A Crisis of Faith: Sermon Jeremiah 8:18-9:1

Lord, open our hearts and minds by the power of your Holy Spirit, that as the Scriptures are read and your Word is proclaimed, we may hear with joy what you say to us today. Amen.

These words from Jeremiah are not pleasant to hear. These words are not filled with joy and on the surface there seems to be no good news within it, but it is my job to find the good news, the gospel message within all the texts we survey each Sunday morning and so my task is set before me this morning. There are things that bring us joy; a child’s laughter, a sunset over the ocean, the smell after a rainstorm. There are things that bring us pain; sickness, death of a loved one, worldwide disasters both natural and manmade. These things can bring us sadness and leave us questioning our own faith.

One event in my faith journey that caused me pain was the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. This event caused me to reflect seriously on how I see God working in the world today. Little over two years ago we all saw the horrors that occurred after the flooding of New Orleans. The poorest of the poor and the sickest of the sick were forced to live in such squalor, such unimaginable conditions. I remember being in my apartment in Nashville and I could not take my eyes off of the TV. I wanted to turn it off and move away from the situation, but I couldn’t. At last, I sat on the edge of my bed and with the horrid images in my head, images of children dying, of bodies floating in the putrid water I wept. I wept for my people, my fellow Americans, my brothers and my sisters. I asked the question “Where are you God?” “If you are there, why are you allowing this to happen?” There I was a pastor in training, a person who is suppose to have faith enough, and I was questioning the very existence of God. I look back on those moments a different person than I was then. I am a stronger person with a deeper faith because I know that I am not the only one who has had those questions.

Sometimes we do not think that our spiritual leaders have these kinds of questions. We like to think that our pastors and mentors have an unwavering faith and they never question God at all. This is not the case. We are all human and when tragedy strikes whether it is national or personal in nature it cause us to question the very foundations we have built our lives upon. Mother Teresa is one of those people whose faith seemed steadfast and resolute. This woman who spent most of her life in the midst of the poorest people on the planet in the slums of Calcutta, India seemed to have enough faith for all of us. Her exterior was that of the perfect servant. She forsook all material wealth to answer a deeper call of God. On the outside she was the quintessential Christian, on the inside however she was having a crisis of faith. A recent book has been published that compiles a lifetime of writings from Mother Teresa that allows us to gain an insight into her own personal journey.

She starts off in her youth with faith like a rock, she can sense God’s presence with her at all times. She feels God so strongly that she makes a vow to God not to refuse anything that he might ask of her. She was in Calcutta, India working at a school for girls when she felt a new calling from God to work with the poorest people and she did. After many years of witnessing first hand the oppression and horror of the life of the poor in the world her faith waned. She could not feel God’s presence in the midst of such suffering. Here is an expert from the book Come Be My Light.

These are powerful words. Now some have taken the opportunity to take these words from Mother Teresa and push their own atheistic agenda. They say “See, she didn’t really believe in God.” This is not what she is saying. She says that she cannot feel God’s presence in the midst of her surroundings. She asked the same question I did. “Where is God in all of this suffering?” “Why would God allow such things to happen?”

Jeremiah also lost the sense of God’s presence. In our Scripture reading today, Jeremiah asks the question that the people ask in the midst of their suffering. This was during the time of the Babylonian invasion of Israel. Buildings lay in ruin, bodies lie dead in the street and the people are lead away in chains and Jeremiah asks the questions, “Is the LORD not in Zion? Is her King not in her?” In other words Jeremiah is asking “Where is God in all of this? Why would God allow such things to occur?”

Why is this important for us today? It is OK not to feel the presence of God around you and to cry out “Where are you, O God?” A crisis of faith does not make you a bad person or a bad Christian. In fact these crises let us know that we are being active in our faith, we are going out into the world with our faith and not keeping it in the closet. We search for the answers and sometimes it does not come for a long time. Mother Teresa spent many years feeling that God was not with her because of the suffering she was witnessing. It is ok to ask these questions and as we search for the answers together we can be strengthened together. Let us search together for the answers to the question, where is God in all of this and why does he allow these things to happen?

