Sermon for Sunday June 21st

This has been a difficult week. A difficult week for a lot of you and a hard week for the towns in our area as a whole. If you have not heard, we’ve experienced a couple of dramatic crises this past week involving the youth in our area, including a car crash and the tragic death of one young man in the river that we live so close to everyday. Throughout all of these events, our hearts go out to the family and friends of those affected. But if we think that THEY are the only ones affected we are very wrong. We are all affected, quite personally, by these things even if we do not have know anything about the people involved, what happened or how things occurred. Why? Because we understand that it is not right that a young person should die or suffer in any way. It’s one thing when something awful happens to an adult, but when a child gets hurt or killed, we search our hearts and minds for an answer why.

And so, this past week, some of you may have wondered out loud or asked yourself silently. Why did this happen? How could this have happened? Or, to be more precise, “Why did God let this happen?” These are children, caught up in the primes of their lives, and yet God just lets them drown or run off the road or live with the guilt of surviving. We seek answers to justify these events, of course, hoping that if we could justify their happening or explain why things happened the way they did, it would all make more sense. We do this to defend ourselves. Because if we can understand why something took plac3, we do not have to be afraid of dying or getting hurt ourselves and our fear of death is placated. But, more importantly, if we can explain why something happened we can get God off the hook. For God to ALLOW these things to happen, he looks impotent and incompetent—unworthy of our praise. For God to MAKE this happen, he appears to be cruel, heartless and capricious.

We are not the first people in the history of the planet to run up against this dilemma. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do bad things happen to bad people? Why do bad things happen at all when we believe that the creator of the universe is a loving and compassionate God? We can only blame ourselves, our sins, our mistakes or our stupidity so long before we come up against the wall of God—he is finally responsible for both life and death. How can you love God after this past week of suffering? How will you continue to love God after you experience any great suffering in your life?

The book of Job tries to speak to this issue. Job was a man who had everything going for him. He had a big family. He was rich and, more importantly than all of this, he was righteous in God’s eyes. As God puts it, “There is no one like Job on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil.” But, Satan challenges God to allow sickness to affect Job and to take away all the blessings in his life. Satan argues that Job only loves God because good things happen to him. If all those good things were taken away: his health, his possessions, his family and his livelihood, the bet is that Job will curse God. Satan knows that when bad things happen to good people, the first reaction is to lose faith.

Job’s family is killed, all of them, in one day. His land is destroyed and all his possessions are taken away. Then he is afflicted with an awful skin disease and left to suffer alone. Eventually, three of his friends come to sit with him, but after a week of silence, they ask him the obvious theological question: What did you do to deserve this Job? What did you do wrong Job? Job answered that he had done nothing wrong.

You see, we think we DO understand why bad things happen to bad people. It reflects some kind of justice in our eyes and, even though it’s difficult to understand why a loving and forgiving God would allow awful things to happen, we can chalk it up to the victim’s bad behavior most of the time. That’s all that Job’s friends were doing. They were just assuming that Job must have done something wrong in order to get in so much trouble with God. And yet, Job insists that he hasn’t done anything to deserve what is happening to him. He maintains that this situation is truly something bad happening to a good person—him.

Job maintains his innocence. He demands an answer from God for what is happening to him. What gives? Why does he deserve such harsh treatment from a God he has always loved and served? In one of today’s readings, God gives his answer.

But God’s answer is not what you might expect. We want God to justify himself for his utter carelessness or justify himself for his meanness. Or, even better, we want to justify ourselves so that we either deserve our fate or deserve our fortune. But God neither justifies his actions, nor does he explain to us, or to Job, why bad things happen to good people. He simply makes the point that he is the creator of all things, whether good or bad in our eyes.

Job passes the test. He shows his faithfulness by looking to God for the answer to the problem of God. He cries out to God. Many others have simply lost their faith and turned to themselves or to other “spiritualities” for comfort when faced with the problem of God, rather than crying out to God for the answer. Many have left the faith when great suffering comes into their life. Perhaps because right in the middle of their greatest time of need, most Christians, and most of us, argue for God’s innocence, thus making him appear either implausible or powerless. If we cannot cry out at God in our suffering, as Jesus does on the cross, why would we bother praising him when suffering has passed? Job continues to look to God for the answers and ends up with a God who is faithful to him.

At this time in our community, you will no doubt ask yourself how God could allow such awful things as car accidents and drownings to occur. Some others might even challenge you to explain how you can still believe in a good God when so much suffering appears in this world. Where are you going to turn in these times? Where have you turned?

We cannot praise God as a creator, finally, because much of what he has created terrifies us. So, he has given us Jesus Christ crucified. We will not and finally cannot worship God in his infinite glory, so we worship him in suffering-on a cross. When God looks like your enemy, run. Run to the arms of Jesus where you can find a loving God who is for you, rather than against you.

God has not abandoned you nor has he abandoned any of those who have suffered so much this past week. But we are still threatened by God, both by what we see as his justice and by what we deem as his capriciousness. He is our creator and we, the creatures. He always will have the advantage and the upper hand. The only answer to Job’s dilemma, and ours, is Jesus. For only in Jesus do we see God’s final word is not suffering. Not car accidents. Not wars. Not death. Not tragedy. But hope, love and eternal life . Amen.