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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