MAY 10, 2009 PASTOR SCOTT FULLER
ACTS 8:26-40; PSALM 22:25-31; I JOHN 4:7-21; JOHN 15:1-8
Why?
Dear friends in Christ: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Prepare our hearts, Lord, to receive your Word. Silence in us any voice but your own that in hearing we may believe and in believing we may obey your will revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Amen.
When a person asks, Why?, it is, as someone once said, the shortest, biggest question…and we start asking it a very young age:
Why is there air? Why is the sky blue?
Why are there different colors (and amounts!) of hair?
Why is broccoli good for you?
Why? stays with us as we develop and become independent:
Why don’t they like me? Why can’t you trust me?
Why can’t I make up my mind?
Our question becomes deeper as our world view begins to expand:
Why do the good die young?
“Why do bad things happen to good people?”
The Bible also reveals it as one of the oldest, shortest, biggest questions:
Cries the psalmist in 10:1 – Why, O Lord, do you stand far off?
Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?
When Jesus is crucified, he also cries out with the psalmist (22:1):
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
And remember Mary on that first Easter morning when
both the angel (John 20:13) and the disguised Christ (v. 15) ask her:
Woman, why are you weeping?
Life often makes us feel as if we are afloat in an ocean-ful of Why?’s. At times those waters are calm…as we pleasantly, profoundly ponder:
-the perfection of a new baby’s fingers, toes and nose; or
-the blessed mystery of a beloved’s love for us; or
-those magical moments when everything just seems right in the world….
At other times, those same waters are stormy and chaotic and we feel tossed to and fro as towering waves of Why? break, and crash down upon us, threatening to send us into the depths of doubt, depression, or despair.
-Why do I have cancer?
-Why don’t you love me anymore?
-Why is there so much hate in the world?
This will probably come as no surprise, but I’m convinced that this oldest, shortest, biggest question is ultimately…about God. Now, if there is no God, then there’s no question Why? – things just randomly happen. But, if we claim that God is, and if we dare to claim that God cares about the world, that God cares about us…then we have a problem on our hands.
How do we bring together these polar opposites: on the one hand,
-our assertion that God is all-caring and all-loving, and on the other hand,
-the reality that life is filled with suffering, separation, disease and death?
It comes down to this questions; Is, or is not, God in control?
The best answer that I’ve ever heard came from Elie Wiesel, author and survivor of a Nazi Concentration Camp. Back in the dark ages when I was in seminary, Carolyn and I got to hear him lecture in Minneapolis. During a Q & A period afterwards, he was asked, In light of this terrible suffering, can you still say that God is in control?
Wiesel’s answer was both poignant and to the point. Said this man who had known such individual, cultural and religious pain, If God is not in control, then he’d better get himself another name!”
Then we must ask: So why DOES God allow suffering, evil, and pain?
To punish us? To teach us a lesson? To learn to be self-reliant?
Again, back to Elie Wiesel, who also addressed this question in the horror of 6 million murdered Jewish people. If it was necessary, he asked, for God to punish/teach/challenge the Jewish people, why did it take 6 million deaths to accomplish God’s goal? An even harder question lies behind that one. What was the lesson, he asked, that we we’re supposed to learn?
You and I, and every other person, we’re no strangers to having to ask hard questions of God. We do it whenever the rug is yanked out from underneath our lives: when faults and failings, missed opportunities and mistakes, accidents and acts of anger leave us conquered, confused or cross…we want to know Why? What’s the lesson that we’re supposed to learn???
When we reach one of these points in our journey through life, we find ourselves standing on the edge of a precipice…if we back away, it feels like defeat. If we take one more step, we’re sure that we will fall to our death. It’s not a comfortable place to be, is it?
The Danish Lutheran philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, around the mid-1800’s, wrote about this existential ordeal in terms of a leap of faith. It’s a metaphor that meant many things to him, but is crucial to us for this key question: If I leap…if I dare to trust…will God catch me?
When our daughter, Rachel, was about 4 years old, we started her in swimming lessons. She was a good at it, although a little hesitant when trying something new. But with swimmies on her arms, her confidence grew and she could do anything…except jump off the one meter diving board! Time after time, she would walk out to the end…as if being forced by pirates to walk the plank into shark infested waters.
Talk about a leap of faith… There were no sharks – just her dad, waiting 3 feet below, promising to catch her. And time after time, she would shake her head no, wondering, I’m sure, why we were making her do it.
Finally though, the day came when she walked to the end of the board, and pushed herself off that petrifying precipice…leaping in faith and trusting our promise that we would be there to catch her. She has never stopped leaping and trusting in the God who has named her and claimed her as his own.
You and I will face our own versions of a petrifying precipice, positive that pirates, or other powers, are pushing us to plummet into pain. Yet there, especially there, we are encouraged to make that leap trusting that God exists, that God cares about the world, that God cares about us.
Now, that does not mean that we will never know suffering or sorrow – in the same way that parents cannot, and ought not, always protect their children from some of life’s struggles and disappointments. No, God does not promise to save us from life’s pain…BUT God does promise to be with us…and maybe even make some good things come out of life’s pain…
In the tragedy of our nephew David’s death, his parents, Rod and Laurie, met with some good people to help them start down the road of grief that so many of you know as well. One person offered them a beautiful quote by the author Patrick Overton. He wrote: When you come to the edge of all the light you know and are about to step off into the darkness, faith is believing one of two things will happen: There will be something solid to stand on...or you will learn to fly (Faith, by Patrick Overton Copyright © 1975 The Leaning Tree, 1997 Rebuilding the Front Porch of America).
Our Why? questions may never be answered in the way that we want… But, when we dare to leap…and find ourselves either standing on something solid, flying, or simply wrapped in God’s loving arms, then I’m pretty sure that we’ll be able to let go of this oldest, shortest, biggest question. Thanks be to God. Amen.