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Flanked by weeping
relatives, a Spanish-American couple sat in the shimmering heat of
Sutter Cemetery, holding hands and staring dully at the brass coffin
that held the remains of their seventeen year old son Bobby. Six of
Bobby’s classmates placed their white carnation boutonnieres on the
coffin. Bobby’s young niece threw herself on the coffin and sobbed
brokenly. Several in the large crowd also cried; Bobby’s father only
shook his head a couple of times as though he had been struck and moved
woodenly with his wife toward the green limousine at the head of the
long entourage. In the same cemetery, Mrs. Harry Rosenbrau watched
dry-eyed as her son was buried. He died on his sixteenth birthday.
Pamela Engstrom, wearing a blue and white gingham dress, a gift from her
mother, had died the day of her eighteenth birthday. The victims also
included twins, Carlene and Sharlene, 18, who loved to sing songs
composed by their mother. So it was in Eagle City, California over
twenty years ago, as fifteen thousand citizens mourned their dead. A bus
bearing 53 members of the local choir and their chaperones, ripped
through a guard rail as it turned on to an exit ramp. The bus plunged 21
feet to the ground, landed on its top, wheels spinning and roof crushed
down to the seats. The final toll, 29 dead and 25 injured. The boys and
girls had gone through junior high together; they were only three weeks
from graduation. Many of them had gone to their prom on the previous
Saturday. Said Karen Hess, 18, the president of the student body, “This
is the first time most of us have ever had close friends die.”
I planned on preaching
a sermon on work today, but I thought, given the week’s events, it would
be better to talk a little bit more about suffering, about pain, and
about death. Not to bum you out, but I think we have to think about
these things from time to time, especially in light of events in the
past week. We have witnessed a monumental tragedy and yet tragedy in
this world is played out everyday. Events like this bus tragedy happen
almost everyday. But then individuals suffer everyday and go through all
kinds of hell. With a hurricane it just magnified this thousands of
times. What do we do with this? How do we deal with it as Christians?
I’ve chosen a couple
of scripture passages in which Jesus is asked about suffering. These are
two interesting passages because Jesus is asked a question but He, as
always, doesn’t really give a straight answer to it. But listen to what
He does say. In the theology of the time, if bad things happen to
people, it is because they had done something bad. So there was a
one-to-one correlation with it. Now we might say, “How could they think
such things?” But we do too. It’s interesting, even on the golf course
when I go out and play with people. They joke with me about how I play;
when I hit a good shot they say it’s because I’ve had a good life. Or if
I make a good putt, it doesn’t depend on how good or bad I’ve been but
rather on whether I can putt or not. But we always have these phrases;
“You must be living right.” Well certainly if we are living right, good
things happen. But not always. So Jesus addresses this theology that
just because something bad happened to someone, that they’ve suffered.
First in Luke 13, beginning in verse 1-5:
Now there were some
present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood
Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, “Do you think
that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans
because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent,
you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in
Siloam fell on them – do you think they were more guilty than all the
others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you
too will all perish.”
The next one comes
from John 9:1-5, dealing with the story of the blind man. The question
is: Why is he blind? Did he sin or his parents? Listen to Jesus’ answer
very carefully.
As he went along, he
saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned,
this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor
his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of
God might be displayed in his life. As long as it is day, we must do the
work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I
am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
This is the word of
the Lord.
I think the first
question about New Orleans, and I’ve even been asked it this week, is:
Was God punishing this city? Or, perhaps: Is God punishing our country?
Believe me, I haven’t heard it yet, but I haven’t really listened a
whole lot to the TV or the radio, but someone will preach this today.
Someone will say it on the radio or the newspaper. There might be some
folks in churches who say that God is punishing New Orleans because it
is a den of sin, after all, the home of the Mardi Gras among other
things. Some others might claim that God is punishing the United States
because of the war in Iraq or something else. It may not be said quite
that way, but the meaning will be the same. Is God punishing New
Orleans? Well, we have to be careful about this. The Bible is very
clear; God does judge. God does even punish a person or groups of
people. We see it in the Bible; Sodom and Gomorrah or the famous city of
Nineveh, the city that Jonah went to. In the Bible there are whole
groups of peoples that some prophets said would not exist because of
God’s judgment and, lo and behold, they’re not here anymore. The
Hittites for example are no longer here. God dealt with them in history.
