Faith and superstition under the sign of Corona

To what extent is corona changing our faith?

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Introduction

Today I would like to start with a so-called fun fact, i.e. useless knowledge, but somehow funny.

Do you know which drug has done the most for species conservation? In other words, for the protection of endangered species? You'll never know unless you've heard it somewhere.

It is Viagra. The fact that this drug really works against erectile dysfunction in men has reduced the demand for so-called traditional aphrodisiacs such as snake blood and rhino horn powder and fewer rare animals are being processed into sexual enhancers.

Ultimately, these so-called traditional remedies are actually only based on superstition and therefore have no effect beyond the placebo effect.

Placebo effect, briefly explained, means that a drug without active ingredients can still work if the patient or the doctor administering it believes that it will work. However, this placebo effect also has its limits and this has also been proven in studies on Viagra.

This placebo effect has been bothering me a bit. There are two mausoleums in Iran (in Mashad and Ghom) that are visited by millions of pilgrims every year. The faithful seek healing by kissing the metal rods in front of the shrines (see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19-Pandemie_im_Iran). This has been practised for decades, until now, and here the religious authorities were faced with a problem. The Shiite clergy have always proclaimed that healing can be found there. And now corona seems to be stronger.

The situation is similar with various pilgrimages in the Catholic world. Many pilgrimages have been organised in the past to help overcome crises and epidemics. And now they have to be cancelled because of coronavirus. In Lourdes, where many people believe that you can experience healing by bathing in spring water and believing in Mary, the baths have also been closed. There is already a petition in favour of reopening the baths (see https://www.katholisch.de/artikel/24712-wegen-coronavirus-lourdes-schliesst-pilgerbecken):

It states that Catholics around the world are "shocked and outraged". There has never been an infection in the pools. Even if you were to bathe in the same pool in Lourdes as someone infected with coronavirus, there could be no infection, "because the pools are not places of sin, but of faith". It is faith, not medicine, that makes miracles possible. Anyone who fears that the pools in Lourdes pose a risk of infection "denies the power of God and the promise of Our Lady and thus the significance of Lourdes".

I believe that the coronavirus is forcing believers to rethink certain aspects of their faith. In the free church world, there are no such (I'm being somewhat disrespectful) "magical" places. There is no Baptist spring and you don't get well by visiting the grave of Johann Gerhard Oncken. I don't think the Bible provides anything like that either.

Our parish hall is not a magical place, but we need to think about how we continue with the church service. We fundamentally need the community in the church service, which is basically good for us. But it's still difficult: is it small-mindedness to be afraid that worshippers will catch the virus? Or is it reckless to simply meet now as before, like Jesus in the desert, where Satan lifts him up onto the temple and says, "Throw yourself down, nothing will happen to you"?

I don't have an answer yet and still feel very unsure about it.

But I am sure that God still performs miracles today, but we cannot force them and there is no automatic mechanism for them. We can pray and God answers prayer.

The paralysed man by the pond

Now I would like to look at a Bible text with you and there really is a kind of "magical place" (John 5:1-9; NL):

1 Then Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. 2 Inside the city walls, near the Sheep Gate, there is a pool with five pillared halls, called Bethesda in Hebrew. 3 Crowds of sick people - blind, paralysed or crippled - lay in the halls.

and waited for a certain movement of the water, for from time to time an angel of the Lord came and moved the water. And whoever stepped into the water first was healed.

5 One of the men lying there had been ill for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him and learnt how long he had been ill, he asked him, "Do you want to get well?" 7 "Lord, I cannot," said the sick man, "for I have no one to carry me into the pool when the water moves. While I am still trying to get in, someone else is already getting in ahead of me." 8 Jesus said to him, "Get up, take your mat and walk!" 9 In an instant, the man was healed! He rolled up the mat and began to walk around.

So are there such magical places after all? In fact, I don't know exactly how seriously I should take this verse 4 with the angel, because you will probably only find it in your Bible in a footnote with the comment "some manuscripts add".

For me, this doesn't really fit in with the rest of the Bible, but on the other hand, God doesn't conform to my idea of how he should be, so it's quite possible. But then it would also have to be measurable if you want to claim such a supernatural, divine healing power for places today. The first person to step into the water after it was moved was healed. That could actually be easily measured and proven. And the fact that many sick people stayed and waited there strongly suggests that healing took place after the water was moved.

For the message of this text it is actually not important whether this water movement really has a healing power or not.

What was the situation like? Crowds of sick people were camped out in these halls waiting. And I think some of them had been waiting for quite a long time. What happened when the water started to move? There was probably pushing and shoving to be the first and the fittest people made it and the more helpless ones were left waiting in the wings.

The patient confirms this: there was always someone there before him. He was always too short and always too late. There was a solution to his problem, but he was incapable of utilising it. It's a bit of an image for the "every man forges his own destiny" way of life. Of course, you would think that if you make an effort, you can get your life together.

No, it doesn't have to be like that. I don't want to talk about laziness, but sometimes you don't get it right, even though it should work somehow.

From the looks of it, the paralysed man could have been healed by the water, but couldn't manage it. Who knows how long he had been lying there and how often the water had been moved!

The first question that Jesus asks the paralysed man is one that he has already asked other people in the Bible:

"Do you want to get better?"

"Or have you settled into your situation in such a way that you are quite content in your complaining?" Of course, Jesus didn't say that, but I could imagine that with the first question Jesus wanted to make the paralysed man think about the unspoken second question.

The paralysed person replies with "I can't". He wants to, but he can't do it.

And then comes the tragic postscript "I have no one".

Can we manage to live community in the congregation in such a way that nobody has to say: "I have no one"? That is certainly a goal of our community.

But the paralysed person is simply fixated on the magical place, just like the metal rods in the mausoleums in Iran, just like the spring in Lourdes, which according to Wikipedia is normal spring water, and many other places where people go on pilgrimage to receive help.

Jesus is not interested in the water at all. He could have helped him to be the first to enter the moving water, or he could have moved the water with his divine power.

But Jesus helps him like this, just like that, regardless of the solution that the paralysed man has probably clung to for many years. Jesus doesn't need these magical places and rituals, he can help just like that.

Questions remain unanswered in this text. Why didn't Jesus simply heal everyone? There were many sick people. I can't answer that, but it shows me that we can't instrumentalise Jesus according to the motto, if I do this and that or if I am in a certain place, then I will be healed. It just doesn't work that way.

But Jesus enters into dialogue with the paralysed man and I am sure that he also wants to enter into dialogue with each of us: Do we want change in our lives? Change for the better? What is preventing us personally from making such an improvement? And Jesus can go completely different ways with us than we imagine.

Summary