I've written on this before, but it has come up again, so here we are once more. There are a few very basic and very different theologies that compete with one another around the topic of omnipotence, control or total power. These theologies do not divide across denominational lines: Christians (and really people of every faith) of every denomination argue on both sides of this issue. But it comes down to the same thing. Frederick Buechner (Protestant), Richard Rohr (Catholic), Elie Weisel (Jewish)... they all basically say the same thing: that there are three statements that cannot be reconciled:
God is all-powerful.
God is all-good.
Terrible things happen.
One of these has to go.
If God is both all good and all powerful, then even things that we feel are terrible must, ultimately, not be. But in order to believe this, you have to somehow convince yourself that rape, children being murdered and tortured and kidnapped, people destroying one another - somehow these are not actually bad things. Somehow God "has a plan" and "has mandated it from the beginning" and "everything happens for a reason." All I can say here is that if you actually believe that these things are not genuinely evil, and horribly wrong, then either you have never experienced genuine trauma, or your morality is completely different from my own.
So maybe, instead, you decide that God must not be all good. Well, this is the only option if God is in control of everything and terrible things really do happen. What kind of monster-god would allow for children to be separated from their parents, tortured, left to die of dehydration and neglect? What kind of monster-god would mandate that some people should be born with riches to fill the world while others cannot get enough to eat or drink? What kind of god feels rape is acceptable?
No, the above mentioned theologians, as well as many people across denominations and faiths who love God and spend time with God come to the conclusion instead that the "God is all-powerful" statement is the one that must be rejected. Instead they point out that God wants genuine relationships with us. And that means that we must be given free will, a free-will that allows people to make choices. Sometimes that means people make terrible choices that in turn lead, at times, to terrible tragedies. And because God is committed out of a deep, deep love for each of us, to letting us be who we choose to be: real people (not puppets, not dolls, not micromanaged robots) in real relationships, sometimes we do things that break God's heart. OFTEN we do things that break God's heart. And when that happens, God grieves with us as much as we ourselves grieve. God cries with us, holds us, mourns for and with us. But God still loves us too much to take away our ability to choose to be who we choose to be. I believe the stance of not being all powerful is something God has chosen, for the sake of giving us genuine life, for the sake of choosing real relationship with us.
Sometimes this makes me angry, just as it does for all of those who choose genuine, honest, real relationships with God. Sometimes I become furious at God for not stepping in, stopping the wars, stopping the torture, stopping death and destruction. But I also believe in a God who is big enough and loves me fully enough to be able to handle that anger. Read the Psalms if you aren't sure. They are full of words of anger at God, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?!" the psalmist shouts as he invites us to likewise raise our voices honestly to God. Jesus echos this from the cross as well, again, giving us permission (as we are called to follow in every way) to likewise express our pain and anger to God. Does God want you to suppress your feelings? Does God want you to lie about what you actually feel? Of course not! The God who loved us into being is big enough to be able to hear and see and love us for ALL that we are, with all our pain, all our anger, all our pride, and all our misunderstandings. That is the God who chooses us, chooses relationship with us, chooses to love us, and to stay with us despite what we do, what we say, what we feel and what we grieve.
Let me be clear that I do not believe that God therefore leaves us alone. We have been sent the Spirit, the advocate, who offers counsel and guidance. God is with us to talk to, to listen, to respond. God works through people, through nature, through scripture, through other writings, to all who are open to God's love, guidance, compassion, movement, encouragement, and wisdom. But God does not compel our choices in any way.
My God is big, big enough to love all of us with all of our faults, our mistakes, our tragedies, and our flaws. My God is all good, love beyond measure, hope beyond despair, and compassion beyond rage. Terrible things still happen. And God is not responsible for those terrible things. They happen, and God cries as her children are crucified again and again. God cries as his beloveds suffer. God weeps as we stumble our way through life sometimes hurting one another in awful ways. AND God laughs with us when we learn, delights in us when we triumph, celebrates with us as we grow and move and expand in our ability to love and care and share and be the people God hopes for us to be. This is the God I love. This is the God I know. This is the God I can count on to love me exactly as who I am, with my anger, and my grief, as well as my gratitude and my joy and my growing. And for all of that I am, indeed, grateful.
Showing posts with label tragedy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tragedy. Show all posts
Monday, July 22, 2019
Sunday, November 15, 2015
Today's Sermon - What to do now?
Matthew 5:38-48
Today is supposed to be the day that I preach on Stewardship, or giving to the church. I had the sermon written and prepared. It was an acceptable stewardship sermon, full of examples and stories – perhaps you will hear it next week. You know the point of it anyway, the church can’t survive without you. You are the church, and therefore we need all of who you are. Blah Blah Blah. Important stuff? Of course.