I can see two possible answers to the question of why? One is that God is exuding his wrath upon his people. God is fed up with our behavior and is pouring out his wrath upon the world and that is why there is so much suffering and that is where God is. God is making it happen either as punishment or in order to teach us a hard lesson. Now there are plenty of stories in the Old Testament about God sending his supernatural squadron of destruction down to earth in order to punish the people of Israel. The people believed that every time that there was a flood, a famine, a lost battle with a neighboring kingdom, or anything against the good it was God’s wrath being shown to the people. Even today we see preachers and Christian leaders saying that the bad things that happen to our nation and our world is because of God’s wrath. 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the tsunami that hit southeast Asia were all acts of God’s wrath to punish the world for its sins.

This seems to be an answer for our question. God is here, but has turned his back to us because of our sins. This is what we read about in the Old Testament prophetic writings. There is a problem with this in my mind. The God that I know is not a God of wrath, but a God of love. 1 John 4:16 says that “God is love” and this is what I have based my entire theology on. I see a God who so loved the world that he gave his only son so that the world might be saved. A reconciling act for the redeeming of the world, this is what I see in the God I worship. So how do we reconcile this, on the one hand we have evidence of the wrath of God and on the other hand we see the evidence of God’s unending love. How do we know which is right take on God?

I say that God does not delight in our suffering nor in our destruction. God does not send destruction in the form of hurricanes, tsunamis, or madmen flying planes into buildings. God does not send AIDS, cancer, or any other disease to punish individuals for their sins. God does not destroy us nor does he turn his back on us. So what is the answer to the question, where is God? I have to believe, I must believe in order to function in such a broken world, and I have to believe that God is weeping with us. Jeremiah said that he wished that his head was a never ending spring of water so that he could cry over his people forever. I believe that God was there with Jeremiah weeping. Jesus asked the question while on the cross, where are you God? God was there on that cross. When we weep in the hospital sitting next to a loved one God is there weeping with us. When the pain is so great that it causes tears to stream down our faces, God is there weeping with us. When the images of war and destruction are so horrid and fierce that we have no other alternative but to weep over our people, God is there also weeping with us.

But this does not answer the question fully, if God is weeping with us then why do bad things happen in the first place. The answer lies within us. We are sowing our own destruction. The injustice and poverty in the world has caused some to turn to violence. There are those who prey on the weak in these hopeless situations so they might sacrifice themselves to further a political cause. The poor of New Orleans were overlooked by the system and forgotten by the people. We sowed our own destruction. The wetlands of Louisiana, the natural buffer zone between the wild ocean storms and the mainland, were long destroyed by corporations and land developers. It was a perfect disaster just waiting to happen. We must be willing to take the responsibility for what is going on the world. God does not punish us, but neither does he prevent us from destroying ourselves. Why? Because we have to learn that there is a better way and sometimes you have to learn the hard way. We reap what we sow and when we sow violence and injustice this is what we also reap.

There is good news, however. Just as we reap the sowing of violence and injustice so we can reap the sowing of peace and justice. If we sow good things we will enjoy the harvest that will come of them. Galatians 6:7 says “Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit.” Jeremiah asked in the midst of his weeping, Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? These were rhetorical questions because he knew that Gilead was renowned both for the healing balm that was made there and the physicians who lived there. Jeremiah knew the answer to his question was yes, so why did he ask it? He wanted to encourage his people to use their own God given abilities to heal their nation. He knew that if they sowed in positivity that they would reap the same. The resources were there they only had to use them for good.

We have the most resources, money, and talent of any nation in the world. We must use what God has given to us to heal our nation and the world. We have our own balm of Gilead and our own physicians both literally and figuratively. Let us use them to heal what has been broken. Jesus said that he came so the people “might have life and have it more abundantly.” We have the gifts, let us sow into the good.

We all have had crises of faith. We, like Jeremiah, like Mother Teresa, must hang on in times of darkness. We must hold to God’s strength in our weakness. Even when times are dark and even when God does not seem present with us, He is forever and ever.

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.