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The Reverend Doctor Rodney S. Sadler is an Associate Professor of Bible and Director of the Center for Social Justice and Reconciliation Union Presbyterian Seminary.
The Reverend Doctor Melissa Sexton is a post-doctoral fellow in the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at the Morehouse School of Medicine and an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church. Dr. Sexton is completing a practicum with the Interfaith Health Program as part of her fellowship; as part of that work, she is interviewing those with particular insights into the religious and spiritual dimensions of the COVID-19 outbreak and our responses to it.
In this interview, Dr. Sadler discusses the vacuum of leadership in the United States in responding to the COVID-19 outbreak. Dr. Sadler discusses the convergence of so many negative factors impacting the country at this moment. In such times, Dr. Sadler encourages people of faith to remember that the ultimate source of trust must be in God. The challenge for us in the midst of the kind of challenge that COVID-19 presents is to reflect on how we place our trust in God.
Dr. Sadler reflects on the 3rd chapter of the book of Exodus and God’s call to Moses to go and speak to the Pharaoh to demand that he free the people of God. Moses replies, “Who am I?” In response to this question, God doesn’t remind Moses of his own capacities and gifts; rather, God simply replies, “I am with you.” God was with Moses and God is with us, sustaining and supporting us.
Since God is with us, a light shines even in the midst of dark times. And this light is revealing the racial disparities that exist in this pandemic. COVID-19 is revealing that something is seriously wrong with our society. Because God is with us, we can speak truth to power and work to dismantle sinful structures and systems to create a more fair, just, and egalitarian society. In this way, this crisis is both danger and opportunity: an opportunity to change the ways we’ve been doing things, things that do not work.