Psalm 46:1-7
Revelation 21:1-6
“Haiti”
Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church
Mindy Douglas Adams
3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
January 24, 2010

          In September 2008, just over a year ago, Dieuseul Anglade, Director of Haiti's Bureau of Mines and Energy, made this statement:

          "For two centuries, no major earthquake has been recorded in the Haitan capital.  The amount of energy accumulated along the fault runs the risk of an earthquake of 7.2 on the Richter scale . . . . There's no need to panic.  But it would be a catastrophe."¹

          David Rothkopf, wrote in this week's Newsweek magazine,

          The most shocking thing about the disaster in Haiti was not that it was so sudden, violent, and horrific in its human toll.  It's that the damage was so predictable.  Seismologists warned that the country was at risk as recently as two years ago.  Haiti is also the latest in a string of nearly annual megadisasters extending back through the past decade, calamities claiming tens of thousands of lives more because poverty and the forces of nature met with foreseeably tragic consequences.²

          So no.  We should not have been surprised.  But we were.  And so were all those Haitians who were going about their business - doing work, fixing meals, driving from here to there, taking a shower, shopping for food - when tragedy struck.  Their lives will never be the same again.

          The world heard about it.  The world watched horrible images on TV and listened to horrible stories on the radio.  The world cried with them in their pain and suffering.  And the world asked/begged the question, "Why?  Why did this happen?  Why?"

          For some, the answers were simple.  Pat Robertson almost immediately declared that this was God's act against the Haitians for their "pact with the devil" when they sought to gain freedom from slavery to the French.  For Robertson, this was simply God's way of punishing them for their sinful past.  

          For others of us, however, the answers are less clear.  We struggle to reconcile our understanding of a loving and all-powerful God with such human suffering.  Some have not been able to make the two reconcile at all and have abandoned faith with their hands thrown up.  UNC Professor Bart Erhman writes about his struggle:  "Eventually, I felt compelled to leave Christianity altogether.  . . .  I realized that I could no longer reconcile the claims of faith with the facts of life . . . . The problem of suffering became for me the problem of faith."³

          So here are two options for dealing with the problem of pain and suffering: 1) Blame God (or in Robertson's case, credit God).

2) Deny God (for if number one is true, how could anyone believe in or worship that God?).

          As for me, neither of those responses is sufficient.  The God I understand from scripture is neither a God who would cause such suffering nor a God who doesn't care about God's own creatures.  Rather the God I understand is a God who created the world and the world is wild and beautiful and ultimately untamed (though we humans do our best to tame it).  I love the world the way it is, but I also understand that I need to have respect for it.  When we visited the Tiger Rescue in Pittsboro as one of our fellowship events this fall, we stared in awe at these huge, gorgeous powerful creatures.  We could not have stared at these tigers were they not behind cages, mind you, and interestingly enough, the more tigers we saw, the more we began to have an unrealistic sense of security about these animals, and perhaps even a sense that they were "tame" and had put behind their animalistic nature in order to settle for a happy, quiet existence behind bars.  But we were reminded of the reality of the nature of these animals when, as we turned to leave the last tiger (which we had been watching a trainer working with), we heard a sudden and tremendously loud roar from behind us.  It was all I could do to keep myself from running, and I was completely unable to keep myself from jumping a foot off the ground.  In the blink of an eye we were reminded that all of nature was not meant to be tamed. 

          All of creation is God's.  But all of creation is not going to cuddle with us in our laps at night.  In this part of North Carolina, we maintain a healthy respect for copperheads during the summer, and in other parts of the world, there other animals that demand such respect as well.  Poison ivy is lovely greenery . . . until I touch it and it becomes a demon.  The sun provides warmth and light and makes us feel happy when we are in it.  But would I fly to the sun and try to touch it?  Not unless I wanted to be burned to bits long before I reached it.   Creation is wild and wonderful and we try to tame it over and over again, we humans, and we have been successful just enough to make us feel overly confident.  But ultimately creation is a wonder and a mystery and we stand in awe before creation and even moreso we stand in awe before the Creator.

          Did God create tigers so humans would suffer?  Of course not.  But will a tiger every once and a while kill a human?  Yes.  Did God create weather so that hurricanes and tsunamis would pound the coast and kill hundreds?  Of course not.  God created the world.  It is a wild and wonderful place, deserving of awe and respect.  Like God, creation is powerful beyond measure and often cannot be contained, often cannot be tamed, though we try and try and try.

          C.S. Lewis, in his "Chronicles of Narnia" series, depicts the divine in the form of a Lion named Aslan.  The people inevitably want to tame Aslan, want to understand him, make him fit in a box, make him come and go as they will, not as he wills.  The ones who understand Aslan, though, even if just a little, understand that he is not a tame lion, and that refrain is used over and over again in Lewis' books as the characters seek to understand why Aslan won't be and do what they want him to be and do.    In the first book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lucy, the youngest of the four siblings who have stumbled into the land of Narnia, reflects with her friend Mr. Tumnus upon Aslan's abrupt disappearance.  Mr. Tumnus reminds Lucy, "He's not a tame lion."  Whereby Lucy replies "No . . . but he is good." 

