Part of the way we are instructed to love one another in the Epistles is to weep with those who weep and to bear one another’s burdens, actions that Jesus demonstrated for us during His earthly ministry. How are you loving fellow believers in this time of coronavirus isolation? How are you loving those who live with isolation regardless of pandemics? How do you need to grow your ability to actively demonstrate love for believers suffering isolation?

I am a Christian. I am a musician. I am a wife, a daughter, a sister. I am a friend, a neighbor.  Sometimes, I am also a severely disabled person due to a rare autoimmune condition that confines me to my home for months on end. During this time of widespread isolation, I want to speak from my heart to my brothers and sisters in Christ, and particularly to the pastors and elders in the church entrusted by Christ with the care of the saints.

Aside from rare trips to the grocery store and medical appointments, I am currently homebound. The last time I attended church was over a year ago. This is my normal and has been on a recurring basis for the last sixteen years. At times, I have been able to attend church regularly even for a couple of years, but then my health deteriorates, and I am unable to attend.

The communications I am seeing from ministries everywhere about a “new reality” of isolation and the need for pastors and fellow Christians to step up to the plate to really work at community have been so very painful to read and hear. Emails and articles say none of us has been through anything like this, and we are all adjusting, but I have been through the isolation part of this.

The needs you are all feeling and noticing for community in isolation have been my normal off and on for months or years at a time for nearly two decades. This is not new to me. What is new is your noticing it and giving it significance. But for me, this is happening without any recognition or realization that this is normal life for many saints with health issues. There is a lack of awareness that anyone has a different experience than yours.

I was raised in a home where church attendance was a priority. My family attended together every time the doors were open, unless someone was too ill to attend, in which case, whoever was ill stayed home, with one parent. Everyone else went to church. I loved being actively involved in church. It gave me great joy and fulfillment. I learned early that serving in the church was one of my favorite activities. I worked in the nursery, sang in the choir, helped in children’s church, taught children’s Sunday school classes, volunteered on projects, and played the piano occasionally.

My mother made a particular point to visit shut-ins and nursing home residents regularly. She taught me and my sisters the importance of company and Christian fellowship for those who are isolated by health. Ill people need human companionship, and believers need fellowship with other saints, even if they are not mentally present enough to communicate appreciation of your visit.

My mother taught us how to visit with the sick: talk with them about them, talk with them about some good things in your life, help them laugh if you can because laughter is good medicine, and sing with or to them because music is also good medicine. Always pray with them. Ask how you can pray or be a help, then follow through.

These lessons have stayed with me as an adult who is now one of those ill saints unable to regularly attend church for lengthy periods of time. Sadly, I have been treated by the church as a severed limb rather than a part of the body of Christ. I have tried at every church that I have attended to bring the issue to the awareness of both friends and acquaintances, as well as pastors and elders. At these churches, where I have been actively involved in the music on a near weekly basis during times of good health, I have been ignored, silenced, told that my expectations are too high, that I have a critical spirit, that I need to be more understanding of just how busy people are with their own lives.^[1]

There are people who have reached out once. Then again, a year later, they tell me they care so much that they would gladly bear this burden for me for a day, or a year, if only they could. Do they realize I have not heard from them in a year? They believe that they care, but they do not realize, and are unwilling to hear, that the yearlong gap in contact communicates quite the opposite.

Recently I listened to the press conference Governor Cuomo held discussing the Coronavirus situation in New York. Near the end of the press conference, he became almost pastoral as he reminded New Yorkers of the emotional toll that isolation takes. He stressed the importance of staying in touch and caring for the mental health of our friends and loved ones by reaching out via video calls and phone calls to check in.

He reminded us of the importance of family, calling for us to be “socially distanced, but spiritually connected.”^[2] I heard more concern and care from my governor than I have received from my pastors or most of my church family in all the years I have been struggling with my health.

I was so overwhelmed with grief and hurt that the body of Christ is doing such a poor job of acknowledging and ministering that this governor stands in stark contrast. For most of the afternoon, I could not stop the tears caused by the pain of being so isolated. A day later as I write this, the tears flow again.

