Pastor's Corner: Remember to stick together

Pandemic, protests, politics … literal lions, tigers (each species caught COVID-19 at the Bronx Zoo in April) and bears (grizzlies spotted 5 miles from our home in Big Sandy).

Oh my.

For a while, we could laugh with exasperation. “Murder” hornets sighted. Earthquake swarms at Yellowstone. Starving and aggressive street rats. Wild boars getting into hidden stashes of cocaine in Italy.

I think the straw that broke the camel’s back for me this week was the reports of historically massive dust storms sweeping from the Sahara across the Atlantic into the Caribbean and Florida.

Maybe the apocalypse really is upon us.

And maybe not.

As Matthew 24:36 records, Jesus said, “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

Author and researcher Scott Hendrix relates that during the era of the Nazi regime in Germany, the resistance of the Confessing Church used an apocryphal quote attributed to Martin Luther to inspire hope and perseverance: “If I knew the world was to end tomorrow, I would still plant an apple tree today.”

When I first heard this proverb of sorts, it struck me as utterly nonsensical. If I knew a giant meteor was about to slam into us in days or hours, surely I’d be acting differently. I would be getting certain affairs in order and gathering with the ones I love most to brace for impact.

Yet given further time to contemplate this nugget of wisdom, I now see it in accordance with Matthew 24:42-44: “Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

If one is already living in accordance with the principles and beliefs we proclaim, there is little different we need to do to prepare ourselves for turmoil and upheaval. The apocalyptic writings are a revelation, not of some new thing but of what is always lying just beneath the surface of smoothed-over appearances.

Now, this is also easy to say and much more difficult to put into practice. The admonition, “Do not fear!” appears so often throughout Scripture, I believe, because in our human frailty, we need reminder of it almost constantly. We revert instinctively to a scarcity mindset and elect to distrust, rather than love and assist, our neighbors whom God has given us.

Our unity of “we are all in this together” fractured, near as I can tell, much more quickly as a nation during this pandemic than it did in the “united we stand” days and months following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This is disappointing but also not unexpected. Most any observer worth their salt will agree this is a country much more polarized now than it was back then.

I do not have any clever solutions to propose for that. I find hope in the example of Christ and the early disciples, holding things together against similar, if not even more daunting, odds. Much has been written about the weakening of the church as an institution for at least a generation now but there is also strength in being one of the last bastions of society where (though this phenomenon is also sadly decreasing) Republicans voluntarily gather alongside Democrats and generations from “silent” to “Z” from different households mix. Much of our challenge in the years to come will be to maintain unity in our core identity as followers committed to Christ, over and above our differences and disputes, and adapting to take advantage of what makes us strong as a faithful community.

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The Rev. Sean Janssen is pastor of Messiah Lutheran Church in Havre and Christ Lutheran Church in Big Sandy.