But we have to be very
careful. We have to be careful not to have blanket conclusions like
this. Did New Orleans sin anymore than Minneapolis or Denver or San
Francisco or Berlin or Nairobi? Or any other place? I doubt that.
Certainly there were many of God’s people suffering right along with the
folks in New Orleans, good and bad. The fact is that things happen and
sometimes we just don’t know why they happen. Maybe we’ll be able to see
that in Heaven. I personally have a long “Why” list and quite frankly I
believe that when I get to Heaven I won’t need it. But it comforts me
now, to think that God will listen to us. When you see God, you might be
like Isaiah and say, “Woe is me,” and it may not matter. But it’s
comforting now. Why, Lord? I don’t think that God minds questions. In
this particular case I don’t believe that God was punishing New Orleans
but there are consequences.
This brings us to
another question: Whose fault is it? Is it God’s fault? Well, I believe
that God is in control of all things; the Bible says so. But I think
sometimes God gets blamed for a lot of things that are, at least,
exacerbated by human beings. You know there are famines in the world
where things don’t grow and there’s dust and no rains, but a lot of
famines are caused by war or by governments who won’t allow people to be
fed or by all kinds of things. History is full of these things; genocide
by starving people to death. What about New Orleans? Well, I don’t know
about New Orleans but I almost think this will go down as a monument to
incredible sin and stupidity of human beings. Now don’t walk out of here
saying that Pastor Carlson thinks that all those people deserve what
they got. I’m not saying that at all. But there are consequences to
building a city and then walling it around by a hill when it’s below sea
level. By doing that, the city is sinking anyway, and then not to take
care of the levee… We’re not going to sit around and point fingers. Now
these poor souls are suffering for an incredible stupidity on somebody’s
part. It’s not just one person, it’s years and years. Everybody knew
this was coming. But we human beings don’t do well about planning, not
even in our own lives. We live in denial of the fact that we will all
die. We don’t like to think about it, we change the subject because it
hurts too much or costs too much. We don’t prepare and then we blame God
when things happen. God is in control. I believe that with all my heart.
And I don’t know why God allows things to happen, but He does, He set
the world into motion, He set the water patterns into motion, He set the
Earth into motion. The universe is in motion; He is in control of
things. Sometimes He chooses to stop natural development, sometimes He
chooses not to.
This leads us to the
next question: Could God have helped it? I think we have to say yes. But
there is a school of thought out there which, in order to comfort
people, says that God can’t help it. I’ve given the example of the book
that appeared many years ago titled, “Why Bad Things Happen to Good
People.” The Rabbi comes up with the conclusion that God is powerless to
stop evil. That may seem comforting, on the surface of it, but as I said
before, think about that for a minute…how scary that is. If God can’t
help evil, is He going to win in the end? Are things ever going to get
better? I’d rather have a God that I didn’t understand totally than a
God who is powerless. Wouldn’t you? I realize this is a rhetorical
question, but wouldn’t you? God can help it.
In the scripture in
Luke, Jesus addresses these ideas of who sinned. He says things like,
“Unless you repent, you too will perish.” He is not simply talking about
physical death, he’s talking about perishing. Everybody faces the same
kind of judgment; it doesn’t mean that if the sky falls on someone that
they are worse than anyone else. It’s just the way it is. Or in the
passage in John, Jesus is almost casual about saying, “This man was born
blind so that God could demonstrate His power.” On one level that might
scare us; does God use us this way? Well, yes. But it’s not a bad thing.
Again, I’d rather be in God’s hands than in my own. I’ve run away from
God just like anyone else. I don’t always want Him to control my life.
But if you just think about it, would you rather be in control of your
life or have God in control? God does use us. And thank God He does.
