Ulrich Zwingli's brush with the Plague
In 1519, the year after Ulrich Zwingli came to Zurich he was laid low with the plague.
Zwingli is a somewhat forgotten Swiss reformer. We have all heard of Luther and Calvin, but not many of us have heard of Zwingli. And yet, independent of Martin Luther, but about the same time, God mightily used him to preach the Gospel in Zurich.
If anyone doubts that a reformation in Europe was needed, they need only to step back to Avignon a century and a half before and read about the wickedness of the popes who lived there. As though in judgement on that city, the plague of 1348 took the lives of half the population of that city.
Zwingli arrived in Zurich in 1518. In the summer of the following year while on vacation the plague broke out in Zurich so he returned home to care for his flock. In the course of his duties he contracted the plague. Many people thought he would never recover.
He wrote a hymn while on his sick bed, which charters his sickness and recovery. I quote a few verses:
Lo! at the door
I hear death's knock
Shield me, O Lord,
My strength and rock.
The hand once nailed
Upon a tree,
Jesus, uplift-
And shelter me....
My pains increase:
Lord, stand thou near.
Body and soul
Dissolve with fear...
And then his recovery:
My God, my Sire,
Heal'd by thy hand,
Upon the earth
I once more stand...
With Zwingli's recovery came a renewed zeal to serve God. One biographer put it like this: "The Gospel, which had hitherto been too much regarded by him as a mere doctrine, now became a great reality. He arose from the sepulchre with a new heart. His zeal became more active, his life more holy; his preaching more free, more Christian and more powerful."
Zwingli's brush with the plague was used by God to rouse him spiritually.
Oh may our modern plague have the same effect on us and the church and the world!
God, our Father
Our verses from Psalm 103 today, are all about the Fatherhood of God, and especially how God the Father treats his children.
As a father has compassion on his children,
so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
14 for he knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust.
15 The life of mortals is like grass,
they flourish like a flower of the field;
16 the wind blows over it and it is gone,
and its place remembers it no more.
17 But from everlasting to everlasting
the Lord’s love is with those who fear him,
and his righteousness with their children’s children—
18 with those who keep his covenant
and remember to obey his precepts.
The Old Testament writers did not really understand the Godhead, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. God was revealing himself little by little over time, and then all of a sudden, as in a flash of lightning, he revealed himself fully through his Son, the Word of God.
Everything obscure about God in the Old Testament becomes clear through the Word.
So when David was writing Psalm 103, he uses the analogy of the LORD being like a father. But we, having been adopted into God's family, read these six verses as wonderful descriptions of God the Father's care for us.
The Beauty of the Father's Love
Notice the beauty of our Father's love.
Our Father is compassionate, verse 13
As a father has compassion on his children,
so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
Compassion is what happens when a heart of love hears about a sorrow in the life of the one it loves: it moves, it is empathetic and sympathetic. Just as a father is naturally moved at the plight of a child, so God is moved at the plight of each of his children. The opposite of compassion is a stone-cold response to knowledge of someone's sorrow.
God feels deeply for us.
Our Father knows how weak we are, verses 14-16
for he knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust.
The life of mortals is like grass,
they flourish like a flower of the field;
16 the wind blows over it and it is gone,
and its place remembers it no more.
Because God made us, because he was there when we were first formed, he knows how weak and fragile and frail we are. So frail that a tiny little virus, far smaller than any human cell can take us away.
David contrasts the eternity of God's love with the short span of our lives. We are here just for a moment in time - and then we are gone. Like the annual plants of the field, whether grasses or flowers, that are here today and gone tomorrow. So it is with us.
Worse, once we are gone, no-one will remember us, not really. Yes we are sort of remembered but just as the ground of this year does not remember the plants that grew last year - it is concerned only with the new grass, the latest grass - so too we will soon be forgotten (though not by God.)
David isn't trying to discourage us, he's writing all this to remind us that we really are very weak and small and insignificant - and YET we are known and loved by God!
Our Father's love for us never ends, verses 17-18
But from everlasting to everlasting
the Lord’s love is with those who fear him,
and his righteousness with their children’s children—
18 with those who keep his covenant
and remember to obey his precepts.
By contrast to our grass-like, flower-like transient existence, God's majestic love endures forever, for he lives forever.
Human love comes and goes. In the last ten years, can you not trace in your own life the mist-like nature of human love? Are there not people who once loved you but do not any more? Time and distance and events and even death have separated them from you.
But, says David, there is a love that never comes to an end. A forever love, an eternal love.
You and I are loved with everlasting love.
At first sight, verses 17 and 18 seem to be talking about a conditional love. For David says that God loves "those who fear him" and "those who keep his covenant" and "remember to obey his precepts."
So is the Father's love conditional or not?
It's not conditional, no. The prodigal's father loved the son right througout his son's wanderings. God's love is radically unconditional. That's what covenantal ove means. It is based on a binding agreement God has made with us through the death of his Son, in the New Covenant.
On the other hand, David's words remind us that the love of God, this kind of amazing love, demands the response of godly living.
How could it be otherwise? "I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies [your whole embodied lives] as living sacrifices.." (Romans 12:1)
Summing it all Up
Think of the kindest, gentlest, most generous parent - ever. Then multiply up that kindness, that gentleness, that generosity. Good human parents are, in Scripture, faint models and echoes of God's Fatherhood.
God, our Father loves all those who love his Son, "The one who loves me will be loved by my Father" (John 14:21), "the Father himself loves you because you have loved me" (John 16:27).
He loves you and I, his adopted sons and daughters with an everlasting love.
Whenever we feel that "no-one loves us" let us remember this great love, born in eternity past, forged at the cross and lasting for ever.
A SONG FOR TODAY
My guess is that not many of my readers know this hymn, perhaps because it comes from an American stable. I used to sing it as a child with my parents and five brothers and sisters.
The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell.
It goes beyond
the highest star
And reaches to the lowest hell.
The guilty
pair, bowed down with care,
God gave His Son to win;
His erring
child He reconciled
And pardoned from his sin.
O love of God, how rich and pure!
How
measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure—
The saints’ and angels’ song.
When hoary
time shall pass away,
And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall;
When men who
here refuse to pray,
On rocks and hills and mountains call;
God’s love, so
sure, shall still endure,
All measureless and strong;
Redeeming
grace to Adam’s race—
The saints’ and angels’ song.
Could we with
ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made;
Were every
stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the
love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the
scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.
Frederick
Martin Lehman.
You can sing along with it HERE.
A PRAYER FOR THE DAY
Our gracious God and loving Father,
You have loved us and by your grace you have given us eternal encouragement and good hope, we turn our hearts to you once more, and praise you for your fatherly love for us.
Thank you that you know our frailty and our transiency.
Remind us of your everlasting love, and teach us to respond to all your mercies by laying down our whole embodied lives as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to you, which is the spiritual act of worship you deserve.
We ask these things, in the precious name of our Redeemer,
Amen.
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