Sermon for Sunday, January 8, 2006
WHY DID GOD LET MY FRIEND DIE? byRev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz |
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Scripture: Luke 13:1-5 1At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2He asked them, "Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? 3No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. 4Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? 5No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did." Back in the 1980’s when Dr. William Sloane Coffin was senior minister at Riverside Church in New York City, he and his family experienced the tragic death of his 24-year-old son who had been driving at night in Boston in the rain and who drove off the road into the Boston Harbor. Dr. Coffin told in a sermon at Riverside Church about the next few days after Alex’s death and some of the terrible theology that we hear when there has been a tragic loss. Here is a portion of his sermon: When a person dies, there are many things that can be said, and there is at least one thing that should never be said. The night after Alex died, I was sitting in the living room of my sister’s house outside of Boston when the front door opened and in came a middle aged woman carrying about eighteen quiches. When she saw me, she shook her head, then headed for the kitchen, saying sadly over her shoulder, “I just don’t understand the will of God.” Instantly I was up in hot pursuit, swarming all over her. “I’ll say you don’t, lady”, I said. (I knew the anger would do me good and the instruction to her was long overdue.) I continued, “Do you think it was the will of God that Alex never fixed that lousy windshield wiper of his, that he was probably driving too fast in such a storm, that he probably had a couple of beers too many? Do you think it is God’s will that there are no streetlights along that stretch of road and no guard rail separating the road and Boston Harbor?” For some reason nothing so infuriates me as the incapacity of seemingly intelligent people that God doesn’t go around this world with his finger on triggers, his fist around knives, his hands on steering wheels. God is dead set against all unnatural deaths, and Christ spent an inordinate amount of time delivering people from paralysis, insanity, leprosy, and muteness. Which is not to say that there are no nature caused deaths. (I can think of many right here in this parish in the five years I have been here.) Deaths that are untimely and slow and pain ridden, which for that reason raise unanswerable questions, and even the specter of a Cosmic Sadist-yes, even an Eternal Vivisector. But violent deaths, such as the one Alex died – to understand those is a piece of cake. As his younger brother put it simply, standing at the casket at the Boston funeral, “You blew it buddy. You blew it.” The one thing that should never be said when someone dies is, “It is the will of God.” Never do we know enough to say that. My own consolation lies in knowing that it was NOT the will of God that Alex die; that when the waves closed over the sinking car, God’s heart was the first of all our hearts to break.”1 Why do tragedies happen? Why is there suffering and death in the world? Why does a 24-year-old die in a car accident? Why does a three year old get cancer? The simple-minded answer is the one about God’s will that we have heard so much. I heard it as a 22 year old when I walked in the front door of my family home the day my father had died of a heart attack and my Baptist aunt met me at the door and said, “It is just God’s will.” The question of why God lets there be suffering and evil in the world is perhaps the central spiritual question and the issue that keeps people from trusting in God and following the paths of God. That is why we are starting this sermon series with this question. I believe that Dr. Coffin is right and that God is not the source of the bad things that occur, that the first three chapters of Genesis are true and that God really has taken great risks in giving us freedom and letting us choose to make decisions that can be self destructive. And I stand with Jesus in the words we heard from Luke where he tells his friends when they ask about an accident in Galilee where people were killed, yes, there really are accidents and random events and the people who are hurt by them do not deserve them and they are not sent from God. We will come back to his words in a moment. But the common belief is very different from Jesus’ message that there are accident and random events. The common belief is that whenever something tragic happens is must be because God caused it or let it happen or that it is God’s will. I heard that statement just three nights ago on the national news when the interviewer talked with one poor family in Texas whose home had been burned down. The woman in the family said, “We just know that God sent this to us and we are trying to learn why.” We saw the same deterministic theology in some emails to one of our Sunday School classes here recently about a young woman who has just recently died of cancer leaving her husband and small children and the friend of hers giving us the weekly updates about her decline (not a member of this church) kept talking about how this illness was part of God’s plan and God’s will as though God wants a young mother to die and leave small children without a mom. Think about that!! Is that your idea of God?? It is not my idea of God and it is not the New Testament picture of God and it is not Jesus’ notion of God. This notion that whatever happens must be God’s will is so destructive and so prevalent. It is at the heart of the best selling religious book in many years, Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life. I have cited that book several times recently and we did a study last fall looking at some of the many positive parts of the book, but we also made a disclaimer about the predestination theology in the book and warned people that this is not United Methodist theology to say that God is behind whatever happens in your life and that God is sending some bad things to you to test you. This does not mean that we won’t learn from the crises or tragedies. That is the truth of Paul’s statement that in all things God can work for good. It means that some bad things that happen