The Oldest Question: Isaiah 55:1-9, Luke 13:1-9

Dear God, take our minds and think through them; take our hands and feet and work through them; take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire for you. Amen

Why do bad things happen to good people? Why are there so many tragic stories on the news and in the paper each day? Where is God in all this? Why does God allow such things to happen to humans whom God claims to have unbounded love for? These are questions that have plagued humanity for thousands of years. These are the questions that plague all faith traditions: Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and Atheists. Each religion must try to answer this question of why and none of them, not even Christianity, can give an absolute answer to the question that will satisfy all people.

This question follows us around and when times are good and things are going well it remains dormant like a volcano or hibernating like a grizzly bear. However, as soon as something happens the question erupts and attacks our minds, our souls, and even our faith down to the very core. We all can remember where we were and what we were doing when the towers fell on September 11th. The question that was on the lips of all Americans and the world was “why?” Why did this have to happen?

The 9/11 attacks were a disaster in all respects and although the question of why was left unanswered we did know who those men whose pictures we saw on the news. Although the terrorist attacks that occurred affected all of us in America in some ways, when we think of catastrophe occurring we tend to think more about natural disasters. These are the events that leave both the why and the who in question. Natural disasters affect people in every corner of the world. California does not have many tornadoes or hurricanes, but they have earthquakes. Michigan doesn’t face many volcanoes or oppressive heat, but they have blizzards. We in Tennessee don’t face the immediate dangers of earthquakes or tsunamis, but we have tornadoes and damaging storms. Each time nature strikes, whether it is a Hurricane Katrina, a tsunami devastating Southeast Asia, or a tornado that strikes a high school and a hospital during a school day, we feel the affects wherever we are and that question creeps upon us.

Each of us faces the dangers of automobile, household, or farming accidents. How many times have you traveled down the road and seen wooden crosses or flowers along a guard rail? We are especially affected when it is a young person who is killed before they have had a chance to live. We also see evil man and women on television who commit horrible crimes against the most helpless among us; children and we can’t help but to ask why? Why do bad things happen? Why does God allow this to happen?

We see echoes of this question in our Scripture reading for today. Luke describes confrontation Jesus has with a group of people. They tell him about an atrocity committed by Pilate, he had killed Galileans while they worshiped and about how a tower had collapsed killing 18 people. Jesus’ response is puzzling and almost uncharacteristically cold. He simple tells them to repent or perish. The people are asking the question of why and Jesus seemingly ignores their request. Is it because they question is too hard even for the Son of God or because the question is beyond an answer that humans can understand? Let us look at the question and some possible answers and some problems with those answers and then turn back to Luke and Isaiah with some new insights. The question has been wrestled with by theologians for centuries to the point that the question and the theme behind the question have been given a name that is theodicy.

The answer the question has to do, in part, with the providence of God or the ability or willingness of God to influence things on earth. There are two schools of thought, both on two extremes of the range of possible answers, that I want to touch on today and then look towards a possible third answer that lies in somewhere in the middle. The first extreme is Hyper-Calvinism. Calvinism gets its name from a man named John Calvin who lived in the 15^th and 16^th centuries in Switzerland and France. He was part of the Protestant Reformation which broke off from the Roman Catholic Church and he came developed his own theology. His answer to the question of why was that God was in charge of everything. Everything that happens of Earth was a direct act from God. God made the sun come up and the sun go down. God made the rains to come and the rains to stay away and so on and so forth. Calvin adhered the 3 Omnis of God, the word Omni is Latin for “all”. According to Calvin and others God is omnipotent which means all powerful, omnipresent which means in all places at all times, and omniscient which means all knowing and all seeing.

This notion that God is all powerful, God is everywhere, and God is all knowing can be comforting to some. God is in control of everything and so I don’t have to worry about anything. Sometimes it feels good to let control go over to something else. It is also comfortable to think of God as in control of everything. It gives us a sense of comfort when things turn to chaos. There are some people who take this line of thinking and believing to the extreme. There are some who refuse to see doctors or take medicine claiming that they trust completely in God’s will. But most of us can see the problem with this type of thinking. Most of us understand that God works through science, medicine, and doctors. This kind of thinking leads to a lack of responsibility for our own predicaments. Remember the temptation of Jesus, “Do not put God to the test.” It reminds me of the story about the man in the midst of a flood. There was a flood in a village.
One man said to everyone, "I'll stay! God will save me!"
The flood got higher and a boat came and the man in it said "Come on mate, get in!"
"No" replied the man. God will save me!
The flood got very high now and the man had to stand on the roof of his house.
A helicopter soon came and the man offered him help."
No, God will save me!" he said
Eventually he died by drowning.
He got by the gates of heaven and he said to God "Why didn't you save me?"
God replied, "I sent a boat and a helicopter. What more do you want!"

