Look, churches do not need anyone to tell us when to reopen or when to remain closed. The vast majority of ordained and lay leaders in the churches are listening first to the Spirit, who is the Spirit of Christ and not another Spirit, who tells us to love our neighbors.

This selfsame Spirit compelled centuries of the first Christians to put themselves in harm’s way for the sick, the widow, the prisoner, the hungry, the stranger, because this is where Christ told us we would encounter him, the human who is God. These are the free demands of love.

It’s a desire to see the face of God in another human that leads the Christian into embodied solidarity with every human person, and it’s embodied presence that has from the beginning driven our worship—the embodied presence of God in Eucharist and the presence of his body in us.

Risk is part of what it means to be the hands and arms of Love in the world. Still, the vast majority of Christians in America and in the world understand the unique challenge of this pandemic. We understand that embodied presence is a factor in the spread of the disease.

Part of the virus’s darkness is that it’s not only an enemy of human bodies but also an enemy of embodied human connection. It’s good that our devices give us ways of connecting as bodies of those who trust in the embodied God but we fool ourselves to believe this is sustainable.

Still, the majority witness of the church in this pandemic has been to exercise prudence in embodied solidarity with the vulnerable. We listen to science and medicine, and have prayed for first responders and responsible leaders primarily by following (and trusting) their advice.

We celebrate the image of God in humanity as the nations honor our parents by staying home. We rejoice as the world takes a sabbath rest, not worshipping the idols of production & mammon but cherishing humans first, a cherishing that has also healed the earth in unexpected ways.

We’ll gather as Christ’s body as soon as we are able but when we do it will be for the sake of Christ’s body and in solidarity with the vulnerable, in ways that are safe and sustainable, and not to secure our “religious liberties” or (as businesses must) to keep our doors open.

Let’s resist allowing our communities to become part of this ideological warfare that pits meeting together as solidarity with conservative politics or that credits remaining apart as solidarity with progressive politics. May we instead listen. May we instead hesitate to judge.

Let’s refuse to enter the fray of division, dissension & loudspeakers. Let’s enter instead the silence of Holy Saturday, as we prepare to embody the better & sacred word of resurrection that all of our Lord’s Day gatherings proclaim—wherever and whenever we choose to congregate.

The Spirit that the church embodies is the a spirit of humility. She celebrates the upside down power of a wounded God, who suffers and dies for the life of the world that God loves, that the world God loves might be rescued from the futility and death that this virus represents.

Let’s allow the humility & vulnerability of our scarred God to govern our communities & rule our hearts in service to the world, making incarnate the way of the cross in contrast to the way of sin & death. It’s a moment pregnant with a renewed speaking and enacting of the gospel.

Woah. That’s a lot more “let us” than I’ve ever written. Here’s what I mean to say: when we enter as the church into the way that God is always already in the world as a human, when we follow Jesus, we resist being co-opted by political agendas like “liberty” & are truly free.

Over and out. I think.