I normally finish composing my sermon for Sunday by the end of the prior week. As I was just putting the finishing touches on a nice little homily on today’s Gospel reading with a couple of funny jokes I thought you might like, I heard there had been some sort of shooting in Colorado. By the time I watched the evening news which revealed the extent of the horror and carnage, I knew I could not preach the sermon I had prepared and, so set it aside.
Unfortunately, in my years in the ministry I have had the difficulty of having to address some sad and tragic events from the pulpit. I think people know that in seminary we are not given a box with all the answers to life’s most difficult questions and dilemmas which we can magically open up and dispense the answers to questioning parishioners. Still, people look us and expect us to address these tragedies from a Christian viewpoint. Thus, I have had to make an attempt with some terrible events: the Columbine High shootings; the Oklahoma Federal Building bombing, the Virginia Tech shootings; the earthquake in Haiti; the tsunami in southeast Asia; Hurricane Katrina; and of course the events of 9/11. The unfortunate fact of our human condition is that these things sadly happen and we struggle with “why.”
That is a question that has been asked many times before in the 2,000 years since Our Lord came among us. In the 13th Chapter of St. Luke's Gospel we hear this story:
"There were some who told Jesus of the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, 'Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all Galileans, because they suffered thus? Or those eighteen upon whom the tower of Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, No…'"
Then as now, a common simplistic explanation to life's occurrences is that a loving God rewards good people and punishes bad ones. Therefore, the people who were violently put to death worshipping at the Temple by the Roman authority (Pontius Pilate, interestingly enough) must have had it coming. Jesus emphatically rejects that notion and adds to it another current event of his day. He asks if the eighteen who were killed by the tower falling on them were the worst sinners in Jerusalem.
The questions remain: are my sufferings the result of my sin? Or, does God send suffering as a test of faith? This view sees tragedy as a curve ball pitched to us by God either to see how we will hold up or else as our just deserts. These are unacceptable answers for Jesus. He clearly rejects the connection between our own sins and the bad things that happen in life. Jesus opens up the possibility that bad things happen to good people. In Matthew 5:45 Jesus tells his disciples that our God "makes the sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust."
Why do bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people? Why isn't life fair? Sometimes we take our free will and make bad choices that hurt ourselves or others. If I put my hand in the fire I will get burned. That's the way the world works; actions have consequences. It is the result of my bad decision, not God punishing me. God gave us free will and, likewise the natural world. What if I put my hand into the fire and did not get burned? In a world like that someone could go out and get drunk and drive their car quite confident that God would protect them behind the wheel. In a world where God makes everything we do work out fine, no matter what choices we make, removing all the consequences of our actions; then our choices would not be real choices and no matter what we did everything would work out just the same. That is not free will. I shall resist addressing here the flagrant availability of firearms in America or the rise in spectator violence promoted by Hollywood today, but you can draw your own conclusions regarding the effects of these on the recent tragedy in Colorado and on our society as a whole.
Much more troublesome are the so-called "acts of God." But sometimes even their effects may have some complicity on our part. If I decide to go walking in an open field in the middle of an electrical storm and get struck by lightening, it may not be entirely fair to place all the blame on God. Or, if I choose to build my house in a known flood plane on the Missouri River or on a Florida beach and it's washed away, or hit by a hurricane; I better rethink whether that was a good location to choose.
However, one cannot explain away all the suffering in the world and there are many tragic things that cannot be explained at all. Where is God when we suffer through no consequence of our actions?
Our with-us God came and lived among us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth: it was then and remains God's boldest experiment. If you are in a quandary of dismay over why bad things happen in life, then maybe you haven't been paying attention to the story; or else you've missed the point. Our blessed Lord suffered the most shameful torture and death yet could have come down off the cross and been carried by the angels to heaven. But God humbled Himself to become human and did not change the rules of the world, even taking on the worst the world had to offer.
So, the victims of Pilate's massacre and the people on whom the tower of Siloam fell can be redeeming as we struggle with trying to understand those events. Jesus says that suffering binds us together in our common humanity…one shared by God through Him and Jesus invites us to come into the very heart of God. That is why He ministered to so many people unfairly suffering. Through all the circumstances of life God is there. God gave us and the natural world free will and so introduced the possibility of suffering in this world. God entered our world, with all its joys and sorrows and suffered as one of us, not just to see how humans live, but to show us how much God cares.
In the unfair, uncertain world we live in, we are called to stay fixed on the certainty of God. Because it's our redemption through the cross that gives us the courage to place our sufferings and the sufferings of others on the broad shoulders of Jesus as he hangs on that cross, taking all the redemptive suffering of the world upon himself, offering it to God. Over the long sweep of human history there have been millions of us who have believed and continue to believe that there is a God who never lets us go. He is a God who doesn't just shares his power but insists that we discover our own power in all the tangled joys and tragedies of life.
He is a God who takes the leftover bits and pieces of our shattered hopes and broken dreams, our heartaches, doubts and disappointments and dares to look at them through our tears – tears that create a prism through which all the colors of life can be seen.
Amen.
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