Sermon from July 15, 2007
A new school year opens in just a few weeks. I hope it's better than last year. Two bookends framed last year. In September a man killed Amish school girls execution style, and in May a fellow student killed 30 in a rampage at Virginia Tech.
Millions of people felt sad, angry, and perplexed by the shootings. Not surprisingly, people want to know why God didn’t stop it. When people ask me that question, I am slow to answer it. Thoughtful answers and inflamed passions form a bad combination, like raking leaves in a windstorm. But there are thoughtful answers.
For example, I might answer by first asking, “Which tragedies do you want God to stop? Just the one in Pennsylvania or the one at Virginia Tech or both? Would it be okay if God did not stop the teenage boy in Wisconsin, who killed his high school principal? What should God do about the children whom insurgents blow up in Baghdad? What should He do about the children swept away by the Tsunami in Banda Aceh or buried in the Pakistani earthquake?”
What are we really asking, when we ask why God didn’t stop the massacres at Nickel Mines, PA and Virginia Tech?
If God stopped each tragedy before it happened, what would His interference do to human freedom? Either human beings are free or they are not. If we are free, then we are free to do unimaginable good and unimaginable evil and everything in between. If we don’t like that, we don’t like freedom. Maybe we prefer some form of servitude.
A few others make the giant leap of saying, “If God is supposed to be all powerful and compassionate and doesn’t prevent what happened to those children, then I don’t believe in God. Such a God would be a monster.”
That is a possibility, but I have a question. If there is no God, whom do I see about what happened in Lancaster County and at Virginia Tech? And about my grief, anger, and confusion? And about all the other senseless human violence? And about the impersonal violence of earthquake, hurricane, and fire?
Without God we would still have all the tragedy and no one to turn to, who might do justice and make sense of it and even bring something good out of the evil.
Contradictions
Last Sunday, we read Psalm one together. It expresses Israel’s vision of the moral structure of the universe. In this vision we find no shades of gray. Sharp edges separate light and dark. With great moral clarity, Psalm one presents man with three contrasts. Verses 1-2 present pathways in contrast. Verses 3-4 present consequences in contrast. Verses 5-6 present destinies in contrast.
We should teach every child this vision of the moral structure of the universe. We mustn’t let sad experiences and jaded souls prevent us from teaching them this vision. We must fiercely resist the temptation to think, “The world’s not like Psalm one. Shades of gray abound in this confusing world. To teach Psalm one to children will make them rigid, unable to flex in a world where the difference between right and wrong is disputed and where compromise is the only way to get ahead.”
Do we really think the ancient Hebrews were so stupid as not to know that? Do we really think they never came across contradictions to their moral vision? The Psalms remain fresh from generation to generation, precisely because they express and engage these contradictions. They allow us to hear the voice of God’s people, when the moral structure of the universe didn’t work the way it was supposed to work.
Look at two examples of this tension in the faithful people of God. The first comes from Psalm 13:1-4.
How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and every day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
Look on me and answer, O LORD my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death;
my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
I thought the Lord knew the way of the righteous and that the way of the wicked would perish. How could a man of faith say that God had forgotten him? The most memorable expression of tension in the face of strutting evil comes in Psalm 73. Let’s begin with verses 1-5:
Surely God is good to Israel,
to those who are pure in heart.
But as for me, my feet had almost slipped;
I had nearly lost my foothold.
For I envied the arrogant
when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
They have no struggles;
their bodies are healthy and strong.
They are free from the burdens common to man;
they are not plagued by human ills.
I thought the wicked were like chaff the wind blows away. Those people didn’t look like that. They looked just the opposite. How strong a temptation was to think this way? This writer was prepared to consign Psalm one to the dustbin of life. Look at verse 13.
Surely in vain have I kept my heart pure;
in vain have I washed my hands in innocence.
What happened to him happens to us, doesn’t it? We see so many religious hypocrites and so much evil strutting about celebrated and unchallenged that we are tempted to believe that no moral structure of the universe exists. That temptation is a lie, and before you give in to it, just listen to your own heart!
You see hypocrisy in the church, and it repels you. You want nothing to do with people that talk out of both sides of their mouths. You see injustice in the courts, or you watch public evil ignored and even rewarded. You think to yourself, “If that’s the best we can do, then I’ll get what’s coming to me any way I can.” But where do you think the frustration and anger you are feeling come from? Don’t they come from the moral structure of the universe, which Psalm one expresses, and which God has chiseled into your heart. Your anger and frustration at evil bear eloquent witness to it.
Of course, we have conflict, when the world doesn’t work the way it is supposed to. Of course your finger hurts, when you hit it with a hammer. The pain in your finger and the conflict in your soul signify physical and moral health. Wouldn’t life become dangerous, if you couldn’t feel pain? Yes, it would. And life would become very dangerous, if we could not feel moral indignation at the injustices of our world.
Actions
So, what do we do with this moral indignation? People act. People organized to defeat DE Senate Bill 5, because they saw it as an injustice to unborn human life. Chris Zwakenberg devoted six months of his life to bring help to the hidden children of Uganda, because their abduction and forced military service abused them and took away their childhood. Dan Hutchison left his job and family in Wilmington to serve with International Justice Mission, because he could help set young girls free from being sex slaves. Some people become diplomats, others run for office, others become lawyers and missionaries and pastors. So, if the injustices of our world waken your compassion and your anger, go do something about it.
But whether we act, or action is out of the question for now, something else matters more than our action. The psalmist has asked, How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? Verses 5-6 tell what sustained him in the face of God’s forgetfulness.
But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord,
for he has been good to me.
Trust and joy and memory become weapons of the soul with which we resist violations of the moral structure of the universe. God’s love and salvation and goodness fuel that trust, joy and memory. That’s why our worship together is a pearl of great price. The word of God stirs up our trust in God’s unfailing love; singing together expresses and encourages our joy and our memory of God’s goodness.
Nearly every psalm of lament ends with a confession of trust and praise, just like Psalm 13. May our feelings of righteous indignation, anger and frustration in the face of gathering evil always give way to expressions of trust and joy in our Lord.
Unexpected Depths
I have spoken highly of Psalm one’s vision of the moral structure of the universe. I have tried to think with you about the moral dilemmas that evil causes us, when it violates that moral structure. Moral dilemmas give Psalm one a moral depth without which we might not take it seriously. Moral dilemmas give our people a depth without which we might not take them seriously. They point us to an unexpected depth in the moral structure of the universe.
The Old Testament poem called Job reveals to these depths by implicating God in the causes of Job’s sufferings. Look back at Job 1:11-12. The devil said to God: “Stretch out your hand and strike everything he (Job) has, and he will surely curse you to your face.” The LORD said to Satan, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your hands, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.” Job then experiences the death of all his children and the destruction of all his herds. God did not destroy them, but He permitted their destruction. The entire book of Job wrestles with this idea.
The Old Testament story of Joseph reveals the same moral depths but with a unique twist. Look with me at Genesis 50. After treachery at the hands of his brothers and years of personal danger and misery that followed, Joseph in a position of power in Egypt was reunited with his brothers. He rescued them from famine and gave them a secure home in Egypt. But they never stopped waiting for the other shoe to drop. Joseph must have it in for them. Joseph found out, and his answer to their fears exposed the unexpected depths of the moral structure of the universe. Look at verse 20: You intended to harm me, but God intended it (everything bad that happened to me) for good.
On a cross, hundreds of years later, Jesus of Nazareth uttered his cry of dereliction: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It is fitting that he learned those words verbatim from Psalm 22, another psalm expressing lament that the world was not working as Psalm one said it should. And yet, Jesus might have said to Pilate, Caiaphas, Herod and the whole cast of characters what Joseph said to his brothers: You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good.
That is what the Apostle Peter said on the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2:23-24: This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead. The moral structure of the universe included resurrection.
The Pastoral Center of Gravity
Dan Henninger wrote the following for the Wall Street Journal. “Everyone in the world watched the second WorldTradeCenter tower fall in real time, and will do so the next time. The world we inhabit now is Iraq, Sudan, tsunami, weapons of mass destruction, Rwanda, Bosnia, Beslan. Knowing – and seeing with our own eyes – so much that is so bad is not normal. We don't need to be shocked by art. We now live in a constant state of shock.” <http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/dhenninger/?id=110006313 accessed 2/18/05>
Seeing so much that is so bad so often can tempt us to become cynical about the moral structure of the universe. Seeing so much hypocrisy of Christian leaders so often can tempt us in the same way. Let’s resist that temptation with goodness.
First, entertain the possibility that the evil that disheartens us does not really call into question the moral structure of the universe; but it does call into question American optimism about human nature. It was a shock, when President Reagan called the Soviet Union the Evil Empire. The word evil had almost fallen out of use in mainstream America. The relentless evil we see challenges our unrealistic view of human goodness.
Second, learn to see the world and its evil as Job and Joseph and Jesus experienced it. They were all victims of evil. Joseph and Jesus fell victim to human malice of the worst sort. And they all saw beyond the evil that overwhelmed them. Joseph could say God intended it for good. Jesus could ask why God forsook Him, but He could also pray, “Father, forgive them; they don’t know what they are doing.”
Third, remember the martyrs of the Church. The present Anglican Archbishop of Uganda, Henry Luke Orombi, tells how “on June 3, 1886, the king of Buganda ordered the killing of twenty-six of his court pages because they refused his homosexual advances and would not recant their belief in King Jesus. They cut and carried the reeds that were then wrapped around them and set on fire in an execution pit. As the flames engulfed them, these young martyrs sang songs of praise.” (First Things, August/September 2007, 25) Muslim suicide bombers are icons of the evil that has set our world on fire. Christian martyrs are icons the goodness that defies the evil that kills them and defies it with faith and joy. They bear witness to the permanent moral structure of the universe. 
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