INTRODUCTION
Do you find that there are times when you just have to ask ... Why? Why do they call it a TV set when you only have one? Why does your nose run and your feet smell? Why do doctors call what they do "practice?" Why are there interstate highways in Hawaii? Why is it that when you transport something by car, it’s called a shipment, but when you transport something by ship, it’s called cargo? Why isn’t the word "phonetic" spelled the way it sounds? Why do tugboats push their barges? And, last but not least, why do they put Braille dots on the keypad of the drive-up ATM? Sometimes you just have to ask ... why?
A first year college student went to take his final exam in meteorology. The exam consisted of one essay question which read “Why is the sky blue?” In answer to this essay question the student wrote the following “Ah...A two point question. As to the first point ‘Why?’ This is a question that has plagued scholars, philosophers and theologians throughout the ages. Who am I, a mere freshman college student, that I should attempt to answer this eternal mystery. I must humbly submit that I do not possess the divine wisdom to answer this first point. But as to the second point, ‘Is the sky blue?’ The answer is “Yes.”
People seem to want to know why things happen as they do. Most especially “Why?” when it comes to tragedy and death. And it seems from today’s gospel reading that people haven’t changed all that much over the two thousand years since the death and resurrection of Jesus. People, then, as now, avidly discussed the latest news of death and destruction and try to understand its significance. Why was the USS Cole bombed? Why has there been so much violence in our schools. Why do good people suffer and die when the those who commit evil seem to get away with the evil they do. Why, Why, Why? This deep need to know the why of suffering has led many to formulate some bazaar answers. Like the paramedic when he was unable to revive a choking toddler said to the child’s mother, “You should be happy that you have other children.” Or that notorious statement, “God must have needed another angel in heaven.” In our need to know why we struggle to come up with a meaning for suffering that we can then live with. But just because we can live with our specific answer to why doesn’t necessarily means that those around us can live with that same answer. And there’s the rub.
We do not know precisely what tragedy some people told Jesus about on the day that our reading originally took place, all we know for sure is that several Galileans were killed in or near the temple by Pilate’s soldiers as they prepared to offer their sacrifices to God. Nor do we have a record of the tragedy involving the collapse of the tower in Siloam that killed eighteen people. All we know for sure is that then, as now, tragedy struck and people died and still other people talked about it, and tried to make sense of it. Whenever bad things happen, whenever senseless things happen, the human instinct is to try to make sense of it. It’s called the search for meaning. A man named Victor Frankl, a Jewish psychologist, developed a psychological counseling approach around this search for meaning. He called it Logo Therapy. A model for therapy developed not in the ivory halls of Cambridge, Harvard, or Yale, but while imprisoned in a German concentration camp during WW II. As Frankl sought to survive the horror of ethnic cleansing he began observing his fellow prisoners in the hope of discovering what coping mechanism would help him endure this horrendous existence. What Frankl discovered was this: Those individuals who could not accept what was happening to them, who could not make their present suffering fit with their faith, who could not find it’s meaning in their world view. Despaired, lost hope, and eventually gave up and died. But those individuals that found meaning from their faith for their suffering, were then able to find hope for a future beyond their present suffering, and so could accept what they were enduring as a part of their existence, and therefore survived.
Yes! It is a part of our very nature to ask the question “Why?” Why did my father die now? Why was our son taken from us? Why did God allow that mother of three children to die of cancer"? We all want to make sense of the senseless, we want to know why certain things occur, and that is often a good thing. For example: when buildings collapse, like the tower in Siloam collapsed, investigations are done to find out why so that, just perhaps, such a tragedy will not occur again. Generally speaking wanting to know why is not a bad thing, but sometimes the urge to figure out why leads us astray, it leads us as we have seen to some rather bizaar conclusions. It can also lead us into assigning blame and guilt to people that do not deserve it, or who at least do not deserve it any more or less than do we. I remember when Rosemary and I pastored in Houlton Maine a young woman was killed one hunting season when she was mistaken for a deer. She had simply been hanging up her families clothes in her own back yard. As the TV news carried the story of the hunter’s arrest and arraignment for murder one woman interviewed had this to say, "Well, it was the woman’s own fault. She should have know better than to go out into her back yard during hunting season.” In the state of Maine the jury found the hunter “Not Guilty.” That’s it, blame the victim. Ah, the American way! Some people, in their quest to understand, reveal that they have all the compassion and sensitivity of a dead toad. The implication was that this young mother somehow deserved what had happened to her. Just as in today’s reading the implication is made by those talking about the Galileans killed by Pilate that somehow they deserved to die because they were sinners. We know this by Jesus’s reply,
"Because those Galileans were killed in that way, do you think it proves that they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? And what about the eighteen people killed when the tower fell on them in Siloam? Do you suppose this proves that they were worse than all the other people living in Jerusalem. No indeed; and I tell you that if you do not turn from your sins, you will all die as they did."
