9:30am Camillo
Isaiah 62:1-5 : 1 Corinthians 12:1-11 : John 2:1-11
It doesn’t seem too long ago that a submarine earthquake launched the tsunami that devastated so many areas in countries around the Indian Ocean. Most of those places, especially in Indonesia, are still trying to rebuild in what is still the aftermath of that horrific episode. In our own nation we live perilously with dry bush neighbouring us, praying that we have no further bushfires.
No prizes for guessing that I’m going to mention Haiti next. Word is that the death toll could reach 200 000, with the number of people the earthquake affected rising to three million. That’s one-third of Haiti’s population.
I have to admit that I can’t imagine either of those figures. They’re too big, almost surreal in their magnitude.
We who have the unspeakable luxury of continuing our comparatively stress-free lives – for which we should not feel any guilt – need to confront one of the huge questions that any faith or religion ought to be asking at times like these. The question takes several forms, most commonly, Why did God allow this to happen? and, Where was God…?
These are the common questions of a shared desperation that arises simply from being human in a damaged world. But they become even more sharply-focussed when disasters, either natural or human-made, shatter our complacency.
At one level these sorts of questions help deflect our thoughts from the pain we are feeling by having a go at God. I suspect that as we view the images of twisted metal and crumpled buildings, the silent screams and cries of people whose lives, for this moment, are ruined seemingly beyond repair, what we see are so many metaphors for our own inner turmoil.
And maybe it takes something this big, this insufferable, to make us jerk awake and take notice.
But we can’t stand it very long and so, inevitably, we have to make our aggrieved and aggressive representations to God, demanding answers or nervously offering un-asked-for and increasingly-arrogant sham theodicies – justifications for God’s actions or inactions – in order to repress our own pain.
Even so, these are necessary questions and we should never be afraid to ask them. Where indeed was the Living God when the earth ripped itself apart and made mockery of human structures and already-tenuous livelihoods in the dirt-poor republic? Why didn’t God do something to stop it?
I’m not going to pretend I have any answers to questions – good questions – that humankind has asked for millennia before Jesus came along. But let’s get some garbage out of the way first.
Neither this nor any other natural disaster is the action of an enraged, vengeful deity punishing human transgression. It’s clear enough from the Isaiah passage, in which God says,
For Zion's sake I will not keep silent,
and for
Jerusalem's sake I will not rest,
until her vindication shines out
like the dawn,
and her salvation like a burning torch.
Although these and the subsequent stanzas speak of God’s determination to bring restoration to Jerusalem, we can see the same movement towards healing and wholeness in the life and work of Jesus. His actions – so easily misinterpreted and misunderstood – were always about restoration and never about power.
This is what the Living God does. God is a builder and an encourager, never a divine policeman or petty tyrant demanding satisfaction for every slight, real or imagined. No doubt televangelists will have a proverbial field day when they peruse the CIA Factbook entry for Haiti and discover that although 80% of the population claim to be Roman Catholic, roughly “half practise voodoo”.
The true face of the Living God is actually in the hands and feet and skills and willingness of fragile human beings offering time and money and the use of their gifts. This is God in action – people acting with the generosity of God to bring about healing and wholeness.
Equally, God’s actions inform the prayers of the nations. Those who pray align themselves with God and the divine intentions.
Paul’s first letter to the community of faith in Corinth makes a point so obvious that we could almost be forgiven for constantly ignoring it, namely that ordinary people like you and me are the primary resources and manifestations of God’s work.
This is why we see volunteers going to Haiti. This is why people are donating money and goods. This is why aid agencies are seriously mobilised already.
And this is why we pray – not to call upon Mr Fix-it – but, as above, to align ourselves with God’s will and purpose for restoration and wholeness. Our prayers, in a sense, are an energy geared towards this purpose and will, made real when we surrender ourselves into the mystery of God and acknowledge that we really don’t know anything, that we are just as confused today as we were yesterday – and maybe more so – and that we can only offer something like faith in the presence of an enormity we can never hope to understand.
All of this may sound like wet, weak-kneed sap but in reality it is the acknowledgement without which we continue to delude ourselves that we have answers and abilities of our own, not God’s making. It is only when we surrender to the mystery that God can then enable us, freed from our confusing certainties and delusions, to be part of the divine purpose.
And when that happens, God is able to take ordinary bodies, intricate, complex and wondrous, and enable them to do extraordinary things.
Rather like turning water into wine…
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