          Sometimes, in our attempts to understand God, and to understand nature and suffering, I think we try to tame God, try to make God fit into what we know and understand, try to make God just a larger and better version of our best selves.  But God is so much more than anything we can create in our own minds or begin to comprehend. 

Jon Walton, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in New York City, understands how hard God's incomprehensibility is for humans accept.  He writes:

          The questions that we raise about God's actions when all around us is despair, or where God is when the innocent suffer, are questions that take us deeper than we usually dive.  They are more complicated than we may fully comprehend.  And to some extent there is a certain hubris that gets us into trouble when we ponder these questions.  And that is because we imagine God to be a perfect extension of us.

          After all, we say, "If God were as good and kind and loving as we are, and if God really had good intentions for us, God would do things our way, according to what we know is good."  That is to say, God would be like us only to the nth degree.  The problem is that God is infinite in being and perfection, eternal, incomprehensible and most wise, boundless in mercy, love and grace, and were we to go as far as we could to the moral edge of the horizon and lean over to see what we can see from there, God would still be beyond our sight and located farther than our reach.  "My thoughts are not your thoughts, and my ways are not your ways," God says.⁴

          Now for some this is comforting but for others it is distressing.  We want, you see, to understand God.  We want to explain God.  We want God to be a tame God.  But if this is what we want, then we don't want God.  We want our own version of God.  We want to be the creator.  We want to create our own image of God, or should I say, God in our own image.

          Ultimately, though, we cannot fully understand God and all God is.  We cannot. 

          We do learn some things about God in scripture.  God created us.  God made a covenant with us in love and faithfulness.   God should have destroyed us a long time ago, considering our constant turning away from God, our constant turning to sin and to our own self-interest, rather than loving God and loving one another.  But instead God sent his Son, to become human, to walk with us and to understand our suffering, to suffer ultimately in our places that death might be defeated - that death might not have the final word.  Jesus healed the sick, brought sight to the blind, fed the hungry, and raised the dead.  Jesus didn't want the people to suffer.  Jesus wanted his people to live in fullness of life and Jesus knew that could only come when we humans loved God with all our hearts and minds and souls and when we loved our neighbors as ourselves.  Jesus, the bread of life.  Jesus, the living water.  Jesus, the Good Shepherd.  Is this a God who would will suffering and death and destruction?  Not on your life.

          So when we face the questions, "Why did this happen?"  "Why did so many have to die?"  "Why are so many still suffering and dying every day?" we followers of Jesus know that it is not because God willed this to happen.  God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - would not bring such destruction onto his people.  Not the God we know from the Gospel.  Not the God who sent Jesus.  Not the God who is the God of my faith.

          I think we have a choice.  We can keep asking the question "Why" and seeking an answer that fits into our box of understanding.  Or we can keep living the life Jesus calls us to live, caring for the poor among us, caring for the poor of Haiti, caring for the poor of Guatemala, and in whatever ways we can, caring for the needs of others.  We can also stand strong in our own faith by remembering the words of God through Isaiah to God's people: 

          "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you" (Isaiah 43:2).

          We can remember the words of the psalmist who wrote:

          "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.  Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its water roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult" (Psalm 46:1-3).

          And as people of faith, we can live our lives - actively, hopefully, and prayerfully in communication with God.  We are God's people and we will not rest, we will not keep silent, we will not stop acting in love and compassion to bring healing to the world and a message of grace to all those who thirst for it, for as long as we remain on this earth.  That means in all of our living - instead of hatred, we choose love.  Instead of anger, we choose forgiveness.  Instead of greed, we choose generosity.  Instead of apathy, we choose activity.  Instead of punishment, we choose mercy.  Instead of war, we choose peace.  Instead of retribution, we choose grace.  Instead of ourselves, we . . . choose . . .  God.

          God did not cause this tragedy.  God, rather, is the face of the father weeping as he holds his dead baby.  God is the surgeon as she repairs the broken bodies.  God is the rescue worker who speaks gently to those trapped under fallen buildings.  God is the stranger who delivers a mother's baby in the city streets.  God is the soldier who distributes food.  God is the beneficiary who writes the generous check.  God is the leader who organizes relief efforts.  God is the drink of water that refreshes parched lips.  God is in the midst of them.   Friends, God has promised this to us and to all of God's people.  As Bob Dunham said last week, "If our future is tied up in God's future, then we and those we love are forever in good hands."⁵  May we never forget the promises of God.  And may we never stop living our lives for God and for God's people.  He's not a tame lion, is he?  Maybe not, but he is and will always be good.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Copyright 2010: Mindy Douglas Adams

¹ Newsweek, January 25, 2010, p. 19,

² Newsweek, January 24, 2010, p. 28.

³ Bart Ehrman, God's Problem, 2009, p. 3

⁴ "A New Name," sermon preached by Jon M. Walton at First Presbyterian Church in New York City on January 17, 2010,  p. 2.

⁵ From the sermon he preached at University Presbyterian Church, "Beyond Desolation," on January 17, 2010.