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Sunday, June 25, 2006
Where Was God?
8th in a series on Spirituality and The Arts
By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz
Psalm 1
1 Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers; 2 but their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night. 3 They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper.
4 The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. 5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; 6 for the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
I would like you to put yourself in the place of the persons many years ago who were editing the book of Psalms. They have a collection of 150 or so worship songs and poems and those range from celebrations of life and faith like the one we started with today to laments of sadness and grief and fear, to coronation Psalms for the crowning of a new king in Israel.
If you were putting all those together in a collection, what would you choose for the opening Psalm. Psalm number one?
The choice that was made was a good one I think; Psalm 1 reminds us of the importance of building our life on God and the principles of life God offers to us, and says that the person who does that is like a tree planted by a stream that will thrive and flourish forever!
Those who build their lives on something shallower will not flourish and thrive—even though it may not seem that way on the surface.
It is at the end of this wonderful Psalm that a promise seems to be made that people might misunderstand: “The Lord watches over the way of righteous.” Another translation says, “The Lord cherishes the way of the righteous” I like that better.
But the impression that people can get is that placing our faith in God is a quid pro quo deal—that if we center our lives on God, God will watch over us and nothing bad will happen to us! Unfortunately, this simple message is reinforced in other Psalms and in some of the Proverbs as well. On the other hand, it is made fun of in the book of Ecclesiastes where the author says he has seen good people suffering and bad people thriving, so the quid pro quo guarantee does not work.
But still many people believe that under the surface. Why didn’t God take better care of me? Why does God allow evil in the world? There must not be a God, some say, if children get sick and die, or if tragedy occurs. If God is good, why does God allow bad things to happen?
Many people say this is the most important theological question of the centuries, and many people get just this far in their thinking and believe that God is a myth or a liar.
The question of why there is evil or where could God be when evil surfaces is so universal and we are going to hear a song from one musical artist, composer Tom Waits who has recorded over 35 albums, as he raises the question of where was God when a young woman named Georgia Lee was killed.
Cold was the night, hard was the ground They found her in a small grove of trees Lonesome was the place where Georgia was found She's too young to be out On the street.
Why wasn't God watching? Why wasn't God listening? Why wasn't God there for Georgia Lee?
Ida said she couldn't keep Georgia From dropping out of school I was doing the best that I could But she kept runnin' away from this world These children are so hard to raise good
Why wasn't God watching? Why wasn't God listening? Why wasn't God there for Georgia Lee?
Close your eyes and count to ten I will got and hid but then Be sure to find me. I want you to find me And we'll play all over We will play all over again
There's a toad in the witch grass There's a crow in the corn Wild flowers on a cross by the road And somewhere a baby is crying For her mom As the hills turn from green back To gold
Why wasn't God watching? Why wasn't God listening? Why wasn't God there for Georgia Lee?
Where is God when bad things happen? Rabbi and Mrs. Harold Kushner had to deal with that painful question many years ago when their young son Aaron was diagnosed with progeria, the rare disease that causes rapid aging and early death, and they watched each year as Aaron began to wrinkle and shrivel up and then die at the age of 14 looking like a little old man.
You remember what happened out of the Kushner’s profound grief and loss—he wrote one of the best selling books of the last 30 years, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”. In the book he says that God does not promise that if we are good and faithful that we will be exempt from tragedy and disease. And to the question of where God is, he says that God is at work through the people who are doing research to cure diseases.
Other people answer that question of where God is in a different way. Pastor Rick Warren comes very close to saying in his popular book that God actually sends these misfortunes and illnesses to people—that whatever happens is “part of God’s plan”. It is an easy and simplistic answer that Calvinist theology has offered for 400 years, but it does not represent the compassionate, caring God that Jesus shows us and tells us about.
As the father of a person with a profound disability, I have heard that simplistic answer many times from other parents of children with genetic anomalies. At the end of one support group meeting in our congregation in Colorado Springs years ago, I heard another father talk about how his severely disabled child was that way because it was the will of God, and I asked him frankly if he really thought God wanted his daughter to suffer with Spina Bifida, if God planned for children to be born with difficulties and illness and genetic problems. I told him that that was not the God I knew about. He paused and agreed with me and realized he had just been using that language as an easy but finally shallow explanation.
I told him I thought God was at work through researchers and health professionals to make life better for people but that God did not want people to be disabled or ill or Jesus would not have devoted so much time to healing people!!
I also believe that God is able to bring enormous good out of what seems to be negative or bad. We have experienced that all of our parenting lives as we realize the gifts that come from being the parents of Todd, but that does not mean that God is sitting back choosing which child will be born with cerebral palsy or Down Syndrome or whatever other challenge you can name.
Why wasn’t God watching? Where is God when evil occurs? It is not a theoretical question if we have suffered through illness or grief as many of us have? Columnist Jeff Jacoby wrote about this recently when Pope Benedict XVI was in Auschwitz last month and the Pope was talking about this very question as well.
I like Jacoby’s answer very much, and it is the answer in the book of Genesis: God has taken great risk in creating us with free will, with the power to choose, and we can choose good or evil. God will not treat us as puppets. God will let us make evil choices, bad choices. Our choices have consequences. And if there is evil in the world, some of that evil is because we have let it occur.
English philosopher Edmund Burke said it succinctly: all it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.
That is the answer Jacoby gives for the evil of the Holocaust: Auschwitz was not God’s fault. It was not God who failed during the Holocaust or the Gulag or on 9/11 or in Bosnia. It is not God who fails when human beings do barbaric things to other human beings. God tells us in the commandments that we are not to murder and in the teachings of Jesus that we are to love our neighbor in the same way we love ourselves. It is we who fail when we fail to listen and fail to follow.
Another thinker says it this way: God has no hands but our own, and some of the evil and tragedy in our world is there because we have allowed it to prevail. Rabbi David Wolpe tells about a man who is standing before God; the man’s heart is breaking from the pain and injustice in the world. He cries out to God, “Dear God, look at all the suffering and distress in your world. Why don’t you send help??
God replies softly, “I did send help. I sent you.”
Next April some of us will be in Italy on our first trip from this church to explore art and history, and we will see in Assisi the statue to the monk whose name was Francis. We saw him briefly in the film clip last week. His famous prayer is a good way to remind us that God needs us to be God’s hands and feet in a world that is waiting for God to act through us:
“THE PRAYER OF SAINT FRANCIS”
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
for it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.