In late February of 2022, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford, delivered a sermon to his Silicon Valley church on the theme of “clean and unclean.” As he spoke of Christ’s revolutionary compassion in physically touching lepers and other diseased outcasts of the ancient world, he paused to reflect on how our society — in which 64 percent of the population professes to follow Jesus — conducted itself over the last two years.
“I started receiving emails almost immediately after the pandemic started from doctors and nurses asking me if it was okay to hug their wives and their husbands,” Bhattacharya shared from the metal music stand serving as his pulpit. “Because they worked in the hospital, they were unclean. Your COVID patients, they were unclean.”
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