are because I bring them on myself, and some bad things that happen are because we still live in an imperfect world where we are trying to find cures for diseases and we are not there yet, and there are still accidents and floods and hurricanes that are so far beyond our control. We have on our web site a lengthy paper from a United Methodist Pastor in Michigan who takes the Rick Warren book and contrasts the Calvinism in it to a Methodist approach and I commend that to you. [The full address is in the written sermon. www.st-andrew-umc.com\ministries\adult.htm -- found at the bottom of the page as Wesleyan Companion to the Purpose Driven Life.] Let’s keep Dr. Coffin’s personal story in mind as we raise the question differently: what are the rewards or guarantees if am faithful to God and have decided to follow Christ? Does this mean that nothing bad will ever happen to me? Does it mean that life will always be fair and kind? Does it mean that all my loved ones will all live to a ripe old age and die of natural causes? Does it mean that I won’t ever experience tragedy or pain or illness or loss? We can see how silly that might sound if we phrase it that way, but that is still the assumption of so many people when we suffer: how could this be happening to me? I am a good person. And because I am a good person that means that only good things should occur!! Once again, we can see how this simple thinking shows up almost every week in the news. We have followed the awful tragedy of the death of the coal miners in West Virginia and have seen the terrible grief of those families—especially after the confusion of some news sources offering the wrong information about survival. But I was so sad to see one woman, obviously grief stricken, who was concluding that because she had learned of the death of her family member, this must mean that there is no God. She said she was a person of faith and she had been praying, but because this explosion had occurred and her loved one had been trapped, this surely must mean there is no God. I know that when we are grieving and reeling from loss, that we say things differently, but we have heard that statement before and the assumption is that if I am a good Christian, then I won’t suffer or feel loss or pain. We just have to look at our Bible to see how far off base that is beginning with Jesus who suffered unfairly even to his death, or the apostle Paul who was loyal and faithful and suffered loss and illness and beatings because of his faith. We could look at the book of Job in the Bible to see that old Job, 2500 years ago, is wrestling with the same questions of why God allows bad things to happen to good people. And Rabbi Harold Kushner in his classic book by that title (on our bookshelves) tells about his own family’s journey in dealing with the death of his young son at the age of fifteen from a rare disease and tells us that this kind of tragedy is not God’s will and that bad things do happen to good people and good things happen to bad people as well. What are the rewards of faithfulness? What am I guaranteed if I trust in God? That life will be fair and easy? That is not in the contract. Life will be unfair. We should not be surprised. Richard Cohen is a news producer who came down with MS as a young man, a young father. He has experienced many physical problems with his lack of mobility and is going blind. He writes eloquently about his physical and spiritual journey in his book, Blindsided. I heard him interviewed on NPR a while back and was moved by his insight as well as by his humor. He was talking with is mother about his illness. His mother said, understandably, “This is not fair.” Richard Cohen said quickly, “You are right. This is not fair. It should have happened to my brother!!” He had a mature outlook. Illness is not fair and life is not fair and if we expect life to be easy and fair and good to us all the time we will be mistaken. Faith in God does not mean that life will be easy or fair. Tim Hansel tells us that in the quote that we use here every few months: God promises us four things in life: PEACE, POWER, PURPOSE, AND TROUBLE. Don’t be surprised when you experience trouble. Where is God in all this? What does God promise us or guarantee us? We just experienced the powerful message of Christmas when a major part of that promise comes through in the name Jesus will be called by; he will be called Emmanuel, the angels says to Joseph, which means God is with us. Whatever we experience, we are not alone, God is with us and because God is with us, we will get through. God in Jesus Christ has experienced all the unfairness and pain that we will experience also and God will go with us and walk beside us to see us through. One of the visiting artists we will have here in May is a nationally known folk singer named Carrie Newcomer who has a song that I have asked Bonnie Lewallen and Price Berryman to do for us called, I’ll Go Too. I’LL GO TOO by Carrie Newcomer
One last thought about the words from Jesus. The response that Jesus gives to the accident in Galilee means that Jesus believes that there is such a thing as an accident. Some things are just accidents. They don’t happen for some COSMIC REASON. Some things are just accidents. There is randomness in the world. What Jesus says is different from the folk saying we hear so often—EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON. How often have you heard that or said that? Maybe some things don’t have some cosmic REASON behind them. Maybe there are some accidents. What the New Testament does say is that even in those tragedies and accidents, God is big enough to bring something good. God does not send or cause those accidents. But God can bring good from them. Those are the words of Paul in Romans 8. It is a truly audacious sentence: In all things God is able to work for good with those who love God. In ALL THINGS! That was the scripture passage that Dr. William Sloane Coffin chose to be read right before he told in his sermon 25 years ago about his son Alex’s death and how it was not God’s will. He offered one more insight in that sermon that we will close with. He reminded us of the quote from Ernest Hemingway in his novel Farewell to Arms: The world breaks everyone; then some become strong at the broken places.” May it be so. Amen. 1 A Chorus of Witnesses, pp 262-263 |
