Vaccines

Sometimes I like to look back at past devotions I’ve written and see how the message has taken on new meaning for me as the years have passed. When I read this one from 2020 {`the readings repeat every 3 years~}, I felt it was a message worth repeating. I’ve changed it just a little to bring some facts up to date.
Six years ago, vaccines in general and a vaccine for Covid19 specifically were in the news and on our minds. The talk was used as a political weapon, a source of great fear for some and the means of hopeful optimism for others. Some claimed Covid19 would be eradicated within two years while others said it will always be with us. Some impatiently and fearfully wondered why it took so long, while others said it would be foolish to rush. When vaccines did become available the distribution and the entire topic of vaccination caused controversy and division. Six years later, it looks like it will be with us forever, vaccination notwithstanding.
Vaccines are typically the dead or weakened form of disease-causing viruses injected into our body. Once exposed to the mild version our bodies are prepared to fight the real thing. Vaccines have been developed for some of the world’s deadliest diseases with very satisfying results. But there is a disease far worse than anything scientists have battled. Fortunately, God has battled it and we read about it in our lessons for this week.
Matthew 16 reads like 2020 headlines. As Jesus predicts his death that certainly has political, as well as religious significance, he sparks fear but is promising hope. Combined with the reading from Romans about love and Jeremiah’s words of repentance and service to God, a picture emerges. It is a picture of a very serious pandemic and the cure that seems equally fatal, yet is perfectly healing.
This pandemic first entered the human body and soul through a serpent and an apple in a Middle Eastern garden and will be with us as long as this world remains. Over 100 billion have died so far as a result of that germ called sin and the 8.3 billion living today have 100% chance of dying unless Jesus arrives in glory first. But even though we all pay the mortal price for the sin-virus, there is a vaccine. It is controversial and divisive, but it is 100 % effective.
Jesus took that wicked infection into his own body for our sake, died, and lived again. By taking that deadly germ into his divine body, Jesus fought the infection, rendered it weak and gave us a cure. When we repent and accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, we are injected, if you’ll allow me to press the imagery, with the Holy Spirit. Sin loses and we live eternally with Christ.
But wait. I said the cure seems fatal. And it is. Jesus said, “whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” Romans tells us what that looks like. It looks like sharing and caring. It looks like serving God and our fellow man. It looks like honoring others and putting others above ourselves. It is unselfish humility. It is being a friend like Jesus and pointing to Jesus who gave his life in order for us to live. It means being crucified, dying with Christ, so that “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” (Galatians 2:20.)
It may sound like a bitter pill…die in order to live. But this particular death brings immeasurable joy. When we decrease so that Christ can increase, when we seek to serve others instead of ourselves, when our focus is on eternity and not mortality, we become healthier than ever with a hope that can never die, in a promise that is unbreakable, from our God who loves us so much that he died for us so that we can live. It is the perfect cure.