Near the end of Steel Magnolias, one of my favorite movies, Melin wrestles with questions of suffering at her daughter, Shelby’s, funeral. In her grief and sadness, Annelle tries to offer solace saying, “It should make you feel a lot better that Shelby is with her king. We should all be rejoicing.” In a moment of beautiful and tragic honesty, Melin replies, “Well, you go on ahead. I’m sorry if I don’t feel like it. I guess I’m kind of selfish. I’d rather have her here.” She then screams at the heavens asking, “Why!” She then walks away in defiant denial—“No, no, it’s not supposed to happen this way . . . I want someone to feel as bad as I do. I just want to hit something. I want to hit it hard.” Then, in one of my favorite movie moments, Clariee grabs Oiser and says, “Here, hit this . . .”
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Why do bad things happen? When they do happen, how are we to respond? Where is God when bad things happen anyway? These are difficult questions to answer in one sermon. It’s not because there are no answers, but the way we answer these questions depends on where people are in the healing process. What is the prescription for a broken arm? One answer is to work out and strengthen the muscles, but before you can do that you must rest and give the body time to heal. Annelle provides a fine answer, that we should rejoice that our loved one is with God in heaven, but the ability to hear this good news takes time. One of the reasons I love this scene from Steel Magnolias is because it wonderfully encompasses the grieving process in one minute of movie genius, but for most of us, moving from grief to joy can take a lifetime.
William Sloane Coffin, accomplished preacher in the mid twentieth century, suffered through the terrible tragedy of losing his son. Several years later he wrote:
When a person dies, there are many things that can be said, and at least one thing that should never be said. The night after Alex died, a woman came by carrying quiches. She shook her head, saying sadly, “I just don’t understand the will of God.” Instantly I swarmed all over her. “I’ll say you don’t lady! Do you think it was the will of God that Alex never fixed that lousy windshield wiper, that he was probably driving too fast in a storm? Do you think it is God’s will that there are no streetlights along that stretch of road?” Nothing so infuriates me as the incapacity of intelligent people to get it through their heads that God doesn’t go around with his finger on triggers, his fist around knives, his hands on steering wheels . . . My own consolation lies in knowing that it was not the will of God that Alex die; that when the waves closed over the sinking car, God’s heart was the first of all our hearts to break.
We all respond to tragedy in different ways. We shout, we cry, we rebel, or we keep silent. For some the wound is too fresh for words. For others the scar needs to be stretched in order to once again live in Christian hope. So, it is somewhat irresponsible to think that in ten minutes we will solve the problem of suffering; however there are three questions we can ask.
First, “Why do bad things happen?” I end the question there because I hope that we are not the kind of people who only ask “Why do bad things happen to good people.” When my uncle was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease my aunt’s friends offered to pray for a miracle. My aunt declined, not because she lacked faith, quite the opposite. She had the courage to tell them, “Saving us from death was never God’s promise.” Bad things happen to good people. Good things happen to bad people, but if we are being honest, we are neither totally good nor completely bad.
Last week we talked about one of the reasons why bad things happen. Sometimes it’s because of us. We ask God, “Why are there so many hungry people in the world,” and God responds by asking us the same question. God provides enough, but we don’t trust that this is true, so we look to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to become God instead of allowing God to be God.
That’s easy enough to answer, but what about the things that are beyond our control? What about illness, natural disasters, the things in which we find ourselves powerless? Rick Warren writes, “You are not an accident. God prescribed every single detail of your body. He chose your race, the color of your skin, your hair . . . Traumas happen to shape your heart.” This seems reassuring . . . if you’re healthy or beautiful or nothing quite so terrible has happened to you, but I disagree. As James Howell asks, “Did God prescribe every single detail of the body of the child with cystic fibrosis, battling for every breath?” Did God send Hurricane Katrina to New Orleans because they were living in sin? Are there no sinful people in Las Vegas or New York or Shreveport?
Accidents happen. Terrible, tragic accidents happen. God never tires of our question, “Why,” and when you are in the midst of suffering, sometimes it is the only word you can muster. God never tires of listening. It is what love does. When we ask, “Why,” the first thing we desire is for someone to listen. Over time when we have the chance to meditate on our “Why” we realize that the question we truly are asking is “Where . . . where is God.” It is the mystery of Jesus’ question from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forgotten me?” The words say “Why” but the question is “Where—where are you?”
