Acts 2:37-41 Common English Bible (CEB)

When the crowd heard this, they were deeply troubled. They said to Peter and the other apostles, “what should we do?”

Peter replied, “Change your hearts and lives. Each of you must be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. This promise is for you, your children, and for all who are far away—as many as the Lord our God invites.”

With many other words he testified to them and encouraged them, saying, “Be saved from this perverse generation.”

Those who accepted Peter’s message were baptized. God brought about three thousand people into the community on that day.

It all seems so weird.

We are told to stay at home as much as we can.

And when we do go out, say, to the grocery store,

We line up in a queue that circles all the way around the parking lot.

We stand single file,

and we stay six feet apart,

and we wear masks.

When we get home from the store, we

wipe down the stuff we bought with disinfectant wipes, if we have them.

Schools are closed and every student is, for now, home schooled.

Universities have sent their students home to finish the semester on-line.

Folks, by the millions, are all-of-a-sudden unemployed.

Baseball stadiums are empty.

Concert halls are quiet.

Churches have empty parking lots on Sunday mornings.

Weddings are postponed.

Late night talk show hosts broadcast from their living rooms.

All because of a thing that we can’t even see. It’s not bears or dragons or earthquakes that have caused all this turmoil. It is a microscopic virus.

We are living through a pandemic as the coronavirus, Covid-19, has spread across the world and visited our neighborhoods.

As of this morning, there have been almost 3 million cases resulting in more than 200 thousand deaths. 52,000 of those deaths have been in the United States.

So this is how the covid-19 virus spreads, as best I understand it.

When a person sneezes, talks, or even breathes, droplets come out of their mouth and nose. These droplets land and stick to surfaces- a countertop or a sweatshirt, or a face. We’re not talking about gross amounts of gunk, most of the time people don’t know they are spraying and people don’t know that they have been sprayed or that what they touch has been sprayed.

If the microscopic Covid-19 virus is in the droplets, and if you come into contact with those droplets with your hand and then, without thinking about it, touch your hand to your face, and contact a mucous membrane, (your lips, mouth, nose, eyes, or even your ears), the virus can enter your body.

I have read that a person touches their face, on average, between 18 and 24 times an hour. (I know I touch mine much more than that). As people touch their faces, their fingers make contact with a mucous membrane about 50% of the time.

Once you been infected with the virus, you will probably go several days before you start to feel sick. And during that time, you will be engaging with other people, and every time you cough or sneeze or speak around others, you potentially spew the virus.

And people with whom you come into contact might get infected, and then they are at risk of infecting others, long before they feel sick themselves.

Hence, the need for social distancing.

The idea is that if you are six feet apart, you’re not spraying on each other. But you might still touch a surface where someone left droplets after a cough or hard breath. So frequent hand washing becomes a necessity in avoiding the virus.

Wearing a mask helps you not to spray when you cough or talk or breathe, while at the same time helps you avoid getting sprayed. The statistics about how social distancing and mask wearing cut down the rate of infection are pretty amazing.

The way this virus works is the very definition of contagious.

To choose to follow the guidelines of health officials has nothing to do with faith or the lack there of. It is common sense, and it is an act of love toward those around you.

The word “contagious” is an interesting word.

Etymologically, the word comes from the

Latin “contagio” and literally means "a touching, a contact."

English definitions include,

- the potentiality of something being transmitted by contact with an infected person or object.

- carrying or spreading a disease that migrates from one person to another.

I think it’s fair to say that most of the time when we think of the word contagious, we think of it in negative ways. It refers to the flu, a stomach bug, an STD or even a grumpy attitude. We all know people whose sour demeanor can bring a whole room down.

But there are some ways in which the word contagious is used in positive ways.

We say that somebody’s laughter is contagious.

Our call to worship this morning is a poem I saw recited in a tik tok video from a man in his 80’s experiencing quarantine. A smile, he recited, is contagious.

Optimism and enthusiasm are often described as contagious.

Today, you can go onto Amazon and order the positive book,

The Contagious Catholic or

or the self help book,

Contagious You.

Contagious, as weird as it sounds in our present situation, can have a positive meaning.

I believe that what is going on in Jerusalem in the passage read by Judi is a great example of a positive contagious spirit at work.

Peter has just preached his Pentecost sermon and 3,000 people have responded by declaring faith in Jesus.

Something very special is going on here. The disciples’ enthusiasm about Jesus’ teaching and his resurrection, along with their experience with the Holy Spirit, has created a contagious atmosphere where people are desiring to join their cause, their community.

They want what the disciples seem to have.

It is a fascinating and exciting time as what the disciples have discovered in Jesus is catching on all over. Their message is, by certain definitions, is contagious. Their spirit is contagious.

Now let’s fast forward to now. I can be critical, and I apologize for that, but much of what I experience as modern Christian culture causes me to want to run and hide, to shelter in place. I don’t want to catch what I often hear being touted as normative Christian thinking and behavior.

Homophobic diatribes, Racist rhetoric,

Sexist Church structures, Xenophobic nonsense dressed in Religious language, Christian groupthink.

Hmmm.

And yet, way back then, the early believers had a message that was contagious.

What is it about Jesus and that earliest church that created an infectious environment that drew people in?

I love what the late Rachel Held Evans once wrote, the early church “remembered what many modern Christians tend to forget - that what makes the gospel offensive isn’t who it keeps out, but who lets in.”

I believe the early church was contagious because those first Christians let people in. They took Jesus’ words to heart as they invited anybody and everybody to be a part of the community.

They took Jesus seriously for they had personally experienced that

In Jesus, we discover a contagious life affirming Spirit.

In Jesus, we encounter a contagious Love that breaks down walls and builds bridges.

In Jesus, we tap into a contagious Joy rooted in the recognition that it is not us against them, but that we are all in this together.

In Jesus, we experience a contagious Mercy that motivates us to be merciful as we look at others with mercy healed eyes.

In Jesus, we embrace a contagious new way of encountering people that looks past limitations because we are freed to see the people around us as the beloved children of God.

In Jesus, we join a contagious community that responds to people’s needs without judgement and with an active, creative, healing spirit that seeks wholeness and reconciliation.

Here’s the situation today, in 2020. Stay at home when you can, when you have to be out, cover your face, wash your hands, and allow the contagious spirit of Jesus’ love and grace to guide your path.

Amen.