Ambiguous but Obvious (Lent 3C)

Ambiguous but Obvious

Lent 3C
24 March 2019 8:00 a.m. Said and 10 a.m. Sung Eucharist

The Very Rev. Fr. Anthony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)

Exodus 3:1-15; Psalm 63:1-8; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9

 

 God, give us grace to feel and love. 

Take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

The unjust death of people at prayer is a shocking and horrible thing: the racist murder of black Christians at Mother Emmanuel Church Charleston SC four years ago, the anti-Semitic murder of Jews in a Pittsburgh Synagogue last year, the 40,000 death toll of Catholics in the Lisbon Cathedral by the 1755 All Saints Day earthquake, or the Muslims last week at Friday prayers in Christchurch New Zealand.   Death is horrible,  unexpected death at prayer doubly so.    

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is asked about people at worship who die horribly.  “Did you hear that the Romans massacred those countrymen of yours who were worshiping in the Temple?  Their own blood was mixed with that of the animals they were sacrificing!  What evil did they do that that God punished them this way?” 

When faced with unexplainable horror, people often resort to the trope “God is punishing me” or “God is punishing them.”  Back in Spring 2010 a devastating earthquake struck Haiti.  Television Evangelist Pat Robertson quickly said that this was God’s punishment for the traditional animism practiced by many of its people, Voodoo.   Jerry Falwell blamed the 9-11 attacks in 2001 on homosexuals and women who sought abortions:  God was punishing America by knocking down the symbols of our pride, the Trade center and the Pentagon.    

But as much as such thinking may appear to explain the unexplainable, it leaves us with an ugly image:  God the Tester and God the Punisher.  Not a pretty picture.

This question posed to Jesus has hefty scriptural authority behind it. The Book of Deuteronomy and all the books from Joshua through 2 Kings teach that if you do what is right, God will bless you and prosper your way.  If you do what is wrong, God will punish you and bring calamity upon you.   1-2 Chronicles take the idea further: if something bad happens to you, you clearly have done something wrong,  God is punishing you.”

But Jesus says no—God is not like that.   He replies:  “Those people did nothing any worse than anyone else.  And what about those countrymen of yours who died in the Tower of Siloam when it collapsed?  They were no worse than anyone else.  The lesson we should take here is not that they were particularly bad, but that we all need to be better” (Luke 13:1-5).  

Jesus says that God is mystery, hard sometimes to figure out. But despite this ambiguity in God, there is certainty also:  the one thing we can be sure about is that God is compassionate. 

Jesus too is following scripture in this view.

The Book of Job tells of a man “perfect in all his ways,” yet who suffers horror.  Job’s friends urge him to confess whatever hidden sin he has committed that God is so obviously punishing him for.  But Job just can’t agree: what he has suffered just is not fair.  He won’t let God off the hook.  But he does not “curse God and die.”  When God at long last speaks to him from “out of the whirlwind,” it is all so overwhelming that all Job can do is mourn and sorrow, and yet bless God for his mysterious goodness.  

Mystery.  Ambiguity.  In today’s reading from Exodus, God is the one who is and brings all into being, the “I am” (Ehyeh) who “brings into being” (Yahweh).   God remains always somewhat hidden from us, speaking from a bush that burns, yet is not consumed.   The God whose name should not be said aloud is being itself that brings all things into existence.   This should cause us to stand in awe, and remove the shoes from our feet. 

Jesus says that you can’t explain the bad things in the world by chalking them up to God the Punisher.   Jesus invites us instead to keep confidence in God’s love and justice and embrace mystery.  He knows that throughout Hebrew Scripture, God is described as loving, compassionate, and patient.  So you have to focus on God’s goodness and love, not on God’s justice, or, worse, what feels like God’s anger when you are not right with God.  Bad things happen even to good people.  Sometimes, the wicked prosper.  But God still loves us.  God is Ambiguous as an explanation, but Obvious as love.  Embrace ambiguity.  Take off your shoes before the burning but unconsumed bush.  And keep your confidence in the love of God, despite things that go bad for us.

Accepting ambiguity is hard.  But it is easier when we focus on the things we are sure of.  Thus we can keep trying to be faithful to the tradition, continue to learn from the stories that have been handed down, and actually find them newly empowered to do better things for us than we were getting from the exact way we received them.    Again, the key is focusing on what we truly know. 

The gospel stories of Jesus healing the sick tell us that the ultimate purpose of God does not include disease, suffering, and death. Jesus’ announcing the reign of God focused in large part in healing physical and mental suffering. This tells us that God doesn’t intend horror and disappointment for those he has made. 

When asked why a man had been born blind, “was it his parents’ sin or his?” he replied, “Neither, it wasn’t punishment for anything, but so that I would have the chance to heal him” (John 9:2-3).  They ask him why, on account of what, and he answers why, for what purpose.   Jesus’ shift between the two different kinds of ‘why’ is essential.   It forces us to turn away from the fruitless questioning of mystery that makes us lose sight of God’s love and instead look for opportunities to serve and help bring the ultimate loving intentions of God closer to what we see before us. 

The basic act of removing our shoes before the Holy is necessary if we are to keep faith and hope.  Embracing mystery means learning to live with uncertainty and ambiguity in an ongoing act of creativity and imagination, and doing so not reluctantly or because we are forced to by facts, but joyfully.  Incarnational acts showing God’s love to those in need and humble prayer that listens to God more than it asks of God—all these are the basic practices of such creativity in the presence of ambiguity.   

After the Indonesian tsunami of 2004, theologian David Hart wrote:  “As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child, I do not see the face of God but the face of his enemy.”  William Pike, writing on the Haiti earthquake, said that he had been reminded of the story of Elijah’s flight to Mount Horeb in 1 Kings 19, where God spoke to Elijah not out of an earthquake, whirlwind, or fire, but out of the whispering of the still breeze.  Against Pat Robertson’s God the Punisher, Pike remembers the text’s words, “The Lord was not in the earthquake.” 

As Mister Rogers used to say, when faced with bad things in the world, always look for the helpers.  They show God’s intention and meaning better than the bad stuff itself.    And when it comes to trying to see God at work in the world about us, the popular internet meme says it well:  Don’t interpret love in light of scripture, but rather, interpret scripture in the light of love. 

Jesus showed us God. God is love. God is forgiveness.   A prayer Book Collect (p. 831) says it all: “O merciful Father, you have taught us in your holy Word that you do not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men:  Look with pity upon the sorrows of [us] your servant[s]… Remember [us] O Lord in mercy, nourish [our] soul with patience, (and notice this especially!)  comfort [us] with a sense of your goodness.  Lift up your countenance upon [us] and give [us] peace.”

God is a healer, not a punisher.  And so we too must be healers, helpers.   Not backseat drivers, or Monday morning quarterbacks ready to dish out blame by gladly trumpeting ugly pictures of God.   This is why we must, with Jesus, focus on the “for what purpose” why rather than the “on what account” why.  In this season of Lent, this means we look at our failings not so we can explain them away or beat ourselves up with them, but rather see them as occasions for seeking amendment of life. 

God indeed is not in the earthquake, not in the horror.  He is not in towers falling, massacres of people in places of worship, or sickness and suffering. These things show us how far the world is from God's intention, not God’s will.   Rather, God is in the efforts of people trying to help the victims of such things.  He, or should I say She, is a nurturer.  She is in reconciliation and service.  He is in efforts to build justice and peace, in caregiving.

And that is where we should be as well. 

Thanks be to God. Amen. 

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