"God and Suffering"
Sermon Presented March 18, 2007
Psalm 13
In March of 1994, I accompanied my "Ex" to Northridge, California to help his 87-year-old aunt whose home had been destroyed in the earthquake. It was a solemn visit as we helped Aunt Wanda sift through the rubble. The only visible signs of the disaster to her body were a few bruises from being thrown out of bed, but her emotional scars were most evident as she tossed pieces of family treasures that had once belonged to her parents and grandparents. As Don and I drove the rental car to the hotel, I noticed a church sign that read: Praise the Lord! I was instantly angry at the one who posted that message. How insensitive! Didn't they know that praise was impossible at this time? Didn't they understand that people needed time to grieve? From my point of view, the message should have been one of solidarity with the people in their grief and suffering and not one of praise.
In contrast, when the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 occurred, I saw no signs of praise in churches. At that time, I was living in Marysville, KS, and the ministers called a noon prayer time at the Presbyterian Church, inviting everyone who would like to come. Calling committees notified parishioners, and the meeting was announced on the local radio station. The attendance and response to that spontaneous service were overwhelming as people from many churches gathered to express their grief and sorrow. Ministers read lament psalms and prayers were offered for the victims, relatives and friends of victims, and emergency personnel who were assisting in the rescue efforts. People needed the opportunity to grieve that great catastrophe together in the presence of God.
Our world is increasingly experienced as disorientation because of wars, violence, injustice, and hunger, and yet the Church does a poor job of allowing for expressions of that disorientation. Churches usually offer praise and not lament. We look for the positive side of every issue rather than offering opportunities to grieve. Christians are encouraged to deny the present circumstances and act as though everything is okay - God is in control and all's right with the world. Besides, heaven is on the other side of life, and won't that be wonderful? But what do we do when we can't see anything positive? What happens when praise gets stuck in our throat? What happens when all we see around us is hopelessness and despair? What happens when a Pollyanna attitude just won't cut it?
I would like to offer a suggestion that has helped me tremendously! I heard about it my first year of seminary from an Old Testament professor who introduced the lament psalms. More than one-third of the psaltery is composed of lament psalms where the psalmist cries out his grief to God. Our text is Psalm 13 and I would like to read it from The Message by Eugene Peterson. The psalmist's cry to God:
Long enough, Yahweh - you've ignored me long enough.
I've looked at the back of your head long enough. Long enough
I've carried this ton of trouble, lived with a stomach full of pain.
Long enough my arrogant enemies have looked down their noses at me.
Take a good look at me, Yahweh, my God; I want to look life in the eye,
so no enemy can get the best of me or laugh when I fall on my face.
(Next the psalmist moves from disorientation to orientation - from lament to praise. However, we have no idea how long it was before this psalm was completed. It could have been days or weeks or even years! Let's continue:
I've thrown myself headlong into your arms-I'm celebrating
your rescue.
I'm singing at the top of my lungs, I'm so full of answered prayers.
This psalm speaks of a time when God appeared to be either ignoring the psalmist or totally absent. It's a time like Jesus experienced on the cross when he cried: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" - Words from the 22nd Psalm - another lament psalm. It's a time when the situation appears to be hopeless.
Lament psalms bring our dissatisfactions and hurts before God. They are prayers we can offer when we experience physical, emotional, and spiritual suffering. When we speak our grief or anger to God we bring God into the dialogue. The converse is that when we cease to speak our anger or rage to God, we feel completely alienated from God. By keeping the lines of conversation open in honest dialogue during times of trouble, we acknowledge that we aren't alone, and that God is present for us. Although the speech is hostile, we are saying to God that we aren't self-sufficient and need God's presence. We trust God with our deepest feelings and God honors that trust. My job is to let you know that this is acceptable speech.
As humans, we try to figure everything out with our rational minds. When we were children we heard that God is all-powerful, all-knowing and loving. With this as background, how do we rationalize a loving God who allows bad things to happen to good people? Why doesn't an all-powerful God stop the tragedy from occurring? Why are there wars and violence and cancer? Why do children starve and women get raped? Why do good people die young and evil people live long lives? Why? Why? Why? And we really don't want to process the idea that we are given free wills; and that rain falls on the just and the unjust.
Reality is that when we suffer, we are in a constant tension between control and vulnerability. Suffering, more than any other human experience, forces us to see that we don't control the events of our lives. Suffering challenges our mirage of self-sufficiency and invites us to recognize that we're not calling the shots. When we suffer, we are forced to see ourselves without our masks. We are invited to surrender the course of our lives to God, fervently praying that God will show us the way.
It seems to me that in the past people took tragic events more in stride than we do today. Death was accepted as a part of life. Children and grandparents died in the home. Poverty was accepted. People didn't try to rationalize what they didn't understand, they just accepted it. That isn't the case today!
When we suffer, how do we accept it? Some people are chronic complainers - and have always been. They meet every trial life deals them with resistance, resentment and outrage. Embittered by suffering, they lash out at others. Forgiveness isn't an option for them. Other people allow their suffering to pull them into the pit where they may not emerge.
Some people use their suffering to help others. However, it takes time to get to the point of acceptance, let alone desire to help others. The sufferer needs to work through the shock and grief, first. The Church can help in this process by having worship services that allow people to grieve in the presence of God and fellow sufferers. Preachers can tell them that speaking our grief to God is healthy and healing. The Church can offer support groups for cancer survivors, victims and/or families of abuse, addiction, mental or physical handicaps, divorce, and faith crises. When we work through our own suffering, we can then share our stories with other sufferers in recovery.
Though no healthy person seeks suffering, as our faith deepens, we become increasingly more sensitive to its presence in the world. We begin to pray for those we never met but only read about in the newspaper or see on television.
Another response to suffering is to call attention to the suffering of others even though that suffering has never been ours. We can participate in an AIDS march, the CROP walk, or a peace rally. We can write letters to our representatives in Congress about the deplorable way our veterans are being treated. We can send money for research to combat a disease or to feed the hungry.
People with "star power" like Angelina Jolie have an advantage over ordinary citizens like us. They can call attention to atrocities by their involvement in the suffering of others and people take notice! Jolie's recent trip to Africa brought the social problems of Darfur and Chad into our living rooms through television, radio and the printed page. Last week's Newsweek (March 19, 2007) article and haunting pictures of Jolie with the refugees keep the problems there in the spotlight. Jolie said that she was changed by the faces of the people! Public attention to a crisis by a celebrity causes people who are comfortable to experience disorientation as we see the needs and are moved to send money or even adopt a child. Celebrities also keep the war and environmental problems before us.
I recently read the novel Four Spirits, written by Sena Jeter Naslund. It is a fictionalized account of the Civil Rights struggle - and particularly the murders in Birmingham of the four children at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on September 15, 1963. When white civil rights workers joined blacks in the struggle, a broader attention was drawn to the racial violence and injustice because those who weren't directly affected joined in the suffering of those who were affected. We need to be ready to participate in the suffering of others if that is what God calls us to do!
Suffering is real! We all suffer at times - some more than others. When we suffer we have a choice to make. We can shut down or we can shout our complaints to God. If you need help in the latter, you can pick up a lament psalm like this 13th Psalm and pray it. "How long, O God, will you forget me forever?" When we offer our laments to God, we bring God into our struggles and in time, we will experience God's presence and love, and hopefully we will be able to sing the praise ending. I don't know how it happens, but it does! Try it and see!
