Beloved Northwoods Family,
During the recent COVID-19 crisis, many Christian churches, ours included, have made the painful decision to close their doors, cancelling regular public worship services, though often utilizing telecommunications to facilitate God’s worship in private homes. The result has been a very unwelcome disruption of our normal pattern of life, not the least of which is our gathering together on the Lord’s Day. Some of you have asked me what principles of our theology have been taken into consideration in making such a decision. Some have even wondered if we are setting a bad precedent by doing so, and if this may be a dry run for our authorities to test the resolve of the church. Here are some thoughts that the elders have had to think through.
First, because God is our highest good, and His day the best day, the worship of God is priority number one. God’s honor comes before man’s honor, His being before ours. As the Psalmist says, “Thy lovingkindness is better than life.” We need God. We need His word, and His gospel, and therefore we need worship. “My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh.” (Proverbs 4:20-22) “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God,” our Lord Jesus has said (Matthew 4:4). To worship the living God together is the highest joy we have in this world; it is the closest we get to heaven, this side of glory. “How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord Almighty! Better is one day in your courts than thousands elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than to dwell in tents of the wicked.” (Psalm 84) We should sooner join the three Hebrew children in the fiery furnace and lay down our lives than surrender an inch of God’s worship. The First Table, our obligation to God, comes before the Second, our obligation to our fellow man, and if there is an apparent conflict, the general rule is to surrender our own interests.
How much more must we, in an age where institutionalized religion gets a bad rap, where people vainly imagine they can take a pass on church, but still be “spiritual,” when people have been told again and again that they don’t have to go to church to be a Christian, that going to church does not make you a Christian, any more than going into a garage makes you a car, how much more must we insist firmly on the Lord’s rightful claim to ownership of His holy day, and to all outward observances of public worship. “You shall keep my sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary: I am the LORD” (Lev. 19:30). It is vanity and wickedness to neglect the courts of the Lord; for when the elders call, the King Himself calls. The call to worship is not the pastor’s call, it is the Lord’s. Further, we do a gross disservice to our fellow man if we fail to stress just how vital public worship is in the plan of salvation; if we tell him that he can worship the Lord just as well in the mountains or on the golf course, as He can in the courts of the Lord, we are telling him a lie. No, we don’t believe that anyone is saved by the church, but we do believe that it is by the “foolishness of preaching” that we are saved, and that outside of the Church there is “no ordinary possibility of salvation” (WCF 25.2).
And so it is only with great reluctance before obvious providential hindrances that we should withdraw ourselves from the courts of the Lord. And elders, who should be calling the saints together, must be all the more careful to cancel services.
But there is a second, great principle at work here, and it is this one: human life is sacred and must be preserved. There are two tables to the law. And Jesus taught that the two greatest commandments are: 1. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength; and, 2. love your neighbor as yourself. The entire law hangs on these two commandments. And so the Shorter Catechism puts it, in instructing us what is required in the commandment “you shall not murder”: “The sixth commandment requires all lawful endeavors to preserve our own life and the life of others.”
Caution can, of course, become excessive. There is some risk in nearly everything that we do. We cancel church when there is a blizzard, in order to try to ensure your safety. Our confession acknowledges that we may be providentially hindered from attending worship services. But what about a virus? Is there any good reason to cancel church in an endeavor to preserve our own life and the life of others from a microscopic organism? The threat may seem remote, but history bears out the very lethal reality of epidemics. We all have a responsibility to protect and safeguard life. But the civil magistrate has a unique responsibility, and even a mandate, to do so. The church does not possess the powers of coercion, but the state does, not only to avenge lawless bloodshed, but it is authorized to enact and enforce just laws to prevent real threats to life and health.
It is interesting to remember, in light of the present crisis, that Moses gave the theocracy quarantine laws, which seem to have been enacted not just for ceremonial holiness, but also for the benefit of public health (Lev. 5:3, Num. 29:16). The whole camp of Israel had to stay put for a whole week while Miriam was quarantined “without the camp” for her leprosy. It would only make sense that the civil power would enforce such laws, lest the contagion break out in the general population. Now, how such laws should be made, implemented, and enforced in the modern day is certainly up for debate.
So what can we say about this apparent clash of commandments? First, because the Lord is God, and He alone is sovereign, He resolves conflicts and He conditions priorities. We do not resolve them by watering one down or prioritizing one over the other. We have not become relativists by canceling public worship. We are never allowed to sin, but in some cases God qualifies His own commandments. Normally, we may not kill, but in a just war, we may. We are not playing fast and loose with the commandments of God. We are recognizing our duty before God in a fallen world. Under normal circumstances, we must order our lives to prioritize worship above all else, and we must not do all our pleasure on the Lord’s holy day, but delight in His good gift. But we also recognize that acts of necessity and mercy are permissible on this day, and we remember that Jesus chastised his opponents, who accused him of violating the Sabbath, because they opposed a healing on the Sabbath day. Jesus told them that that the Sabbath was His Sabbath, that He was the Lord of it, and that the Sabbath was made for man, and that it was lawful to do good on the Sabbath. He accused them of wanting to kill and do evil on the Lord’s Day, rather than to heal and to save life, which the Lord commands. In this, our Lord taught us to rejoice and be glad, when someone is healed and a life is saved, no matter the day.
We then, in our Reformed and Presbyterian tradition, give doctors and nurses a pass to work on the Lord’s day. And if someone is too sick or too infectious to join the congregation, we do not object to their staying home. God can be to them a little sanctuary, and they can seek His face in private. But at no point is there some internal contradiction between our duties to God and our duties to man, even if it can seem like that is the case. Sometimes the Lord of the Sabbath calls us to do things we normally wouldn’t do on the Sabbath. It is conceivable, then, in truly extraordinary circumstances that the elders of the church might cancel worship services. It is in such a situation that we believe we currently find ourselves, being guided by what we see happening around the world, and now in our country, the proclamations and orders of our civil magistrate, and the great commandment to protect the life of our neighbor.
We do not make this decision lightly. We recognize that we are accountable to the Lord for the way we shepherd the flock and exercise leadership in the church. We feel torn between two great priorities, but we do not believe we are in an impossible predicament. Our gracious Lord would not leave us in such a place. We pray the Lord would protect us all from harm, and that He will bring a speedy end to this pandemic. We urge you to be in prayer for the same, and that you consider having a special season of prayer, fasting and repentance before the Lord, until we see His hand at work. Know that we miss you all greatly, and that we anxiously await the day, in God’s good providence, when we gather again before the Lord, our highest joy. Until then, be in prayer and in the Word each day. Love one another. Reach out to those in need as you are able, and “gather” with the saints on the Lord’s Day as the service and sermon are made available to you. This week, I am revisiting a passage from the gospels we considered recently from Luke. As Jesus serenely slept, the disciples were in great fear because of a storm on the sea, and the Lord revealed Himself to them calming the raging storm when he said, “Peace, be still.” I would ask you: When are you afraid? Why are you afraid? Of what are you afraid? If Jesus Christ is with you, do you really ever need to fear? What does it tell you about the Lord that he slept as things were apparently falling apart? What was he teaching his disciples, and us?
The Lord richly bless you my beloved,
Pastor Norgauer