On Flesh in the Time of COVID-19

written by Hannah Phillips of the Open Worship Community

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” John 1:1-5, 1:14.

One of the coolest parts of discerning my call to ministry thus far has without a doubt been getting the chance to visit different seminaries and divinity schools. A couple of weeks ago, while visiting Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, I had the opportunity to sit in on a New Testament class taught by Dr. René Schreiner. The timing of it could not have been more perfect; the class had just started to talk about the Gospel of John, which apparently is Dr. Schreiner’s wheelhouse, and she did not disappoint. A warm woman with a mischievous twinkle in her eye, she led the class in meaningful, thought-provoking, entertaining discussion. I left glowing.

The day after our tour, Max and I found out that Garrett, like many other institutes of higher education across the country, had made the difficult decision to transition away from in-person classes for the rest of the semester. They cancelled their community activities and were moving class meetings online. A little later that same day, we found out that our own school, the University of North Texas, would be doing the same.

The reason for all of this, of course, is the COVID-19 outbreak sweeping the globe. While I’m grateful that so many institutions have made decisions to protect their students, faculty, and staff, and hopeful that these preventative measures will indeed keep the worst possibilities at bay, it’s still a scary and painful time to be a person. And with all of this stuff happening, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about something Dr. Schreiner said during her class just a few short weeks—now a lifetime—ago.

The Gospel of John begins with a long, flowery prologue. The book itself was written less to chronicle the life of Jesus and more in an attempt to explain who Jesus was and why he mattered; this is why it starts out so differently from the other Gospels, and why Jesus as a character is often portrayed a little differently. So in this prologue, John starts out by invoking what he refers to as the Word—“and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”—and explaining that in Jesus, this Word “became flesh.”

Which, Dr. Schreiner explained, John’s first-century audience would not have regarded as good news—quite the opposite, in fact. When she asked the class why, we were at something of a loss. The Incarnation, after all, is good news. What was it about “flesh” that was so bad?

Finally she asked, “What did the first century smell like?” “Bad?” someone ventured. “Yes!” she cried. “It smelled awful! Why?”

“Flesh?”

“Yes!” she practically shouted. “Not just because people didn’t bathe as much, but think about how an infected wound or an abscessed tooth would’ve smelled. And there weren’t good ways to treat those things. Flesh is sweaty and smelly and painful. Flesh is the source of suffering.

“So for the Word to become flesh?” she continued. “That would’ve been bad news.”

And friends, I’ve been thinking about that a lot. Because being flesh right now—that is, in the midst of a global pandemic—can feel like very bad news indeed. People are afraid, and rightly so, cooped up in their homes to protect their flesh and the flesh of those they love. Healthcare workers find themselves worked to the bone, their flesh utterly exhausted. And the ill suffer, their flesh possessed by a virus which causes pain and misery and death. And we know from projections and what’s happened elsewhere that there is likely more suffering to come.

But there’s hope.

There are lots of ideas out there about why the Word “became flesh,” even though it seemed like bad news. Even though being flesh kind of sucked (and still does for all of us sometimes). But I believe that this happened, at least in part, to remind us how beautiful flesh is. The bottom line is that it takes courage to be flesh—especially in times like these.

 And there’s beauty in that courage. There’s beauty in folks finding ways to care for their neighbors. In people staying home to protect both their loved ones and strangers. In disrupting our normal lives to stop this thing. In following Jesus’s call to love our neighbor by sacrificing in a way my generation, at least, has never had to sacrifice. In short, there’s beauty in loving each other, in caring for our flesh.

After all, what’s the thing Jesus did most in the Gospels (besides speaking in parables)? He healed suffering flesh. Illness, injury, infection—the very suffering that made the Word become flesh seem like bad news—were all resolved through His great love. Jesus cared for both body and spirit. In His great wholeness, He came to make us whole.

And that’s where God shows up in this. Not in the virus, the death, the fear, the exhaustion—all the things working against flesh—but in us and among us, in the strength and creativity and love of neighbor we’re seeing all over. God is in the care-taking and loving and sacrificing in protection of all our flesh, collectively. And God will sustain us through it. Because the other wonderful thing about God is that God is bigger than our flesh.

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

 God is with us and for us, my friends. Always. As illustrated by the Word become flesh, in Christ Jesus.

 Which, of course, turned out to be pretty good news, after all.