Sermons

January 9/05
If There is a God, Why is There a Tsunami?

Reverend Dr Cheri DiNovo

Job 40-42:6 Matthew 3:13-17

The reason I substituted, in a very cavalier manner, this reading from Job instead of the reading from Isaiah that should have been the Hebrew scripture reading for today was because of this horrific event that has come to us, the Tsunami of course. The best book, the book that all preachers always use when speaking about the presence of evil in the world, is the book of Job. Now to set the stage for this part of the story one has to say that everything bad that could possibly happen to a person has happened to Job and not because of anything he did. He’s blameless. God’s answer to Job seems bizarre because God goes on and on about a crocodile and a hippopotamus. God talks about a crocodile and a hippopotamus in answer to the question, "Why is there evil in the world? Why does it happen to me or to someone I love?"

I also wanted to mention Christmas Eve. Who here was here on Christmas Eve? (many raise their hands) We had 500 people in the sanctuary. We had a gallery half full. Ever since I came here about 6 years ago, it has been a prayer of this congregation and some incredibly faithful people in this congregation that we would one day see this Church full. So it was a miracle of an evening. That said, Gil and I and the two kids jumped into our minivan right after the service and headed down to Charleston, South Carolina where we were going to meet up with a cruise ship and go on a cruise. (Yes, we will pay for it for the rest of the year) And as we got to Lake Erie this incredible weather started. It was the worst driving conditions that we have ever experienced. There were no lights, and the road was covered with Lake effect snow, snow that came right at the windshield. The only guides were the little reflective flags at the side of the road. We really were driving blind. The only way we knew we were on the road were the rear lights on the car in front of us. If there wasn’t one, you didn’t know. Gil, the hero, drove through most of that.

Now, as good Christians, we prayed. I prayed that the snow would stop. I prayed that the roads would clear. I bargained and dealt and spoke in my heart to God. It dawned on me in one frightening moment that because the Church was full on Christmas Eve, that that was as good as it was going to get and that now we were all going to die! Now, there’s a precedent for those kind of deals and wagers we think we make with God, and it’s called Faust. When we make those kind of wagers we’re probably not in conversation with God but with the Devil. My mind did go there however, I have to admit.

Sure enough, we got lucky, the snow cleared. We got on to I-79 and it was more or less, smooth sailing and miracle of miracles, we made the boat on time. Now here’s where humans are just so darn weird. You know that the first thing on the boat that we did was complain about the food!
Here’s the point, whether we had died or whether we had lived, on the drive down to Charleston, our prayers were answered. Whether we had died or whether we had lived our prayers were answered. Whether we die or whether we live, our prayers are answered.

The prayers were answered as soon as we formed the prayer. Faith itself, is an answered prayer. The fact that we thought to pray is an answered prayer. That in itself is a miracle! That we thought and believed that there was a God who was listening to that prayer, if only for an instant, that is the miracle. That someone, something, that force of love that loves us so much that it listens to our concerns is as good as it gets! That is the miracle! So, whether we die or whether we live, which some of us will for some of the time, prayers are always answered.

Now, theologians who have grappled with evil will tell you that preachers can’t talk about evil because if you talk about evil, you add to the evil. No matter what you could say in some sort of vain attempt to justify the kind of horrendous actions that nature and man and woman inflict upon each other, you would simply add to their burden. There is no explanation for evil in the world, whether caused by nature or caused by man or womankind. But don’t we want to? Don’t we want to ask the question? Don’t we want to grapple with the ‘how’? Don’t we want to say something to our friends who don’t share our faith, something when confronted with such a horrific event as the Tsunami?

Let’s place that horrific event in context. Do you know that every week in Africa the same number of people die as were killed in that Tsunami, every week, 52 weeks a year, from AIDS, from starvation, from bloodshed? Let’s put those numbers into context, as with Rwanda for example, where 800,000 were killed and where nobody did anything or certainly not much. Let’s put this disaster in context yet still it’s a disaster of immense proportion. How can such a disaster happen in such a world? A world controlled by this all powerful, all loving God?