“When the waves closed over the sinking car, God’s heart was the first of all our hearts to break.” We know God’s heart because we know Jesus. When Jesus learned of Lazarus’ death, Jesus wept. When Jesus came near Jerusalem he wept because they did not see that God was with them. When Jesus is on the cross the crowds were shouting, “Save yourself,” and instead of jumping off the cross and smiting his scoffers, God chose to love them and forgive them. God’s heart broke and God died. That’s the beauty of Jesus’ question—My God, My God. My God. God is with us, and this is a truth that no one and nothing can take away from us. As our Psalm today reads, “Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I fall from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.” When bad things happen we first ask “Why?” Next we begin to realize that our “Why” is actually a “Where.” Finally we ask, “When bad things happen, what am I supposed to do?”
Job’s friends asked the same question. Job had great health, wealth, and family. All of this was taken away from him in the blink of an eye. In the midst of great suffering, Job’s friends do exactly what we should do when someone is in despair. They said nothing. They sat with him for a week. They offered their presence, not saying, “If you need anything, call me.” They suffered with him. Eventually they miss the mark, and they feel the need to speak, about 30 or so chapters of words. They begin to ask Job to search his heart because he or one of his children must have done something wrong to be stricken with such hardship. Job says time and time again that he is righteous, and he turns to God saying, “If I have done anything wrong, tell me. Just tell me so I can repent.” It’s like when Jesus was walking with his disciples and the disciples see a blind man and ask Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?” Jesus replies, “Neither . . . he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him,” and in full disclosure, is that not why any of us are born—to reveal the works of God? At last Job loses faith and shakes his fist at God saying, “O that I had someone to hear me” (Job 31:35). His friend, Elihu nearly interrupts him saying, “Hear this, O Job; stop and consider the wondrous works of God” (Job 37:14). Then out of the whirlwind God answered Job saying, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me . . . where you there when I laid the foundation of the earth? Have you commanded the sun to rise? Have you entered the storehouses of snow? Did you hang the stars?”
Job then places his hand over his mouth and withdraws the question, but God says, “No, listen to me, Job . . . did you make the Behemoth? Can you draw out the Leviathon?” Job finally sees it. Job says, “I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted . . . therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me . . .I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.” How does God respond to Job’s suffering? God responds by showing Job beauty. Job didn’t get it at first. When God begins showing Job the beauty of the universe, Job withdraws the question, and God starts back up again. God does not ask us to withdraw the question. Remember, God does not tire of our “Why?” God starts again and shows Job more wonders and finally beauty triumphed over Job’s darkness. Job says,“No purpose of yours can be thwarted,” because he finally understands that God’s ultimate purpose is to show us that beauty and love wins.
When we are in the midst of suffering we cannot see it. It is when we look back on those dark times that we see that God was there the whole time. God does not cause evil things to happen. It is that God carries us through them as we carry each other. After God speaks with Job, Job prays for his friends. Jesus, seeing a man being lowered through a roof on a mat, heals the man because of the faith of his friends. As James Howell writes, “The Church is most itself when believers carry those who don’t have an ounce of faith energy left, whose tears block their view of God, who for the moment are the wounded leg in the Body of Christ, for which the Body then compensates with extra effort from the other members of the Body to keep moving toward God.”
When the wound is still fresh, it doesn’t matter what I or anyone else says about God or suffering, we are simply called to be, to sit in silence, to suffer with one another. In time our questions of “Why?” become “Where?” reflecting on Christ’s same question on the cross. In time we begin to understand that God’s heart was the first of all our hearts to break, and we are filled with Job’s words saying, “Now my eye sees you,” and we begin to pray for our friends who are just beginning the process of healing. We then become the ones carrying the mat. We then come to God asking a new question. Instead of “Why,” instead of “Where,” we ask, “How can I be a part of the answer to end suffering?” “What is the power I have within me to alleviate the ache?” Like the blind man who was healed we ask, “How can I reveal the wondrous works of God?” Amen and amen.