Monday, March 31, 2014

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent: March 30th, 2014



Sermon – Sunday, March 30th, 2014
Gospel: God is found in the midst of suffering
Call: Look forward

In the Midst

Grace & Peace Bethany Lutheran Church,
I have some exciting news to share with you all, which some of you may already know.  My twin brother Neal, who is also training to be a Pastor at Luther Seminary and is going through the first call process, has been assigned to the Northern Illinois Synod of the ELCA – which means that whatever church he ends up at he’ll be dangerously close by!  I say dangerous, because we have been known to pull shenanigans from time to time.

Some of you have gotten a chance to meet him already – Others of you have probably seen him … and thought he was me – because as you might know we are identical twins.  And to answer the question that I’m sure you are all wondering right now – yes, at some point in the future we will definitely do a pulpit swap ... and I will NOT tell you ahead of time. (Trust me, it's more fun that way).

Having my brother around is going to be really good for me for a lot of reasons – one of the primary ones being that if I ever get into mischief, I can always blame it on Neal.  I can picture it now.  “Pastor Paul, I could have sworn I saw you and some middle schoolers sticking pink flamingos into (the Bengstons, the Thoreson’s) yard yesterday evening…was that you?”  “Uhhhh. Me? No!  Maybe it was Neal.”

Of course, it’s a double-edged sword.  Neal could easily blame me for his shenanigans as well.  I fear the day when I get an angrily worded email – yelling at me breaking a stain glass window … at a church I've never been too.

But it is nice to have a built-in fall guy – somebody I can always point to and blame when I need it.  Because that really is our nature isn’t it?  When something goes wrong we are always looking for somebody to blame – somebody to point the finger at and say “Aha!  You’re the one who screwed up!”

That has been true of human nature for a long time.  Today we hear the story of a blind beggar and immediately, the disciples want to find out who’s to blame for the man’s condition.  They ask Jesus the preposterous question, “Who sinned that this man was born blind?  Him, or his parents?”

Who sinned?  Really?  That’s what the disciples want to know? Most of us don’t think of blindness as something caused by sin anymore.  It’s a medical condition.  Blindness – particularly if one is BORN blind – isn’t something that we can avoid by a holy life.

But today, I’m inclined to cut the disciples a little bit of slack, because they are simply asking a question that we all want an answer for, and that question is “Whose fault is this?” “Who can we blame?”

We are quick to judge the disciples here, but we ask the same question all the time.  I was listening to the news earlier this week, and they were talking about the horrible mudslide that happened over in Washington State.

As of Saturday 17 people were confirmed dead, and about 90 people are still missing – all because of a rain-soaked mountain that couldn’t hold back the ground any longer.  All those homes – all those people vanished in an instant. 

The newscaster was interviewing a geologist who revealed that this same spot has seen many mudslides over the last century. Geologists and other scientists have studied the area since the late 90s and concluded that it was vulnerable to the same thing happening again. 

They even wrote official reports about it warning people of the danger.  And what was even more astonishing, was that they said that many, if not most, of the townspeople were aware that something like this could happen.

The people on the news were looking for somebody to blame. “Whose fault is this?”  Was there a failure of policy here?  Should people have been allowed to build on an area that was known to be unsafe?  Should they have known better?

Who screwed up here? Who sinned?  In situations like this we really want to have somebody to blame because it makes us feel better.  If we can answer those questions, if we can identify what people did wrong … then maybe we can avoid disaster ourselves.

The only problem is this: sometimes there isn’t anybody to blame. Sometimes it’s just a water-soaked hill that can’t hold back the mud any longer. Sometimes it’s just a man born blind. And so Jesus tells the disciples their answer.  He says, “Neither this man, nor his parents sinned.” 

Jesus is saying that by asking who sinned, you’re asking the wrong question.  The question the disciples asked assumes that God was the one to blame – that God was punishing the blindman for some unseen sin.  But God, Jesus says, didn’t do this.  He didn’t make the man blind.  He didn’t collapse the side of a mountain.

Despite these words from Jesus, we still want to blame God when things go wrong.  When we run out of people to point fingers at, the only one left to blame is God. We sense that in tragedy, God must be close by. And so our instinct is to ask, “Where is God in all this?”

I know it’s a troubling question, but it’s one that we have to ask, because the world is wondering. With the new movie about Noah out in theaters now, I expect there will be a lot of discussion about why God lets bad things happen. 


Where is God when people are born blind?  Where is God when mudslides destroy towns?  Where is God when floods wipe out a city-a world?

There are seemingly two ways to answer that question.  On the one hand, there are the Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells of the world who take the route of the disciples and blame 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina on sin. They point their fingers at so-called sinners and lay the blame at their feet.  Nevermind that it’s not what Jesus says – particularly in our text today. 

Another way to answer the question is to say that God doesn’t exist – or even worse – that he doesn’t care. But whenever I find myself doubting, I think about the incredible transformations I’ve witnessed – both in myself and in others – and the only explanation I can come up with is that God must be behind all this.

And I can’t deny God’s love for the world when I see the poor being cared for every day – or when thousands of Christians rush to disaster zones around the globe in the name of Christ. Yes, I believe God cares deeply about this world we live in.

And so Jesus tells the disciples that God didn’t cause this poor man’s blindness.  To ask “Who sinned?” or “Who is to blame here?” is indeed the wrong question because it looks backwards.  Rather, the question to ask is, “How does God respond to tragedy?”  “How do we respond as a people of faith?” 

As Christians, we look forward.  It’s not our place to judge.  It’s not our place to lay blame. It is our place to help.  It is our place to heal.  Jesus tells the disciples that it’s not about what the blind man or his parents did, it’s about what God is about to do through a blind beggar.  Through blindness, Jesus was going to make the world see God.

There is a third way to answer this question of suffering.  The Biblical witness is that God is indeed very present in the midst of suffering, but it’s not because he is causing it, or because it’s his will, or because he’s punishing somebody.  God is present in suffering, because God is working to transform it.

Finally, on the cross we learn that God does not exclude himself from suffering either. God suffers with us. The twenty-third Psalm that we heard today talks about it this way.

1 The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters;
3 He restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name's sake.
4 Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me;
your rod and your staff— they comfort me.
5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.

I don’t know about you, but the line that grabs me today is this, “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me.” That’s how God responds in the midst of darkness. He stays with us.

We all have dark valley’s in our lives. Sometimes, darkness comes from outside of us in tragedy – like mudslides and hurricanes. Sometimes darkness seems to come from within us, like blindness or depression or addiction or cancer.

In the midst of that darkness, God is with you.  He’s not blaming or pointing fingers because sin itself has already been put to death on the cross. It’s behind us. There’s no reason to look back. God is looking forward. He’s transforming. He’s creating life out of the dead places.  

Brothers and sisters in Christ,
That is what we are called to do as well – to look forward. 
To heal.  To Transform a broken world.
That is who our God is. 
That is the amazing grace of the risen Lord.

Let us all look forward in praise to God.
Amen.

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