But it isn’t what is important today. So last night after being glued to Facebook on and off throughout the day, to friends’ posts about the news and to news sources themselves I realized the sermon I’d written had to be tossed, or at least postponed. Because that’s not what we need today. That’s not where we are today as a people. We are instead on Friday the 13th, 2015. As I understand it, within a 24 hour period we had terrorist attacks in Paris, an earthquake in Japan, a funeral bombed in Baghdad, Suicide bombings in Beirut and another earthquake in Mexico. Through these events and these events alone in a 24 hour period it is guesstimated that we lost 115,200 human lives. In 24 hours. And that does not count the murders and suicides and deaths to hunger, starvation, dehydration, kidnapping, spousal abuse, or natural disasters around the world other than the two mentioned that went on yesterday. It does not count the violence, the pain, the suffering that went on in the world that just permanently damaged individuals and communities around the world. It does not count those lost to disease and car accidents and SIDS and old age. There was suffering in that 24 hour period. And beyond that I understand there was an attack on a university in Kenya that ended with 147 dead, also from a fundamentalist group similar to Isis called Al Shabab. It goes on. And on. And the result is real suffering. Great suffering.
Deep.
Suffering.
And not just in isolated pockets. There is a poem out by Warsan Shire, “later that night I held an atlas in my lap, ran my fingers across the whole world and whispered, “where does it hurt?” It answered, “everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.”
In the midst of all of that, what are we to do? How are we to feel and act and live? How are we supposed to respond? How are we supposed to get up each morning like the world is normal and fine and God’s beautiful creation? And then, and then, the passage our pastor decides to read to us is about loving our enemies! Is she nuts? Is she crazy? That is not where we are right now! That is not how we feel right now!
And the truth is, I’m with you on that. The truth is that feelings like sorrow, like forgiveness, like loving those who hurt us – those things feel weak in the face of what the world is experiencing. How is love a realistic response to what went on in Paris, Baghdad, Beirut, Kenya?! We know what happens to those who practice love in the face of stuff like this!! Martin Luther King Jr, Gandhi, JFK, Jesus! Look what happened to them? They ended up dead! Killed. All of them. Dead. And if it was just our lives on the line, maybe that would feel okay. But what about when it is our children? My children? My family? My community? Aren’t we supposed to defend the week and oppressed and downtrodden? Aren’t we supposed to do something? And mustn’t that something be violent so the point is made? Mustn’t that something be so huge and dramatically vengeful that we get the attention of those lousy Isis people and make them stop??!! They need to suffer as we have suffered. We want them punished. Anger feels strong! Vengeance feels strong! Retaliation feels strong! Those aren’t the weak emotions of grief, of sorrow, or of love! Right?
Right?!
Right….?
I found myself reading article after article written by people I respect, admire, value. I read argument after argument about the “correct” responses to all of this. All sorts of ideas are being expressed, as they always are. David is a Marine. And he admitted that that part of him fires up in the face of all of this. But he’s also now very close to a person who takes very seriously Jesus' call to turn the other cheek – I take it so seriously that I pretty much consider myself a pacifist. I agree with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr when he said “darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” But what do we do with either of those philosophies when what is really under them all is simply raw pain. Grief. Loss. Incomprehension about what is happening to our world, in our world, around our world. In our communities, with our friends. With those we love….
Anne Lamott wrote this, “So where do we find grace and light? If you mean right now, the answer is Nowhere. It's like after a child dies. Grace always does bat last, and the light always overcomes the darkness--always, historically. But not necessarily later the same day, or tomorrow, after lunch. Wendell Berry told me 25 years ago, in Advent, the darkest shortest days of winter, "It gets darker and darker and darker, and then Jesus is born." But it is only November 13! It gets even darker. What is the answer? Gandhi is almost always the answer. Jesus's love for the poor and refugees is the answer. Adding a bit of light and warmth to these cold dark days doesn't hurt. Candles are beautiful and bring a soupçon of solace to our souls. People living on the streets could really use your old blankets and jackets. Grace will always show up in the helpers, as Mr. Rogers' mother used to tell him in times of tragedy. But today, right now, if you have a nice bumper sticker that explains or makes sense of what happened in Paris, it's probably best if you keep that to yourself”
Frankly, I was tempted to read to you her whole article instead of my sermon because her writing is so profound and beautiful and right on. But I realized that that would also not be helpful. Because in the midst of all this, in the midst of tragedy, and pain, and loss, and confusion, what we need most is each other. What we need most is to be together, to stand with one another, to support and love one another. And while distant writers and not so distant writers can help us, can be part of the guides that help us through this time, what we need is immediate, is here, is now. At a time when there is pain, and loss, and tragedy, “distant” is the opposite of what we need.
