Decimation

"Yet at the most fundamental level—and this can’t be emphasized too strongly—the cross is in no way “religious.” The cross is by a very long way the most irreligious object ever to find its way into the heart of faith. J. Christiaan Beker refers to it as “the most nonreligious and horrendous feature of the gospel.

The crucifixion marks out the essential distinction between Christianity and “religion.” Religion as defined in these pages is either an organized system of belief or, alternatively, a loose collection of ideas and practices, projected out of humanity’s needs and wishes. The cross is “irreligious” because no human being individually or human beings collectively would have projected their hopes, wishes, longings, and needs onto a crucified man".

Fleming Routlidge - The Crucifixion.

In my childhood, I would often play with my cousins and sister at the open London common known as Blackheath. The title was awarded to the place because of the dark colour of its soil, but there is a common urban legend that it was so named because it became a famous graveyard for the city during the time of the Black Death. Whilst there are people buried on the heath from that period, it isn't a mass grave, but it certainly proved a macabre story to tell us as we learned 'ring a ring a roses'.

There is nothing so mythical about the images recorded in Europe this week.Hundreds of people are dying every day and the contagion is clearly just beginning to spread in many places, so the worst is clearly yet to come.

There have been all manner of reactions to this dreadful moment about who and what is right or wrong, but the awful truth is that many of us are facing a palpable threat of death that is clearly dreadful, and, at the moment, facing it without a readily available form of remedy or aid, so what are we to do? Where are we to look for aid?

There have been countless times in the past few weeks where my thoughts have wanted to just landslide into blind panic over this - I had one very disturbed night where the dreadful truth of what's happening gripped me - but I know that dwelling in such a place isn't going to help, especially if I'm facing my own mortality.

What we are clearly all facing is a breaking of our society that no one would have imagined as generally credible beyond fiction just a few months ago, so where can we find any genuine solace and comfort when pretty well everything we've known is taken away?

Fleming Routlidge gives us a very gritty and tangible place to start:
"Religious figures are not usually associated with disgrace and rejection. We want our objects of worship to be radiant, dazzling avatars offering the potential of transcendent happiness. The most compelling argument for the truth of Christianity is the Cross at its center. Humankind’s religious imagination could never have produced such an image. Wishful thinking never projected a despised and rejected Messiah. There is a contradiction at the very heart of our faith that demands our attention. We need to put a sign on it, though, like the signs on trucks carrying chemicals: Hazardous material, highly inflammatory cargo. Handle at your own risk.".

Like the Coronavirus itself, the truth of Christianity is a hazardous thing - it will twist and turn us as we seek to genuinely come to terms with its pain and joy, but it will heal us even as we face our certain mortality, and that is the healing we so genuinely need.

As Paul puts it, God forbid that I should glory in anything save the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ.