Sermon for CATM – January 17, 2010 – God and Suffering:
Where is God in our Grief and Mourning?
Haiti. A country known for its poverty and its desperate need. Yvonne Martin, a nurse from Elmira Ontario and a missionary within my denomination, the Evangelical Missionary Church of Canada.
Yvonne had just arrived in Haiti with five others to volunteer her medical skills and was settling in to the place where she was staying just one and a half hours after her plane hit the tarmac in Haiti. The earth moved.
The building she was in collapsed. Her five friends escaped with their lives. Yvonne was the first known Canadian fatality in an earthquake that has killed tens of thousands and we fear well into the hundred thousands of people.
There is grief EVERYWHERE in Haiti. There is mourning EVERYWHERE in Haiti.
And as we in North American and around the world watch and agonize and pray for Haiti, there is a prevailing sadness over this tragedy for a huge number of us, and an eagerness to help.
Maryellen posted on Facebook on Thursday night that she told Josh about the devastation in Haiti. Four-year old Joshua responded: “We should go there and help. I’m strong enough to lift bricks from a house”.
The world is in the thick of worry over Haiti. I hope that you are praying for the nation and praying for the people and praying for those in our military as well as civilian agencies from Canada and from around the world that are in Haiti now or on the way to bring relief to the suffering.
Thank you for giving today to the relief effort in Haiti. The entire offering, as we’ve said, will be sent there this week, doubled by our government.
Last week we looked at why there is suffering in the world. It was a lot more abstract to think about last week than it is today. A week’s worth of reports and images from Haiti have really brought it home.
But not for the first time. You and I have known suffering, real suffering. Yet our hearts and mind focus on those in Haiti for whom suffering is their food and water and oxygen. [Pause]
When tectonic plates move, tsunamis result. Earthquakes shake the planet. The earth groans.
Romans 8: 19 The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
Creation groaned underneath Haiti this past Tuesday, and grief and mourning are everywhere.
But where is God right now as we shudder at the horror experienced and still being lived in Haiti this very moment? Where IS God when things go wrong? Where is God in grief and mourning?
That is a really, really important question. But the answer is actually more important, because the answer we come to will define our faith journey. A poor answer to that question will shipwreck faith.
A good answer will enable us to draw nearer to God when things go terribly wrong.
We’ll consider these questions as we look at today’s Scripture passage, which is Psalm 42. We’re using our new pew Bibles today for the first time, so please stand as we read together.
Read: Psalm 42
What I love about the psalms in general is that they are tremendous glimpses into a number of things. They are glimpses in the soul of the writer – his agonies, his doubts, his anger, his loneliness…as well as his joy and faith.
They are glimpses at God. In Psalm 23 He is the Shepherd of our souls. In many others He is the defender of the weak. In others still He is the strength of the weary.
The glimpse we have of this psalm overall is that of someone who is at a very, very low place in his life, where answers to important questions elude him, and yet where he is able to affirm that God is present to Him, and a hope and a comfort to him.
Psalm 42:1 As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?
The glimpse we have in the opening verses of Psalm 42 is of someone who truly wants God as a person. His soul LONGS for, PANTS for, God with the yearning of a deer, the need and passion and single-hearted commitment that a thirsty deer has for a mountain stream.
A deer is all intuition and, as far as we know from the way deer stand and stare down cars that are careening toward them in the dark, not a lot of anything else going on up there. It’s all intuition.
The deer does not think cognitively with its mind, using sound reason as to why it needs water, it naturally seeks out water when it thirsts.
Like the pain we feel in our stomachs when we are hungry for food, so often our souls are hungry. Sometimes our soul asks if there is any meaning in our lives, any hope in this life, any confidence to be had in a world that seems to not care.
The God of the covenant, the God of faithfulness and Almighty Sovereignty quenches the longest desires and needs that we crave as humans made in his image.
Because we are all made in the image of God, he is not only our source of life and being, but the nourishment and the “food” and “water” of our life and being.
While material and physical food and water feed the body, nothing can fulfill the soul’s desperate longings…except our Great God and Creator?
2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?
Verse 2 is interesting. The repetition in first phrase is on the one hand a common poetic device in Hebrew literature, a simple stating and restating.
On closer examination though we can perhaps see that first he says he longs for God, then he says he longs for the living God. What might that be about?
There is a sense in which all that we know of God already IS our understanding of God. It’s a comfort to go back in our minds to what we already know of God, because there is so much there that is rich and trustworthy.
We have personal history with God, and to remember His faithfulness in times past is essential. But the contrast between longing for God, and longing for the LIVING God is worth noticing.
When thoughts of God are, in our minds, mostly a testament to our history with God, that’s one thing. There are hymns that point us in this direction. One is called “God of Ages Past”. Another is called “God of our Fathers”.
When our thoughts of God are about the God who is living, is present to us, is actively directing the unfolding of our lives and is bound up in each moment, each joy, each success, each defeat, each sadness and each challenge…that speaks to an understanding of God that is fluid and current and open to being experienced afresh.
That speaks to God not as Someone from the past to be brought back into memory, but rather God as He is, an ever-present reality, closer to us than we are to ourselves. Closer than our breath.
And the psalmists question is, when can I go and meet with God?
3 My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, "Where is your God?" 4 These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng.
You might say, “hang on a minute”. Why go somewhere to meet with God? Isn’t God everywhere? Do I need to go to church to experience God?
The psalmist might have been David, or might been someone else who wrote in or around 587 BC when the army of Babylon carried the Israelites away from their homeland of Israel and destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem.
