SOMEONE TO BLAME
The British are well known in the world for talking about the weather, and boy, have we not been talking about the weather in the last few weeks?.
And I must admit, in London we had a sprinkling, but here in Reading it looks like you have had mountains of the stuff.
Our coldest snap since 1963, from space a satellite picture showed the whole of the UK white with snow, we’ve talked about black ice, wind chill factor, and lots about grit!
Some people have battled to go to work in true Blitz like spirit, where others have used it as an excuse to stay-at-home and go sledging with the kids, who were having a great time because schools were closed.
Back in 1963, AT LEAST AS FAR AS MY PARENTS REMEMBER IT] schools didn’t close, people carried on with shovels, no central heating and lots of jumpers…the british were still remembering the wartime spirit. They were hardy then!
But today, TELL ME IF I'M WRONG] people seem to have developed a dependency culture, THEY SEEM TO NEED someone somewhere to blame, the government because it snowed, the council because of no grit, the next door neighbour because they didn’t clear their driveway well enough…whinge, whinge, whinge.
People love to complain, that’s true, and when something bad happens we want someone to blame, to point our finger at….we are living in A BLAME CULTURE WHICH SEEMS, LIKE MOST THINGS THESE DAYS, TO HAVE CROSSED THE ATLANTIC. IN THE UNITED STATES, THEY SEEM TO sue for almost everything, some of the silliest claims I heard was a man suing Elvis Presley for stealing his sideburns!!, and the ultimate claim from a man who sued his Church after Hurricane Hugo destroyed his house, the newscasters said it was an Act of God, he decided to sue, and guess what he WON!!!
You see when bad things like natural disasters happen , there’s no-one else to blame, but GOD, look at the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti just a few days ago, one of the poorest Countries in the world it’s people already suffer, now the suffering is beyond belief, the haiti prime minister believes the deatyh toll will far exceed the 200,00 death count of the tsunami, and remember this is just one country. Insurance companies call them ‘acts of God’, nobody is to blame-nobody except God…..that is!
There’s plenty of stuff in the bible about such things, these questions and attitudes are as old as the bhills. We are going to see how several voices in the Old testament sound as if they are speaking in our own times, instead of three thousand years ago, particularly the Psalmist, Job and the feisty old sixth century prophet Jeremiah…but the question on many people’s lips then and now is “Why would a loving God allow innocent people to die? Why would God allow this to happen?
The questions that these natural disasters raise, are not new, or different from the questions faith always ask in the face of suffering and loss. The Book of Job and Jeremiah, the laments of the psalms, the passion narrative all testify to the Bible’s scrutiny of human pain. Sometimes as in Psalm 88, that we have just heard, it’s as if the light just GOES OUT, sheer despair with the single word ‘Darkness’. The psalmist pours his soul out to God in his desperation, why God, there’s no word of trust in this Psalm, there’s no glance heavenward…the psalmist is weighed down into the darkness and the depths.
In a way psalm 88 makes us see that god’s not challenged or put off by our expressions of despair, let’s look at Job’s laments, how many times did Job challenge God about his life of woe, the book of Job consists of the human quest for an explanation on suffering, you just have to read …Job 19 verse10
He batters me from every side, he uproots my hope…And leaves me to wither and die.
And her’s job 23 verse1-3
I still rebel and complain against god, I can’t hold back my groaning.
How I wish I knew where to find him and knew how to go where he is.
…..And what about the ‘weeping’ Prophet Jeremiah’s question…WHY DO GOOD PEOPLE SUFFER AND WICKED PEOPLE THRIVE?"
We have always lived in a world full of threat and risk, the universe is a violent place, full of volcanic eruptions, tetonic collisions, meteorite impacts, climate changes, but without the movement of tetonic plates, there would be no mountains, no rivers, no forests, nothing, humanity would not exist at all. Only a universe of danger and flux could give birth to us…risk and accident are the price we pay for being here.
God could have made the universe in such a way that nothing ever went wrong, but he didn’t, he created a World that is free to be itself and so are we constantly changing and evolving, geologically and spiritually.
We all get angry at God some time in our lives when we lose someone we love, whether it’s through tragedy, illness, a young life cut short, we feel numb and destroyed by the loss, the anger and helplessness is also there, anger at God, and HELPLESSNESS in the face of a world where totally unreasonable tragedy falls on the innocent and unsuspecting, but if we stand back we see GOD IS THE VICTIM TOO.
He was among the rubble and dust of Port au Prince on Wednesday, he was sobbing with the Father over his dead child, he was there with the dying on the floor of the hospital, he was digging with his hands at the bricks and the stones of the collapsed buildings ….in these terrible disasters that hit our world…GOD IS THE VICTIM TOO
He is not far from those who suffer, who die, or are bereaved, he is right beside them holding them up, supporting them, weeping with them , he is there in the compassion and the love of others ….like the german tourist giving morphine out in that haitian hospital ….all she said was “I came here to help”
And we see day by day , children being rescued from under the rubble, by teams of rescuers and aid agencies….WE KNOW GOD IS THERE.
What we need to do is raise our faces to the image of christ on the cross, as hope that god entered into all the pain and loss, and is more believable than ever as a loving and caring God.
He sent his son to live and die on Earth and to suffer with us, to suffer with humanity on the cross, but Christians believe that his death on the cross changed death itself, he made death a pathway to Resurrection, to new life, to a new creation where there is no more death or mourning or pain.
This assurance of hope is to be found in that wonderful passage from Romans 8 we’ve just heard. Paul addresses the believers in Rome with one of his most powerful arguments concerning God’s love expressed in Christ, it tells us despite how difficult life gets , how many troubles we will have to endure, Christ’s love promises us hope that he will bring something good out of even the worst circumstances, if we open our lives to his everlasting love.
No challenge is too small, Christ’s love will sustain us through our greatest sufferings, giving us that hope that ‘nothing can separate us from the love of Christ”
That love can continue to grow even on the soil of the worst pain and the deepest doubt, even when we reach the edge of unbelief, something will stop us in our tracks and we will stand back and see the action of God in the world that will always be there, making love possible.
Although the world is a risky volatile threatening place, what love can do in it is never exhausted, because it’s rooted in God’s action it’s strength is immense, it will be battered, it will be crucified, it will be bruised, and abused …..but it will never BE DESTROYED.
As long as there is life on Earth, there will be pain and suffering, as long as there is life on earth, there will be unreasonable tragedies, we have no promise of a fair and pain free life, but as Hans Kung the Swiss theolgian put’s it so wonderfully
“BELIEF IN GOD DOESN’T MEAN WE WON’T HAVE TO SUFFER, BUT IT DOES MEAN WE WON’T HAVE TO SUFFER ALONE”
You see GOD WILL NEVER LEAVE US OR FORSAKE US, AND HE WILL ALWAYS BE WITH US TO THE END OF THE AGE.
AMEN
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