Pastors, brothers and sisters, the story of the Good Samaritan does not merely teach the lesson that everyone is a neighbor. The Good Samaritan got up close and personal with the wounds of the suffering man. He handled this man’s body, bathing his wounds and anointing them with salve. He gave of his personal financial resources to provide care for the man, and then came back to check on him after he completed the journey necessitated by his business.

What kind of neighbor are you being to those around you who are hurting? What needs do they have that you can attend to? And are you addressing this new era of isolation in a way that acknowledges those who have already been isolated long before the coronavirus came to call? Have you contacted them to find out what lessons they can pass on from having walked this path ahead of you?

In a recent podcast interview between Brené Brown and Tarana Burke, Ms. Bruke said, “If you can’t hear me, you can’t see me.” Brené Brown agreed saying, “To be seen and known and loved is the only reason we’re here. If you can’t hear me, you can’t see me.”^[3]  As a believer, I agree in part with her statement of our purpose: we are created for community. But I would add that we are also here to glorify God, and one of the ways we glorify Him is by recognizing and affirming the inherent, God-given worth of other people.

When we can’t hear a person, we diminish our own assessment of their worth. When you cannot hear me, you cannot see me. When you cannot see me, you begin to extinguish my existence in your life. You diminish my worth, in your own eyes. You fail to affirm what God has said about my worth. I have felt unheard and unseen, unvalued, extinguished in the eyes of my faith community. It is one of the most painful aspects of the suffering I have endured because of my poor health, far more painful than the physical suffering I have endured.

My husband has regularly attended church during this past year. Nearly every Sunday, at least one person will come to him and ask him how I’m doing. But with rare exception, they haven’t reached out to me. Even when he asks them to. The most frequent comment he gets is that they are looking forward to hearing me play the piano again.

Yes, I’m a gifted pianist and arranger, and I joyfully use that gift to minister to God’s people. But that is not the sum total of who I am. There is so much more to me. “To be seen and known. . .is [a great part] of the reason we are here.” Are you seeing and knowing the people in your faith community who are unable to participate in the same way you as a fully able-bodied person participate?

I want to be clear: I am not having a crisis of faith. Because I know the tender loving care of my Chief Shepherd, I am deeply grieved at His being so misrepresented by His followers. He will not quench a smoking flax or bruise a broken reed. Those who are useless by the ordinary standards are not so to Him. He tenderly leads the neediest of His sheep, and I have experienced such care in my personal walk with Him.

But Jesus said that as believers, our testimony to the unbelieving world would rise out of our demonstration of love to one another. He told His disciples to love one another as He had loved them. The way we love other believers will either advance or hinder the spread of the gospel.

Part of the way we are instructed to love one another in the Epistles is to weep with those who weep and to bear one another’s burdens, actions that Jesus demonstrated for us during His earthly ministry. How are you loving fellow believers in this time of coronavirus isolation? How are you loving those who live with isolation regardless of pandemics? How do you need to grow your ability to actively demonstrate love for believers suffering isolation?

Years of conversation with both pastors and fellow lay believers has revealed an impoverished understanding of the theologies of suffering and lament underlying and contributing to this issue. Discomfort with suffering and lament will certainly make it difficult to visit and shepherd those with chronic illness.

Here is a list of resources that I found helpful in developing and deepening my own theologies of suffering and lament:

Suffering and the Heart of God by Diane Langberg

Embodied Hope by Kelly Kapic

Sermon series Out of the Storm: A Study of Job by Pastor Todd Pruitt at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Harrisonburg, VA

Jan Karon’s Mitford series of novels.

Rebekah Heramb is a musician, gardener, homemaker, and follower of Christ who lives in New York with her husband.

^[1] I am thankful for some pastors and ministries that I follow through the internet, including the Mortification of Spin podcast, and Pastor Todd Pruitt. These few stand out as examples of believers who do in fact care for the sick and isolated and view that care as a necessary and important part of shepherding their people. At my current church, there is one couple that has reached out and maintained contact.

^[2] Governor Cuomo, “Governor Andrew Cuomo Coronavirus Briefing Transcript March 23,” https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/governor-andrew-cuomo-coronavirus-briefing-transcript-march-23.

^[3] Brené Brown, “Tarana Burke and Brené on Being Heard and Seen,” https://brenebrown.com/podcast/brene-tarana-burke-on-empathy/.