If there is any truth to the words of Jesus and Martin Luther King, then we have to start with love. And that love has to start with those we know. If you are a visitor, that love has to start with those right in front of you, too, from us to you, and hopefully you will feel surrounded by that in this place. We learn through loving and being loved by those in our midst how to love those who are not in our midst. We learn by loving and being loved by those we like how to take a chance and maybe, just maybe, love those we don’t like. We learn from loving and being loved by those we don’t like, the first steps in loving our enemies. But that, too, is jumping way ahead.
For today I don’t want to argue about the best way to both love our enemies and defend the powerless. Today I don’t want to explore what to do about what is happening to our world. For today, for today, I believe our call is simply to begin by being together, supporting each other, loving each other and those around the world. And I want to start by telling you that whatever you are feeling about what is happening in the world is okay. Feelings are just feelings. Those, too, are gifts from God, that help us know something is wrong, and help us move forward and into solutions at some point. We don’t grieve by pushing those feelings away. And we don’t move forward by denying them or deciding they are wrong. If you feel angry, that’s understandable. If you feel rage-ful, that’s okay. If you feel sad, that is absolutely normal. If you feel lost, or scared, or alone or confused – all of those feelings in the face of these tragedies make sense. And we are here for you, for each other.
And God? Where is God in the midst of all of this? I’m reminded of another passage. Matthew 2: 16- 18: When Herod knew the magi had fooled him, he grew very angry. He sent soldiers to kill all the children in Bethlehem and in all the surrounding territory who were two years old and younger, according to the time that he had learned from the magi. 17 This fulfilled the word spoken through Jeremiah the prophet: A voice was heard in Ramah,
weeping and much grieving.
Rachel weeping for her children,
and she did not want to be comforted,
because they were no more.
Where is God in this? It is God who is weeping, not just Rachel. It is God’s children who have been killed. It is God’s children who are suffering. Where is God when we are suffering? Right with us. Suffering as well.
Yes, we are called to move forward, to do something, to work this through. But today, for today, we are called to just be with our feelings, with one another, and with the God who is grieving too.
Today is supposed to be the day that I preach on Stewardship, or giving to the church. I had the sermon written and prepared. It was an acceptable stewardship sermon, full of examples and stories – perhaps you will hear it next week. You know the point of it anyway, the church can’t survive without you. You are the church, and therefore we need all of who you are. Blah Blah Blah. Important stuff? Of course.
But it isn’t what is important today. So last night after being glued to Facebook on and off throughout the day, to friends’ posts about the news and to news sources themselves I realized the sermon I’d written had to be tossed, or at least postponed. Because that’s not what we need today. That’s not where we are today as a people. We are instead on Friday the 13th, 2015. As I understand it, within a 24 hour period we had terrorist attacks in Paris, an earthquake in Japan, a funeral bombed in Baghdad, Suicide bombings in Beirut and another earthquake in Mexico. Through these events and these events alone in a 24 hour period it is guesstimated that we lost 115,200 human lives. In 24 hours. And that does not count the murders and suicides and deaths to hunger, starvation, dehydration, kidnapping, spousal abuse, or natural disasters around the world other than the two mentioned that went on yesterday. It does not count the violence, the pain, the suffering that went on in the world that just permanently damaged individuals and communities around the world. It does not count those lost to disease and car accidents and SIDS and old age. There was suffering in that 24 hour period. And beyond that I understand there was an attack on a university in Kenya that ended with 147 dead, also from a fundamentalist group similar to Isis called Al Shabab. It goes on. And on. And the result is real suffering. Great suffering.
Deep.
Suffering.
And not just in isolated pockets. There is a poem out by Warsan Shire, “later that night I held an atlas in my lap, ran my fingers across the whole world and whispered, “where does it hurt?” It answered, “everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.”
In the midst of all of that, what are we to do? How are we to feel and act and live? How are we supposed to respond? How are we supposed to get up each morning like the world is normal and fine and God’s beautiful creation? And then, and then, the passage our pastor decides to read to us is about loving our enemies! Is she nuts? Is she crazy? That is not where we are right now! That is not how we feel right now!
