While many in this land were still celebrating at Christmas parties in the early hours of Boxing Day 2004, the Australian and Eurasian tectonic plates in the earth’s crust moved violently against each other.
The impact of the crash was so massive that scientists tell us that the earth wobbled on its axis enough so that every day hence will be a fraction of a second shorter. The waves that swept across the Indian Ocean from the quake epicentre near Indonesia moved at the speed of a hurtling jetliner. Wherever they met land, they leapt high into the air and swept the margins of the land with a ferocious destructiveness that has so far taken 150,000 lives – and the body count continues to grow. A million people are homeless – at least five million may have had their livelihoods taken away from them. In the time it takes for the land to recover, many thousands more may die from thirst, starvation, exposure or disease.
The images and stories from Asia across our TVs and newspapers have held us in thrall over the last few days:
• An older man desperate to hold on to the railing of a wall as the waters sweep by him – nobody knows if he survived
• The Australian mum who was holding on to two children at the same time – she realised that she could only hold one or all three of them would die. She let go of the five year old for somebody else to hold on to but the child got away from the person’s grasp – a child who was frightened by water and could not swim – amazingly the child was found alive hours later because he had clung on for life to the top of a door, even as the waters swirled around him
• A four year old boy, no older than my own four year old, was swept to the top of a tree in Sri Lanka by the water – two days later they found him, still alive and clinging on to that tree, even though he had no food or water or company
• The high casualty rates among the children because those parts of Asia have 39% of the population under 16 years of age, and also because it was holiday time and thousands of kids were simply doing what kids do – playing on the beach when the waves hit.
No wonder our nation has responded as never before. Two days ago, charitable giving to the government’s disaster committee by people in the UK had reached a million pounds an hour. Across the world, already two billion dollars has been committed for disaster relief. We cannot help but feel compassion towards the hurting, grieving peoples of Asia. We feel their loss. We mourn with them.
Ramesh Richard, a friend of mine who grew up in Tamil Nadu, part of India’s south coast, sent an email in which he said the sea-quake is being followed by a soul-quake. From their innermost souls, people are crying out in agony and despair. Some wished they had died rather than survive without family and without hope. Still others are looking to God as they marvel that they escaped certain death – but what for? They seek something beyond the natural to calm their soul-quake.
We who are far away from the sea-quake may well wonder how our souls should respond to what has happened in Asia? What can we say to those around us who ask why God let this happen? Was he asleep at the wheel and so was unable to stop this tragedy before it occurred? Or does he not care about us? Is he powerless? Does he even exist?
As Christians we search the Scriptures for help in answering these questions in our soul. Today, I was supposed to preach from another passage in the Bible but three weeks ago Andrew suggested that I consider preaching from Joel instead, as a start to our new series on the Minor Prophets. Actually, if you search the Scriptures, there is no better tsunami help than Joel – neither of us knew of the tsunami at the time but I believe that the Spirit led Andrew to changing the passage. So that’s the first thing to note about the tsunami – God knew it was going to happen.
We don’t know much about Joel or the circumstances that led to his writing the words we just heard read to us from Joel Chapter 2. But we do know that an invasion of locusts had swept through the kingdom of Judah that in its own way was as terrifying and devastating for the Israelites as this week’s tsunami. The number dead was lower but the end result was the same – the land was destroyed, there was famine and economic ruin, and thousands of families lost loved ones.
What is remarkable about Joel’s prophecy is how he takes what appears to be a natural calamity and puts on his spiritual lenses to understand better God’s purposes for Israel. According to Joel, the locust invasion is a foretaste of the coming Day of God’s judgement and is sent in advance of that day as a warning of it. What starts out as a description of the locust invasion in Chapter 2 suddenly becomes a heavenly army in verse 11: “The Lord thunders at the head of his army, his forces are beyond number, and mighty are those who obey his command. The day of the Lord is great, it is dreadful. Who can endure it?”
What does Joel want the people to do? In verse 12 he tells us: “Even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning. Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity.”
But surely, I hear you ask, God did not send the tsunami to punish the people of Asia? After all, God could have used a locust plague to remind the people of Israel to return to him from their sinful ways, but surely such techniques cannot apply to those who don’t belong to Israel, his chosen people? Many of those who died this week would not even have heard of Jesus – how can God be punishing them for turning away from him?
We need to note two things about God’s actions in the tsunami. One, there will be more such catastrophes coming, and two, we are told how to respond to them.
Looking at the first one, in Matthew 24, Jesus is asked by his disciples how they can identify the signs that the world will come to an end. In verse 6 (reading from The Message Bible) he says, “When reports come in of wars and rumoured wars, keep your head and don’t panic. This is routine history; this is no sign of the end. Nation will fight nation and ruler will fight ruler, over and over. Famines and earthquakes will occur in various places. This is nothing compared to what is coming.”
What a terrifyingly accurate description this is of the world we live in right now – what with Iraq, Darfur in Sudan, and the tsunami. But it will only get worse, and these are signs that the end times will soon be upon us. God will be sending us more warning signs that the end is coming our way – this tsunami is just one example.
And what happens to all those innocents who get hurt and lose their lives in these catastrophes?
Jesus was asked a similar question in Luke 13: About that time some people came up and told him about the Galileans Pilate had killed while they were at worship, mixing their blood with the blood of the sacrifices on the altar. Jesus responded, "Do you think those murdered Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans? Not at all. Unless you turn to God, you too will die. And those eighteen in Jerusalem the other day, the ones crushed and killed when the Tower of Siloam collapsed and fell on them, do you think they were worse citizens than all other Jerusalemites? Not at all. Unless you turn to God, you too will die."
When we ask Jesus the question, “Why did a disaster fall upon these people?,” his response is: never mind the other people – a God full of grace and compassion, slow to anger and abounding in love, will deal with them. We should be asking instead, “Why haven’t these disasters come upon us?” Our problem is that we have forgotten how sinful we are. We have forgotten that it generally takes a disaster of unparalleled proportions to wake us from sin’s lethargy.
So how can we respond to this week’s tragic events?
In Joel 2 v 16, we hear the prophet calling the people to gather - the church assembly, the elders, the children, even the little ones - just like in our church today, and he urges them to pray to God to spare his people. And that is what we can do today – together pray for God’s mercy. And God responds in verse 23 onwards to say that he will repay them for the years robbed by the locusts. And he promises to pour out his spirit on all people, something that started two thousand years ago on the Day of Pentecost.
Let’s do what we have to in terms of giving gifts to those who are suffering in Asia right now. It is a proper Christian response and the least that we can expect from a church that is blessed like ours is. But our biggest gift to the people of Asia would be for each of us to turn back to God, from the littlest to the oldest, to cry out to him for help, and to ask him to make us clean inside and outside. For some reason unknown to us, in God’s economy, he values that more than billions of dollars of aid money.
Jyoti Banerjee
Jan 2, 2005
