No Greater Love: Parables and a Pandemic

When I started this blog, I assumed that other than an occasional explanation of why I might look at things in a certain way, I would steer clear of politics and religion, not out of a fear of offending, but out of a desire to share ideas from a perspective with which all my readers could identify.  My faith is at the core of who I am and shapes the way I view the world, but it is also very personal, something that has developed over time, and exists in the context of relationships that I could not begin to adequately explain, let alone expect someone else to understand and apply to their unique circumstances. While raised in the tradition of calling others to Christ, I’ll admit mine tends to be a quiet evangelism, a daily struggle to live my life according to teachings that were never crammed down my throat, but presented as offerings for me to take and apply, to consume, digest, and be nourished by throughout times in my life when I would eventually find them valuable and relevant. Some days, I am successful, and on other days, I fail dismally. But as Winston Churchill said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.” I cannot separate my courage from my faith, as they are intertwined, and sometimes it is hard to tell one from the other. I may succeed in leading by example one day, but there is always the next day. Likewise, if I fail, there is always another day.

Many of the lessons that were taught to me were from the Bible. I have friends who can quote scripture, chapter and verse. But to be honest, I was the kid who was scrambling on Saturday night to find the shortest verse to memorize by the next morning. Of course, the first was “Jesus wept”, but it was downhill—or rather uphill—from there. After all, the shortest verse in the Bible only gets you through one week! But as I grew older, it wasn’t individual verses that spoke to me as much as it was the parables, which I found intriguing and applicable to the everyday struggle of MY life. Many of them were learned in childhood, but others were of particular significance as I grew older and my experiences were no longer just theoretical interactions in hypothetical relationships. Some became so profoundly relevant that I remember where I was and what I was doing when the meaning of a particular parable become so clear to me that its application to my daily life was undeniable.

As an actress, I suppose it is not surprising that it was these stories that held my attention, but lately, I am remembering more of those individual verses from my childhood, and finding today’s headlines modern day parables for our lives. These are the verses that are probably familiar to any of us who spent any time at all in a small wooden chair on Sunday morning singing “Jesus Loves Me” or gluing popsicle sticks together in the form of a cross. It is easy to think of scripture as a dusty book of do’s and don’ts, or a weapon with which to justify our beliefs or condemn another’s, but rather than getting into a deep philosophical exploration of exactly WHAT one might believe scripture to be or not to be, just know that for me, it can provide perspective when my vision is limited and illumination when a path feels obscured.

This week, the following verse kept coming to my mind: “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:3, and yes, I had to look it up). There are many people for whom this is a way of life, their chosen profession, their reason for being—a firefighter charging into a burning tower or a teacher placing her body between a student and a gunman—but the people caring for and providing support for victims of Covid-19 are the most recent examples of those who embody this principle. By comparison, the sacrifices the rest of us are making to “flatten the curve”—sheltering in place, keeping our distance, wearing face masks—seem small. As a child, I had trouble imagining a situation where I would have to chance to make the ultimate sacrifice as my world was a small one, safe and comfortable. As my world expanded, so did the opportunities to aid others and provide comfort, to educate and entertain. While not always convenient, I never considered any of it an actual sacrifice.

Yet the devastating impact of this coronavirus pandemic upon our communities and our economy is something unlike anything any of us have experienced. The drastic change to our everyday lives is only magnified when it destroys longstanding traditions of gathering and celebrating our faith and our families. Those traditions associated with Easter evolved over time for me. Simple pleasures of a new hat, a pair of white gloves, and hiding eggs gave way to the excitement of a “Holy Week” that started with a commemoration of the triumphant entry, moved through the solemnity and darkness of death, and emerged victorious on Easter Sunday. Later into adulthood, it grew into an entire season, forty days of discipline to honor the ultimate sacrifice.

And so, I find myself at one of those defining moments, a time that will be etched in my memory of when I came to a new understanding of laying down one’s life for one’s friends. This pandemic has become a parable in which we are a player. We have all been called to lay down our lives…or rather, lay them aside…for someone else. It may be someone we know, or a person we will never meet, someone’s mother, someone’s child, someone’s friend for whom we make the sacrifice. The closing of our schools, our businesses, our churches, have given us the unique opportunity to live up to the mandate of service and sacrifice. Let us solemnly embrace it with a grateful heart and find comfort knowing that in our isolation, we are, in fact, being there for one another.

Peace be with you.