“Who sinned? This man or his parents, that he was born blind?” The question came from Jesus’ disciples, who were apparently sincere in wishing to understand. And Jesus told them it was neither. Their encounter was an opportunity, so “God’s works might be revealed in him.” And he healed the man. Jesus ignored the question of blame — this was all followed by an official investigation, but that’s another story. It’s all in the 9th chapter of the Gospel of John.
I would like to believe that our situation involving the novel coronavirus gives us a similar opportunity. If we open our eyes, we can see ways to serve each other, to serve the community, to strengthen our own resolve to reveal “God’s works.” The question of why it happened is, like the cause of the blind man’s disability, irrelevant.
We’re confronted with the vulnerability of the elderly, as we work to find ways to care for them without exposing them to further danger. They might need food, they might need toilet paper. They might need conversation and companionship. They certainly need to know they’re not forgotten in this emergency.
We must now look at our businesses as the economic communities they are, in addition to being profit-making enterprises. Can we afford to abandon those who can’t come to work because of the risk of infecting themselves or others. Have we created a structure that forces them to act against their own interests and ours by staying on the job because they can’t afford not to? This gives us a chance to think about and potentially correct the problem.
There are similar challenges facing those experiencing homelessness, first responders, religious leaders, school children, even professional athletes. Each situation is difficult. Each needs compassion and ingenuity. And each, if we’ve learned the lesson Jesus taught, is an occasion for a miracle.
Addressing the emergency requires us to listen to and work with people with whom we might have felt we had little in common in the past. Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said of his conversation with President Donald Trump on handling a cruise ship stranded near San Francisco that “every single thing he said, they followed through on.”
In 1918, we called the worldwide pandemic the “Spanish flu.” It appears that COVID-19 originated in China, and its effects on that society only remind us of how interconnected we are and how much we depend on people living there to meet our own needs. Sting, hardly a prophet, pointed out the plain truth in his song “Russians”: “We share the same biology, regardless of ideology.” The virus doesn’t care if you’re Chinese, Italian or Yankee. The lesson in our common humanity is obvious, but it clearly needs to be relearned in our generation.
I’m certainly not saying the prospect of a pandemic is a blessing. But here it is. As with everything, the opportunity to do God’s work is in the way we respond.
Dan Bammes is a longtime reporter, news anchor and radio personality in Salt Lake City. He can be heard weekends on KSL NewsRadio.