And the truth is, I’m with you on that. The truth is that feelings like sorrow, like forgiveness, like loving those who hurt us – those things feel weak in the face of what the world is experiencing. How is love a realistic response to what went on in Paris, Baghdad, Beirut, Kenya?! We know what happens to those who practice love in the face of stuff like this!! Martin Luther King Jr, Gandhi, JFK, Jesus! Look what happened to them? They ended up dead! Killed. All of them. Dead. And if it was just our lives on the line, maybe that would feel okay. But what about when it is our children? My children? My family? My community? Aren’t we supposed to defend the week and oppressed and downtrodden? Aren’t we supposed to do something? And mustn’t that something be violent so the point is made? Mustn’t that something be so huge and dramatically vengeful that we get the attention of those lousy Isis people and make them stop??!! They need to suffer as we have suffered. We want them punished. Anger feels strong! Vengeance feels strong! Retaliation feels strong! Those aren’t the weak emotions of grief, of sorrow, or of love! Right?
Right?!
Right….?
I found myself reading article after article written by people I respect, admire, value. I read argument after argument about the “correct” responses to all of this. All sorts of ideas are being expressed, as they always are. David is a Marine. And he admitted that that part of him fires up in the face of all of this. But he’s also now very close to a person who takes very seriously Jesus' call to turn the other cheek – I take it so seriously that I pretty much consider myself a pacifist. I agree with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr when he said “darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” But what do we do with either of those philosophies when what is really under them all is simply raw pain. Grief. Loss. Incomprehension about what is happening to our world, in our world, around our world. In our communities, with our friends. With those we love….
Anne Lamott wrote this, “So where do we find grace and light? If you mean right now, the answer is Nowhere. It's like after a child dies. Grace always does bat last, and the light always overcomes the darkness--always, historically. But not necessarily later the same day, or tomorrow, after lunch. Wendell Berry told me 25 years ago, in Advent, the darkest shortest days of winter, "It gets darker and darker and darker, and then Jesus is born." But it is only November 13! It gets even darker. What is the answer? Gandhi is almost always the answer. Jesus's love for the poor and refugees is the answer. Adding a bit of light and warmth to these cold dark days doesn't hurt. Candles are beautiful and bring a soupçon of solace to our souls. People living on the streets could really use your old blankets and jackets. Grace will always show up in the helpers, as Mr. Rogers' mother used to tell him in times of tragedy. But today, right now, if you have a nice bumper sticker that explains or makes sense of what happened in Paris, it's probably best if you keep that to yourself”
Frankly, I was tempted to read to you her whole article instead of my sermon because her writing is so profound and beautiful and right on. But I realized that that would also not be helpful. Because in the midst of all this, in the midst of tragedy, and pain, and loss, and confusion, what we need most is each other. What we need most is to be together, to stand with one another, to support and love one another. And while distant writers and not so distant writers can help us, can be part of the guides that help us through this time, what we need is immediate, is here, is now. At a time when there is pain, and loss, and tragedy, “distant” is the opposite of what we need.
If there is any truth to the words of Jesus and Martin Luther King, then we have to start with love. And that love has to start with those we know. If you are a visitor, that love has to start with those right in front of you, too, from us to you, and hopefully you will feel surrounded by that in this place. We learn through loving and being loved by those in our midst how to love those who are not in our midst. We learn by loving and being loved by those we like how to take a chance and maybe, just maybe, love those we don’t like. We learn from loving and being loved by those we don’t like, the first steps in loving our enemies. But that, too, is jumping way ahead.
For today I don’t want to argue about the best way to both love our enemies and defend the powerless. Today I don’t want to explore what to do about what is happening to our world. For today, for today, I believe our call is simply to begin by being together, supporting each other, loving each other and those around the world. And I want to start by telling you that whatever you are feeling about what is happening in the world is okay. Feelings are just feelings. Those, too, are gifts from God, that help us know something is wrong, and help us move forward and into solutions at some point. We don’t grieve by pushing those feelings away. And we don’t move forward by denying them or deciding they are wrong. If you feel angry, that’s understandable. If you feel rage-ful, that’s okay. If you feel sad, that is absolutely normal. If you feel lost, or scared, or alone or confused – all of those feelings in the face of these tragedies make sense. And we are here for you, for each other.
And God? Where is God in the midst of all of this? I’m reminded of another passage. Matthew 2: 16- 18: When Herod knew the magi had fooled him, he grew very angry. He sent soldiers to kill all the children in Bethlehem and in all the surrounding territory who were two years old and younger, according to the time that he had learned from the magi. 17 This fulfilled the word spoken through Jeremiah the prophet: A voice was heard in Ramah,
weeping and much grieving.
Rachel weeping for her children,
and she did not want to be comforted,
because they were no more.
Where is God in this? It is God who is weeping, not just Rachel. It is God’s children who have been killed. It is God’s children who are suffering. Where is God when we are suffering? Right with us. Suffering as well.
Yes, we are called to move forward, to do something, to work this through. But today, for today, we are called to just be with our feelings, with one another, and with the God who is grieving too.
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