November 14, 2010

Malachi 4:1-2a
Psalm 98
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
Luke 21:5-19

Temples tumble and human enterprises fall – be they in Jerusalem in the year 70 of the Common Era or in New York City on a September morning in the year 2001 or on Wall Street in whatever year that debacle began or came into the fullness of light. A new millennium rises from the wreckage of that calamitous Twentieth Century but the hope that we will learn war no more is, in this country, dashed to pieces – though in many, if not most places that hope never was at all. And the earth shakes and rolls and the ruins of cities become the sepulchers of the good and the not-so-good alike. Hurricanes come ashore and levees break, torrential rains wash down from the hills, and the-time-of-cholera is once more. Refugee camps grow larger and polar ice shrinks and everywhere on any day good people, even the best, suffer, and even innocent children sicken and die. Meanwhile, south of the border, no one is safe, the death toll keeps on climbing, the drug cartels grow more brazen and well-armed, and no one knows how to stop the madness. And in a land once called “holy” the children of common ancestors contend in an unholy state of territorial warfare. What, dear God, is the meaning of all this?!?!?

There are of course plenty of people plenty willing to answer that question, who over the airwaves and cable and satellite dish come in the name of the Lord, hosanna to them in the highest. “The end is near,” they shout. “The prophecies of the Book of Revelations are being fulfilled. The rapture is upon us. Messiah is about to return. And for ten dollars you can buy my book and learn exactly how, when, where, and why.” “God is angry,” they shriek. “Hurricanes in Florida and New Orleans, clearly God’s vengeance – had you killed the homos – or at least kept them tightly locked in their closets, these things surely would not have happened. And Haiti – well there’s voodoo there, don’t you know. The Christians and the innocents? Collateral damage – after all, they let it happen in the first place.” And you know what the Phelps’ clan has to say about our young people killed in Iraq or Afghanistan – I needn’t sicken any of us with that tortured, torturing logic.

But Jesus won’t have any of that sort of dung. “Do you think the Galileans caught in the crossfire between Pilate and the insurrectionists were worse sinners than others?” Jesus asks in the 13^th Chapter of Luke. “Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them – do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? Quit thinking that way about God,” says Jesus – “or you will die like they did – thinking that God is an angry, vengeful God who forever prowls about looking to annihilate us for even the tiniest infraction.”

But the question remains: Why all these bad things? Especially when they happen to good people. What in the name of heaven is God up to?

It’s called speculative theology – trying to see into the mind of God. Martin Luther was once asked by a student, “Father Doctor Luther, what was God doing before God created the heavens and the earth?” Luther’s answer: “Creating hell – for people like you who ask questions like that.” Vintage Luther, but behind his too-clever-by-half reply, a truth. Spending one’s time trying to weasel one’s way into the mind of God – outside of the Word of God in Christ crucified and risen – is not only fruitless, it takes away from faith – it results not in hope, but in sleepless nights – it results not in good works done solely for the sake of the neighbor, but in time spent pondering the imponderable, time that would have been a great deal better spent changing the baby’s diapers or picking up litter by the side of the road.

To be sure, a good deal of the evil in this world is of our own doing, the inevitable consequence of our human will to power, prestige, and money – and there are innocent by-standers, some. And against these things we can and must struggle and work. Still, why must the good suffer? And what of earthquakes, famines, floods, tornadoes, volcanoes, avalanches, tsunamis, and wild fire? Is creation itself evil? No answers. Not from Jesus. Only the obvious: “The rain falls on the good and the evil alike.” By our accounting, not fair!! So what are we to do? Sit under a tree like Jonah, stick out our collective tongues at God, and pout? St. Paul’s answer to the people of the Church in Thessalonica is clear: “Quit your idle chatter, your endless speculation, your self-absorbed philosophizing – and get to work! The neighbor does not need your chattering and your attempts to predict the end-times. The neighbor does not need your vain attempts to penetrate the mind of God. The neighbor needs your work. The creation needs your care.”

But what to do when death inevitably does comes skulking and untamable evil lurks nearby? I heard a wise man once say – during the height of the Cold War when all around were digging bomb-shelters in their backyards in a vain and ridiculous attempt to save themselves from nuclear holocaust – I heard this wise man say, “If the sirens sound and tell us that the atomic bombs are coming our way, we’ll go to the garage and we’ll get down the lawn-chairs and we’ll set them up in the front yard and we’ll sit in a circle and we’ll hold hands and we will sing hymns of praise to our God while we wait.”

“All sorts of bad things will happen,” says Jesus. “Don’t try to figure it out – but make of it an opportunity to speak of the hope that is within you.”

Her name was Christine. She was a soul-mate, and when she called to tell me she was dying of cancer, as I began to cry, she gently, quietly said: “Kevin, it’s all right. I’m not afraid. I’m a child of God. And I’m not just saying that – I know it to the very depth of my heart. I will not perish, but live. What exactly that means, I do not know – I only know it’s true.” And Christine did die a year or so later – but not until after she had sung in Evening Prayer for her last time here on earth: “My soul doth magnify the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”

In a few moments we will sing as well – this time along with Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The Hymn of Day is a translation of Bonhoeffer’s last poem, written from prison as he awaited his sure and certain execution at the hands of the Third Reich. “Yes,” Jesus says, “They will arrest you and persecute you, they will hand you over councils and prison . . . and they will put some of you to death . . . this will give you an opportunity to speak of your hope.” This will be an opportunity for us to speak – not the hope of this world’s reason – but the hope that was spoken by the one who did turn the other cheek and die – the hope of the one who said, ‘It is finished. Into your hands I commend my spirit’ – and who, on the Third Day, it is said, rose from death.

And so it shall be for all of us, by the work of the Holy Spirit. So let’s get out the lawn chairs and sing our faith, the hope of things not seen – and then, even as the bombs come near, get to work and care for the neighbor and for the whole creation.