also takes delight in making us deathly afraid, worried, and apprehensive so that we should regard dying as horrible and have no rest or peace all through our life. And so the devil would excrete us out of this life as he tries to make us despair of God, become unwilling and unprepared to die, and, under the stormy and dark sky of fear and anxiety, make us forget and lose Christ, our light and life, and desert our neighbor in his troubles. We would sin thereby against God and man; that would be the devil’s glory and delight. Because we know that it is the devil’s game to induce such fear and dread, we should in turn minimize it, take such courage as to spite and annoy him, and send those terrors right back to him. And we should arm ourselves with this answer to the devil:
“Get away, you devil, with your terrors! Just because you hate it, I’ll spite you by going the more quickly to help my sick neighbor. I’ll pay no attention to you: I’ve got two heavy blows to use against you: the first one is that I know that helping my neighbor is a deed well-pleasing to God and all the angels; by this deed I do God’s will and render true service and obedience to him. All the more so because if you hate it so and are so strongly opposed to it, it must be particularly acceptable to God. I’d do this readily and gladly if I could please only one angel who might look with delight on it. But now that it pleases my Lord Jesus Christ and the whole heavenly host because it is the will and command of God, my Father, then how could any fear of you cause me to spoil such joy in heaven or such delight for my Lord? Or how could I, by flattering you, give you and your devils in hell reason to mock and laugh at me? No, you’ll not have the last word! If Christ shed his blood for me and died for me, why should I not expose myself to some small dangers for his sake and disregard this feeble plague? If you can terrorize, Christ can strengthen me. If you can kill, Christ can give life. If you have poison in your fangs, Christ has far greater medicine. Should not my dear Christ, with his precepts, his kindness, and all his encouragement, be more important in my spirit than you, roguish devil, with your false terrors in my weak flesh? God forbid! Get away, devil. Here is Christ and here am I, his servant in this work. Let Christ prevail! Amen.”
Our situation, in which COVID-19 is visiting our cities, is already revealing our hearts. What do we fear and why? Are these fears for ourselves or for our neighbors? Do I want to serve the needy? This virus is not currently on equal footing with the bubonic plague, and yet our hearts ask the same kinds of questions. More than 400 years after Luther’s letter, C.S. Lewis confronted the question of how a Christian ought to live in light of the atomic bomb threats:
[Live] as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents…
If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things – praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts…
While Lewis would amend his advice about chatting to our friends over a pint (because of social distancing), he would certainly advise us toward the sensible and human things – the things that bind us together in love and service.
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