There are other problems with this line of thinking. The main problem is that if God is all powerful, ever-present, and all knowing and bad things happen then God cannot be all loving and all good. It does not add up logically. How does this explanation hold up when someone has terminal cancer? A person who holds to Hyper-Calvinism might say that God gave the cancer to that person so that he or she might be made stronger or their families might be made stronger. This mode of thinking says that God allows disasters both natural and man-made so that we might be made better for the experience. We can’t imagine a loving Parent or Creator doing this kind of thing.

Another problem that is born out of this kind of thinking is that God sends disasters both on an individual, community, and world-wide scale to punish the wicked. The terrorists on 9/11 thought they were doing the will of God by punishing America for its lack of support for Muslim countries. Several televangelists and preachers said and continue to say that God punished America because of its tolerance of sexual immorality and the tolerance of homosexuality. Many said that God punished New Orleans by sending Hurricane Katrina and God punished Southeast Asia by sending the tsunami. Most of us dismiss this kind of thinking immediately. We cannot fathom God doing this kind of thing to humanity.

Let’s turn now to the other side of the coin which is Deism. That is the belief that God created the universe and set things into motion, but does not actively participate in the world today. It is like a set of dominos being set off. God set everything up and push the first domino off and sets back and watches the rest of the dominos fall as they may. Disasters either manmade or natural are simply part of the universe and are not cause by nor allowed or prevented by God. This school of thought came out of the Enlightenment when new scientific discoveries were being made. As humans became more and more familiar with the inner workings of life and the world around us the miraculousness of the world seem to fade away. God might have set things in motion, but the world pretty much runs on its own.

There are, of course, problems with this side as well. We believe in a God that is fully active in the world today. God is not just for the Bible and for Biblical times, but is with us in the here and now, in Rehoboth/Liberty United Methodist Church March 11, 2007. We believe in the power of prayer and God ability to answer prayer sometimes in miraculous ways.

So where does that leave us. We see problems in both extremes and so perhaps the answer is somewhere in the middle. John Wesley described God as a loving Parent not as a tyrannical king like in Hyper-Calvinism and not like a mystical, absent Creator like in Deism. This Wesleyan view of God understands that God is involved with the world today and that God does not simple watch the events of the world without care or concern. Also this view of God recognizes that God gives humanity free will which is the ability to make free choices. Just as a parent allows his or her child to make their own choices. However, a parent does not simply throw his/her child into the world without any kind of guidance along the way and so God also guides us through Scripture and through the presence of God’s Holy Spirit. In all things, I affirm, in fact it is central to my theology that God is love, God does not love but the very essence of God is love.

Let’s try to find some middle ground between the two. Humans are given free will and the ability to choose everything, even the ability to choose or reject God; therefore we also have the power to make bad choices, even horribly evil choices. We have to ability to choose to kill someone, even a child; we have the ability to murder, enslave or oppress a group of people just because of their race; we have the ability to choose the most evil or the most good. This means that the responsibility is ours. God did not send those men to crash airplanes into the World Trade Center or the Pentagon, they chose to do it.

What about natural disasters? Some would argue that the increased strength and frequency of weather related phenomena are caused by global warming which is caused by pollution. Most scientist agree that these type of phenomenon like tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis are the earth’s way of renewal which has been going on for millions of years. The fact that we are caught up in it is because we have chosen to live in areas of increased natural activity such as California, the Gulf Coast, and the Midwest and Southeast. All in all these can give some answer to the question of why.

All three of these answers are incomplete and we are left with God’s revelation to Isaiah.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are my ways higher than your ways

and my thoughts than your thoughts.

The answer given here is the same given to Job. We cannot fully understand God’s plan or even God’s nature. It is an eternal mystery. One that one day we will be able to understand fully. Until then the question always plagues us and no answer is completely satisfactory. How do we go on in a world filled with horror and tragedy? We must hold on to our faith. Our faith is that God was with us in the midst the ashes of the Twin Towers; God was with us in the 9^th ward of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, God was with us Southeast Asia after the devastation of the tsunami, God is with us when the doctor says its cancer, God is with us when we walk in the valley of the shadow of death and God’s love will never leave us no matter what we might face. In God will not forsake us and God’s love abounds no matter where we find ourselves. Until the day when all our answers are made clear “Farther along we'll know more about it Farther along we'll understand why Cheer up my brother live in the sunshine We'll understand it all by and by.”

Let us pray…

Grant, O Lord,

that what has been said with our lips we may believe in our hearts,

and that what we believe in our hearts we may practice in our lives;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.