There is a way to make sense of the senseless, but that way my friends is not to blame the victims by suggesting that somehow God brought about their death, or whatever other mishap has occurred to them as some kind of punishment. By that standard no one should be alive today, “for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” God is not a God of evil. I couldn’t follow a God like that. I would not believe in a God who was like that. NO! God is not the author of the bad but of the good. Jesus suggests that we make sense of the senseless, not by condemning the victims of tragedy for their complicity in their own deaths nor do we make sense of the senseless by turning evil into good. We make sense, we find meaning for the suffering in life by considering our own mortality and our own sinfulness, in light of the suffering of Christ and working to produce fruit befitting the salvation provided to us by Christ before we are called to account for our lives before his eternal throne. The message of Jesus, like the prophets before him, is that all of us deserve to experience the wrath of God, but that God does not seek our deaths, nor does he delight in our suffering, rather he offers us the free gift of forgiveness. Like the prodigal son God waits for us to return home. Having come to ourselves, that is having come to our senses, we repent of seeking only our way no matter who is hurt in the process. We turn back from “My way or I’m taking the High Way” to finally lacing our feet upon the road that leads back home. In biblical language we repent, we turn back, we turn around, we go home. And in returning we find a heavenly Father overjoyed with our return. And crying out to all who would hear, “Come and see, Come and see my child who was dead is now alive.”
This is the good news of the gospel. If the truth was to be told. Anyone of us if we knew the suffering that was to come would seek to avoid it. This is why we have yearly medical exams, to catch any medical problems early enough to avoid their full blown consequences. This is why we have savings accounts and IRAs, that we might save for rainy days or for retirement to avoid poverty when we cease having an income. But when Jesus Christ came into this world he didn’t come to avoid the consequences of living but to confront them.
CONCLUSION
Philippians 2:5-8
“Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death ona cross!"
This is the good news of the Gospel, Christ came as God’s representative to be with us, to support us, to die in place of us. When Rosemary served as a hospital chaplain in Williamsport, PA she ministered to one couple confronted with unexpected suffering. The Fox’s had retired the year before and had just completed building their dream house when Mrs. Fox was diagnosed with cancer. Rosemary ministered to them from beginning to end. Even though they belonged to a church and had a loving pastor a bond grew between theFoxs and Rosemary. And on the day Mrs. Fox came into the hospital to die, Rosemary was there. As the whole family was in the room ogether Rosemary said the daughter turned to her and asked, “Why is this happening?” Now you need to understand that as chaplains weare trained to view the question “why” as a statement of anger. It’s not really a request for ananswer. In most cases the person is asking, “Why is this happening to me? Why is thishappening to me now?” So Rosemary didn’t answer the question but instead sought tocomfort the daughter. But again the daughter asked Rosemary, “Why is this happening?” Rosemary told me, suddenly I realized that daughter really wanted an answer. Seeing the suffering on the daughter’s face all Rosemary could find to say was, “I don’t know why this is happening. All I do know is that God is with us.” In hearing those words the daughter began to weep.
This is why the prophet Isaiah said, that the Christ that was to come would be calledEmmanual, which means “God is with us.” I once read a card that said, “When you are at a cross-road in your life, go to the cross.” For it is at the Cross of Christ that we find a heavenlyFather who has come to be with us in our suffering, who has come to suffer with us, who has come to suffer for us. The other day I called Eric Pearson during the day at his home. Eric picked up the phone right away and when he learned that it was me said, “Every time you call me I’m at home. With my schedule I’m not usually home. God must be with you.” Yes Eric, God is with me. God is with us all.
Special thanks to Rev. Richard Fairchild
for the foundation to this sermon.