Virus as a Summons to Faith

I have just read Walter Brueggemann’s “Virus as a Summons to Faith: Biblical Reflections in a Time of Loss, Grief, and Uncertainty”. It is an interesting reflection on what faith says to a time of pandemic.

Brueggemann explores how the Bible, especially the Old Testament, addresses such moments. Citing Jeremiah, he points out the futility of suggesting that God somehow magically sorts out the things that go drastically wrong – “More than any other witness in the Old Testament, Jeremiah leans most deeply and most honestly into the disaster of his people. He takes the failure of social assemblies as a sign of the death of the city. When the city cannot assemble for rites of passage it is sure evidence that social life has failed. Indeed among us, it is only the foolish who insist on assembling, among them pastors who insist that Jesus will protect us from the virus.”

However, he also makes clear that the note of hope is still to be sounded – “The prophet anticipates that in this place of waste, disaster, and devastation the sounds of festival celebration will again be heard. Life will resume in its rich social thickness. Amid the sounds of social gladness there will be songs of thank offering sung to the God who restores and revivifies.”

The point is that we need to be ready to move on, and actively looking to do so, tempting thought it may be to do otherwise. “In our moment of fear and insecurity, we may be tempted to hold on to what was once safe and secure. Prophetic tradition knows, to the contrary, that the future does not reside in old treasured realities. It belongs, rather, to bold faithful thought that evokes bold faithful action. This has always been the prophetic task, and it is now, in this freighted moment, our prophetic task. The new thing God is making possible is a world of generous, neighborly compassion.” The essential message is that God is with us, come what may, but, alongside that, is a reminder that change is part of the given patterns of life, and if there are things that are challenging us to a greater change than usual – “We can embrace a new normal that is God’s gift to us!”

Adjusting will be challenging – “newness is never cozy; it arrives through a struggle that turns out to be birth, though along the way the struggle might have been mistaken for death pangs. Newness is not easy for the God who will create a homecoming for exiles, according to this poet. Newness is not easy in creation that is too long in the grip of deathliness.”