What do we do about
all of this? I can’t give you all of the answers; it is a mystery at
times. It is a mystery to me why God allows all of this to happen. It’s
a mystery why God allows little girls to be kidnapped and abused by
people. It’s a mystery to me why some people die of cancer and some
people do not. It’s a mystery in a lot of ways. But there is a sense in
which we have to make a choice: to believe that God is good and knows
what He is doing even when we don’t understand it…even in the appearance
to us of God not knowing what He is doing, there is a sense in which we
must accept that suffering is a part of life. It’s not in the sense of
giving up or being stoic about it, but being determined. It’s written in
the Bible that when Jesus came to the end of his ministry and knew he
was going to the cross, it says he set his face toward Jerusalem. The
idea was that he was determined, in the face of suffering, to go through
with it. We have to have the same determination and courage. You know,
I’ve said this many times, but it takes courage to grow old, it takes
courage to live life because we all wear out. So we accept suffering as
a part of life, but not stoically, not passively. We are to be active in
it; we not only accept it, we go out and comfort those who hurt and we
weep who mourn. That’s part of what we need to do. There’s an old story
about a farmer who got his tractor stuck in the mud. He called a friend
to help him get it out. They worked and worked and tried to get it out.
His friend said to him, “I can’t help you get your tractor out of the
mud, but I can sit here with you.” That’s what we have to do
sometimes…sit in the mud with each other.
We’re also called to
alleviate suffering as much as we can; to do what we can. As I said last
week about the orphanage, we can’t help everybody, but we can help
pieces of the world. We alleviate suffering in lives, around us, and in
the world as much as possible. We’re called to do that. And then we are
also called to learn the lessons of pain and suffering. It’s been said
many times that often because we are so hard-headed, so stubborn and
self-centered, we don’t learn much of anything unless it hurts. The
world thinks that life is all about living as long as possible, as
comfortably as possible. We buy into that. We buy into that everyday.
But suffering complicates that. Phillip Yancey said something I quote
all the time. He said, “We could believe that the purpose of life here
is to be comfortable, enjoy yourself, build a nice home, engorge good
food, have sex, live the good life. That’s all there is. But the
presence of suffering complicates that philosophy. It’s much harder to
believe that the world is here so I can party when a third of its people
go to bed starving each night. It’s much harder to believe that the
purpose of life is to feel good when I see teenagers smashed up on the
freeway. If I try to escape the idea and merely enjoy life, suffering is
there haunting me, unless we live in denial.” And a lot of us do. The
presence of suffering, hurricanes, and death…it really hasn’t started.
When the water goes down and they do the burying, that’s when we will
see the weeping and wailing. When they start pulling the bodies out of
the houses, that’s when it will hurt. What do we do with that? Change
our perspective, perhaps…do something, do what we can, and pray.
Last but not least,
trust God. Yes, trust God. Who else can we trust? Think about it for a
minute; God has not circumvented suffering ever. After all, what is that
thing right there? That thing [cross] is a horrible thing in a way. It’s
an instrument of suffering, of torture. And yet it is the symbol of our
faith. If we were really to have a cross up there, it ought to be blood
stained with nails in it to remind us that God entered this world. He
didn’t stay out there in the universe somewhere. He entered this world
and became one of us and suffered and died for us. God does not give us
all the answers; it is steadfastly in the scriptures. Read them through.
Read Job again. God doesn’t give all the answers to Job. Job just sees
God in a whirlwind. Jesus doesn’t give answers to the suffering; He just
says, “Repent.” He didn’t give answers to the suffering; he says, “God
is using this for His glory and His honor and His work.” It’s not
satisfying sometimes. But he simply says, “Trust me. I’m good. I’ve got
it well in hand. I’ve entered the world. I’ve redeemed it and I’m
working.” That doesn’t mean we don’t cry or hurt or look at the world
passively or look at the world and just blow it off. But it does mean
that we can live with courage. We can live with confidence that our God
is our God and our Lord is our Lord. I’ll leave you with that this
morning, especially as we partake of the Supper. The Supper is a
memorial of suffering. Listen to the words again, “On the night he was
betrayed, Jesus took bread. And he gave thanks. And he said this is my
broken body and shed blood.” And that Supper right there gives us hope
because it not only points to that suffering but also to a future which
is ours in Christ, a life now that is ours in Christ. Yes, indeed my
friends, God is the Lord. I’m not saying suffering doesn’t matter,
because it does. But in the end, we trust a God who will win!
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