Christ Church, NYC : Standing with Haitians

Standing with Haitians

January 17, 2010

Second Sunday after the Epiphany
Isaiah 62:1-5; 1 Corinthians 12:1-11; John 2:1-11
The Reverend Stephen P. Bauman

Shortly after the 2004 tsunami overwhelmed South Asian coastal communities with waves up to 100 feet high and killing nearly 230,000 people, I received a thoughtful email from a woman in her twenties who was struggling to absorb any meaning or understanding from that holocaust of water. I've retained our exchange and recovered it Friday while processing my own response to the images coming from Haiti where it seems the potential loss of human life may approach that of the tsunami. At this point there's no way of knowing the ultimate scale of the tragedy, but we do know its catastrophic. Like you I've been overwhelmed by the crushing devastation, chaos and loss.

At one point my young friend wrote me this: "I was asked by a co-worker why God would allow a natural disaster to kill a multitude of innocent people. A few thoughts sputtered through my mind including natural population cleansing, a wake-up call etc., but I was unable to provide a solid answer. My generation has experienced a couple of wake-up calls in the past few years, but unlike 9/11, which I summed up as the evil of humanity, I cannot find an explanation for this disaster. How do I explain God's will in this tragedy to a borderline atheist?"

Her questions seem eternally relevant, touching the most sensitive nerve of our existence-our being born and having to die - and the sometimes capricious manner in which that equation works out. These questions agitate our spiritual and religious natures, accounting in part for our presence in a space like this on a Sunday morning. As I brooded about this in the last couple of days, I drafted another response to my young friend that begins this way:

You ask a tough question, among the toughest. First, it's very important to say what a disaster like this earthquake is not - it is not God's special punishment visited upon a whole class of persons, a la Pat Robertson's ludicrous pronouncement. Did you catch it? He said that Haiti had been cursed by God because they "had made a pact with the devil" at the time of their shedding the colonial rule of France in 1804. The earthquake is God's judgment and now maybe Haitians will have a chance to reform.

It's ridiculous, I know, but unfortunately Robertson's a high profile person, a former Presidential candidate, claiming the Christian mantle. The founder of the Christian Broadcast Network and host of the 700 Club, he has media penetration in 97% of the market. No one appointed him to speak for Christians. In fact, with his analysis of Haiti's predicament, I'm inclined to say his God is my devil. All the more reason for Christians like us to robustly claim the name and the mantle. I won't relinquish to people like him the definition of my passionate religious conviction.

But his theological brand mimics the easy, self-serving explanations of every sort of fundamentalism. Job addressed this question millennia ago concerning undeserved suffering. That's really what's at stake here: why is there suffering in the world? Jesus made clear that suffering is part of the fabric of existence and at one point referenced a certain physical disaster - the collapsing of a tower - and asked, were the victims of this collapse greater sinners than others? He flatly answered no, of course they weren't, as if to say, "Anyone can see that."

While this doesn't answer why we must suffer in the main, we can make some other general comments. For instance, we can say that all of us are going to die. What we seem to so resent is a premature and sudden end. I'm mindful that when we pray for a miracle of healing for someone and they are healed, among the things we've accomplished is postponing the inevitable. That doesn't make the healing any less desirable, but it does place the healing in an appropriate context.

This area of study is called theodicy - one of the oldest concerns of theological inquiry (the Book of Job is a very early and profound example.) Generally Christian theologians are concerned with how suffering squares with a loving God. We'll never have the final answer. We poke at it, we posit tentative explanations, but at best, our answers are always partial. Still, that doesn't mean that God does not love. (Although we see now that any sentimental definition of love won't do.)

God stands above, behind and beneath all things. When disaster strikes we are thrust into our most dependent position, a position we do not like because it pushes us to the outermost limits of our knowledge and understanding. Faith calls us to trust even still. In fact, faith is defined by the limits of our knowledge. Faith reaches beyond knowledge.

Faith also calls us to be realists, to acknowledge that a massive calamity does not create a new set of conundrums, but reiterates the basic situation of our being born and having to die. It shakes the sentimental and comfortably secure Christian into facing the truth about the real stakes. It jolts awake our understanding of the sacred and holy nature of life and of time. C.S. Lewis thought that in some circumstances pain served as God's megaphone. I have some personal understanding of this. And sometimes I've seen persons come to faith in the midst of suffering; it becomes the awakening agent for a new authenticity and integrity. Of course, for others, it pushes them away since they seem to think that had they been in charge they would have built the universe differently.

But remember that Christianity is founded on the life and times of a man who died by crucifixion for the sake of love. When we're at our best, we don't flinch from the reality of suffering, and though we may not fully understand it, we believe that God can redeem it. That's part of the meaning found in resurrection faith. I believe God does not specifically will bad things to happen to people, even though the created order clearly allows for it. I can't prove that, of course. It's through faith in the God of resurrection that I sense this truth.

This leads me to say that when speaking with another about these matters it's important to remember that saying less is probably "more". I will often say to someone when they ask a really tough question, "You know, I'm not entirely certain, but this is what I do know…’ and then go from there.

For instance, I know a personal God who is as near as my next breath, and astonishingly, this is the same God who flung the stars into distant space. I know of an abiding presence to me and to those that I love so that I am able to pray as we do in our funeral liturgy, "Help us to live as those who are prepared to die, and when our days here are accomplished, enable us to die as those who go forth to live, so that living or dying our life may be in you and that nothing in life or in death will be able to separate us from your great love in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Having faith in the God Jesus revealed does not predict having an easy way. Never has. Any minister you've ever heard who has implied this has misled you and diminished the depth and meaning of our Christian tradition. But importantly, very, very importantly, profound faith does predict having a certain confidence about life, a certain courage in the face of suffering and death, and a powerful desire to live into the gift of life with a heart of generous love.

Faith gives us hope so that each day can be received with gratitude, awe and wonder. That's why even in the midst of tragedy we still hear groans of thanksgiving emanating from deep within the human heart. This is the engine of the indefatigable human spirit that receives each day expectantly, loving God above all things and our neighbor's as ourselves. And that brings us back to Jesus who taught, lived and died for that truth.

We're in our season of Epiphany: the time we take a good long searching look at the man who was born in Bethlehem. In these weeks we read stories of healings and miracles like the one at the wedding in Cana. Describing how Jesus provided the wine that assured a wonderful party, John says this was a sign pointing to Jesus' real identity. And the disciples believed in him and attached themselves to his cause. From our vantage point we know it won't be long, no more than three years, before Jesus writes the end of his earthly life's equation in love's red ink. He reveals that love is the engine of God's grace through which the universe coheres.

We say that by attaching ourselves to his life's trajectory, our life resonates with the triumph of resurrection. It's an astonishing mystery, but his triumph born of love becomes our very own. Regardless of our life circumstance, he means for us to have it-today, tomorrow, the day after that, and even for eternity. And he means for us to share it as well, just as he shared his own life. That's our call, our work and our joy.

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