And you know God is sort of a jokester in Job? You know, God says, some days it’s your day and some days it’s the crocodiles! Some days it’s your day and some days the hippo wins! ‘I’ve created all of the creatures and they all pray. I love the idea of animals praying. They’re all crying out to me all the time and sometimes I answer in one way and sometimes in another and if you were me you could see the big picture but you’re never going to be me! So just relax and get this, "Whether you die or whether you live, your prayers will always be answered’

This brings us to that wonderful aspect of the Christian called humility. You know God created Adam, meaning ‘earthling’ in Hebrew. We are ‘of the earth’ and to the earth shall we return. We’re not so special. We’re earthlings. I heard this wonderful talk by David Suzuki at the University of Toronto about a month ago and in it he said all of my work could be summed up if folk just got one concept, "You are an animal." You are an animal and that means that when you see a sign in a restaurant that says, "No Animals", don’t go in! You and I are animals. We are animals. We are enmeshed with nature. We are a part of it, we are not apart from it. It is part of us. We depend upon it, earth and wind and air and fire. We depend on it and sometimes it turns on us. We depend on each other and sometimes we turn on each other. This is our road, our path, our sacred journey. We are part of this incredible cosmology, this universe, this wonderful world in which tragedy and joy exist side by side. How fabulous is that! And sometimes we are not the lucky ones and sometimes we are. But whether we live or whether we die our prayers are always answered.
Another point is that nature isn’t always wonderful and loving is it? This is a point for people who ground their faith in the Bible. Nature is not always wonderful and loving. Sometimes nature it self, can turn on you, like the crocodile and the hippo. Sometimes they’re not your friends. Sometimes nature hurts us and kills us. Sometimes really evil things happen to really good people. The explanation if there is one, or if we can even attempt to talk about such a thing as an explanation has I think to do more with freedom and love than anything else.

Here, the metaphor of parent for God serves us well. If you are a loving parent what is it that you want for the child that you have, in part, created. What do you want for them? You want for them, freedom which is to say the freedom to do evil as well as good. That is what love wants for all creation, us and nature, nature and us, freedom. We are free beings. How beautiful, how scary is that! And so, with this freedom, our children go out and get hurt. With this freedom they grow up and hurt others. With this freedom we do mean things to nice people. With this freedom, nice people have evil things happen to them.

This is not because God wills that evil or has a hand in that evil or orchestrated that evil in any way. Oh God no! But because God loves us so that God created us and this beautiful cosmology in the most beautiful and scariest of situations and that situation is freedom. In this beautiful path that we walk together we have so many choices, we have free choices. I love the stories of the survivors that come out of a tragedy like the Tsunami event. I love the stories of heroism but I also love the stories of the ones that didn’t survive, those are beautiful and holy stories, the stories of the ones that weren’t lucky that day, of who they were and how they helped and what they did and gave their lives for. After all, we gather in the name of the one who didn’t get lucky ‘that day’.

Talking about him and humility we have this beautiful scene of Jesus baptized. Guess what, a dove is a pigeon. The heavens opened and a pigeon lit on Jesus’ shoulder. Great! And not only that, the Jordan isn’t this great big wonderful river it’s a muddy little stream. And guess who John was? John was a prophet yes, but today we’d call John a schizophrenic. So this crazy guy is bending over this humbled God in this ditch and a pigeon comes and sits on him and in that moment they hear the heavens open and they hear a voice say, "This is my beloved son!" right here with the pigeon and the crazy person, right here. "This is my beloved son".

Whether you die or whether you live your prayers are always answered because at the end of the day, at the end of the story, don’t you want more than anything else to know that God is waiting for us with open arms no matter what happened here. We do go home again and we are loved and there is someone listening when we pray whether we get lucky or unlucky still we behold the most miraculous of all miracles which is this world, this beautiful, scary world.

Amen