Either way, the psalmist, after stating his thirst for God, after stating quite poignantly his sorrow, as well as the hovering questions of others remembers the experience of going to meet with God and sharing that experience with others, others in the festive throng. His sorrow and longing for God, rather than isolating him, pushes him to his community of faith.
That’s really important actually. For some, when things go wrong and they really need the support of others there’s an impulse to retreat from others. This is the opposite of wisdom. We need each other.
When we’re faced with loss, when we’re faced with suffering, when we’re lost in grief, questions do abound. They float around in your head looking for answers that often can only come in dialogue with others, and with the help of another point of view.
Questions also occupy your prayers looking for divine perspective. In this post-modern age many believe that life is in the questions we ask and the journey we take. Questions are a good thing, of course.
But if good questions are given bad answers, we’ve got a problem. In fact, after the conversation, the answer we come up with is actually more important. For the psalmist, it seems that whatever the situation was that had led to his mourning was known about by others.
Others, too, had real questions. The questions were specifically, “Where is your God?” That implies of course that they could not see God in the situation, or that God seemed weak in the situation. The answers we come to impact our lives most severely.
I sat across the table from a friend the other day who was in the ministry but has been through a lot of difficulty and has suffered as a result of other people who have made decisions that have negatively affected his life and his work.
His stated view is that God either doesn’t care, or that God has been too weak to change things. These were the answers he came up with to the questions that swirled around in his head.
I challenged him that the view he had come to, one which left his relationship with God in ruins, was the result of a theology or thought process that was flawed, and that he needed to make a decision.
Are you content to live, effectively, without faith in God? If yes, then he was in the right headspace. If no, he had work to do, in here (point to head). You see, he was blaming the wrong person. Human fault was being blamed on God.
That God allowed human fault to impact his life and that He did not overrule that fault was a sign of God’s weakness and therefore unworthiness to be paid attention to.
I challenged him to reexamine his answers to the questions that had surfaced in his heart due to his experience. He responded that He felt that God owed Him.
My friend has a lot of work to do and a long way back to a friendship with God. It is hard to watch. God is no one’s debtor. I hope we all remember that.
The answers we come to impact our lives most severely.
5 Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and 6 my God. My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon--from Mount Mizar.
7 Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me. 8 By day the LORD directs his love, at night his song is with me-- a prayer to the God of my life. 9 I say to God my Rock, "Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?" 10 My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, "Where is your God?" 11 Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.
Where is God in the midst of grief and mourning? Where is God to my friend who believes God owes him big time for the injustices that people have done to him? Where is God right now in the profound misery that is the nation of Haiti?
Where is God in the challenge you are facing, in the grief and mourning you are experiencing?
The answer is simple. God is right in the middle of it. Right at the epicenter of our need. God is always present to us. A short while ago we walked together toward the birth of Christ.
If the incarnation tells us anything, it’s that God doesn’t distance Himself from humanity. God in Christ is God with us.
The psalmist here has a really healthy internal dialogue. He’s talking to himself. He’s asking “Why are you so downcast, why so disturbed within me”. It’s clear he has an answer to that question. Likely two answers.
There are the facts that are real and tangible and really dragging him down so much so that he wonders if God has forgotten him. He’s down, and he wouldn’t be writing this if that wasn’t the case. That much is clear.
He experiences his troubles like waterfalls, he is utterly overwhelmed by the waters of his troubles. I’ve come uncomfortably close to drowning a couple of times so that’s a potent image to me.
The feeling is one of utter powerlessness and all of one’s energy being spent. The psalmist has two answers. One answer is that these circumstances are the cause of being downcast and disturbed.
But his second answer, his better answer, isn’t a conventional answer. His better answer is to tell himself to put his hope in God, the God whose faithfulness he knows, whose love he trusts.
Despite all that he is feeling and perhaps has felt for so long, when he focuses on the loving reality of God in his life, he begins to hope again. “I will yet praise Him”.
He sees his future in a new light when in his heart he focuses on God. In fact, he says: “My soul is downcast within me; THEREFORE I will remember Him”.
His answer to his own grief and sorrow is to REMEMBER God. To not forget that God is with him. To not assume that he is alone.
Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.
I hope that each of us here grow in our ability to cope with the hardest things that we will face in life.
I pray that each of us would determine in our own hearts that when the going gets rough, we will remember the faithfulness of God.
We will remember that God is our ever-present help in times of need. That we will never turn away from the living God.
Early reports from Haiti were of sounds coming from underneath the rubble of devastated buildings.
The most common word heard above the cries of pain and agony from those pinned beneath buildings was…what? Did anyone read that? It was “Jesus. Jesus. Jesus”.
People in need. People crushed by the weight of the world, calling upon God to be their help, their solace, their comfort.
May we continue to pray for those who suffer in Haiti, and for the rebuilding of that island nation. May we each do what we can manage to help in practical ways.
May our hearts reflect the wisdom of the psalmist whose choice is to hope in the midst of the best and worst of circumstances in the living God. Let’s pray.
God, Your name has been and is being called upon millions of times in Haiti of late. Grant relief and comfort and order to that helpless nation, we pray. And as we consider our own struggles, as we face grief and suffering and sadness in our own lives, may we choose to turn to you, may we choose to turn to the living God in Whom is our hope.
In Jesus, You drew so very near human suffering, O Lord, to fill it with Your presence. Thank you for Jesus. Thank you for His holy presence in our lives through the Holy Spirit. Strengthen us, living God, that we might serve You with gratitude and passion for our whole lives. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
