The Flea
And Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. Mark 11:22-24 ESV
Have faith – The Black Death was one of history’s most influential pandemics. In the space of four years, it killed between 75 and 200 million people. The Plague had shattering effects on Europe’s political, economic, and religious systems. In particular, the constant presence of death, the unremitting extinction of entire communities, and the fact that the Church was unable to stop it led to a mass exodus from some parts of Europe and a wholesale abandonment of Christian belief. Why? Why did people abandon their faith because of a flea? The answer is found in this verse in Mark. As the Plague killed more and more people, it became obvious that the Church had no power to protect its congregants. Moreover, since priests and nuns attended to the sick, and ended up dying themselves, the populace could only conclude that the God of heaven was either terribly angry with the religious hierarchy or was impotent in the face of the Devil. When the Pope initiated a special mass to plead for forgiveness and healing, nothing happened except more death. In the battle with the flea, the Church lost.
We would do well today to remember this mass devastation from the 14th century. It changed everything about life in the West. So when we read a definition of faith like this one, “faith is a conviction or persuasion that something is true,”[1]we should shudder at the implications. According to this idea, faith isn’t necessarily about what is true. It is only about convincing ourselves that something is true. The people of the Middle Ages believed what the Church taught them about God. He was all-powerful and the protector of the righteous. Then along came the flea, and their conviction that God would take care of the penitent, the obedient, the ones who tithed and said their daily prayers—all of that went straight into the grave. No amount of “faith” saved anyone, no matter how hard they believed.
It’s difficult to imagine the utter collapse of religious hope that people experienced in the Plague. But it’s not so hard to imagine how we would react if six of every ten people we knew died within five days of contracting a disease that had no cure. We might pray. We might attend services. We might weep before the Creator. But nothing stops the death toll, and in our hearts we might just give up on God. Yes, we would remember Job’s declaration that he would continue to have faith even if God were to kill him, but those are words printed in a book, not vocalizations when we look in the mirror. Hope disappeared in those days. And if we were alive then, it just might have disappeared for us too. Today we ride the cusp of a new religious optimism—the promised prosperity of God. But we haven’t yet encountered the flea, have we?
Topical Index: Black Death, Plague, flea, faith, Mark 11:22-24
