This week's reflection is from RevDevin, our Associate Vicar
I debated posting about my vaccination status to Facebook and Twitter — younger friends in the UK are still waiting their turn, and other friends may medically be unable to be vaccinated, and above all I don't usually share information about my personal health online. And yet, Cambridge has one of the lower vaccine take-ups in the UK. Back home in the States it's even worse — after a successful first round of jabs, there are significant numbers of people refusing vaccination. Sharing my willingness to be vaccinated might encourage others to do the same. We don't get vaccinated for ourselves. We get vaccinated to protect others — because when enough of us are vaccinated, transmission drops dramatically. The problem should be familiar to us as Christians. As Archbishop Temple is said to have taught, "The Church exists primarily for the sake of those who are still outside it." The full quote from William Temple is a little meatier, however, and asks more of us as Christians and as a church. It's worth a careful read: “Only in His own gift of Himself is it reasonable to expect that all men will find what they need; only in a Church which is the vehicle of this gift, and is known to be this, and not a mutual benefit society organised by its own members for their several and collective advantage—only in a Church expressive of Divine transcendence can all nations find a home.”1 We get the jab when we can, for others even more than for ourselves; we come to church to be refreshed and renewed not for our own self-satisfaction, but in order to go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
Devin
1 William Temple, Church and Nation: The Bishop Paddock Lectures for 1914-15, Lecture II. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43896