As many Christians in the West mark the first time they’ve been unable to celebrate Easter publicly at church due to the COVID-19 outbreak, theologians are weighing in on how God might be moving in the world.
Because of the ongoing pandemic, federal, state and local governments have issued “social distancing” and stay-at-home orders along with the temporary shutdown of businesses deemed as “non-essential.” And churches have been largely prohibited from holding services, even on the holiest of Christian holidays.
“I’m reminded that for the persecuted church, this is every week for them,” said Glenn Packiam, pastor of New Life Church-Downtown in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in an interview with The Christian Post.
“The inability to gather, the restrictions on church and worship, we are in many ways standing in solidarity with the persecuted church because we are experiencing what has been their norm on a weekly basis,” he said.
The pandemic presents another opportunity to reconsider the first Easter and the period soon thereafter where Jesus appeared to the disciples while they were in locked rooms, afraid and unsure of what had just happened.
“The last they knew, He was crucified and buried in a tomb. So there is, in a very real sense, not just a connection with the global church —a portion of which is the persecuted church — but there is also a connection with the earliest of churches, the first followers of Jesus who found themselves in locked rooms. And Jesus appeared to them,” Packiam said.
“The resurrection of Christ is able to appear to us, to come to us wherever we are. And as we think about Easter we can remember that the risen Christ walks through locked rooms, He appears through locked rooms, He comes through closed doors and finds us afraid and alone.”
American Christians sometimes tend to interpret events based on what is happening to them, that if they are experiencing difficulty then it must be the end times, he added.
“I think we have to be careful of that because we get spoiled by comfort, we get spoiled by life sort of being relatively good. And because of that we lose our sense of the power of what Christian hope actually is. Christian hope has always been the future,” he said, referencing the Apostle Paul’s words in Romans 8 where he speaks of a hope which remains yet unseen.
“For many of us living in a comfortable sort of existence, our definition of hope gets skewed to be a sense of peace and everything is OK.”
SOURCE: Christian Post, Brandon Showalter
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