Summit Church



Theme: Why?“God and Suffering”Sermon preached by Jeff HuberApril 18-19, 2020Scripture: Genesis 1:27-28, Matthew 27:45-46; Luke 23:45-46 VIDEOSermon StarterSLIDEGod and SufferingJust before Easter, I was having a conversation with someone who had sent me an email after watching one of our worship services online. One of you invited this person to check it out because I was talking about faith in the midst of the pandemic and this friend of yours was struggling with some big questions that many of us ask. This person asked, “How can you believe in a God when all those innocent people have died from virus, lost jobs and been separated from their family at the moment of their death? Many of them are poor and vulnerable and already sick, and them didn’t do anything to deserve what happened to them. How do you make sense of that?” I told you last week on Easter weekend about the funeral I did for Jeanine who was in my youth group in the first church I served. She died in a tragic car accident and before the service I met with several kids who had been in youth group with her and with their family members at someone’s house. We were remembering her life and laughing and crying together. When I was alone, just before it was time to leave, the young woman’s brother, whose name was Jeff, came up to me and asked, “Why did God kill my sister?”On a regular basis I have people who are skeptics ask me this question, “How can you preach a God of love and justice when 30,000 children die every single day of starvation and malnutrition related diseases?” Those are all very good questions and we all wrestle with questions like this from time to time. Any thoughtful person of faith, and certainly those with no faith, will wrestle with the problem of suffering and why there is evil in the world—and how you reconcile that with the Scriptures proclamation of a God of love, justice, mercy and compassion.Sometimes the questions are not as dramatic as the ones I have just shared with you. Sometimes they are simple questions about how life happens and how life is frustrating and irritating and sometimes profoundly disappointing. Maybe we believe in God and then terrible things happen and we ask, “Where was God then?” We see all of these things wrapped up in this wonderful clip from the 2003 film, Bruce Almighty, where Jim Carrey’s character has just been fired from his job and he has been beat up trying to stick up for a homeless gentleman who was always near his car when he leaves work. Perhaps you have felt what he is expressing in this clip. VIDEOBruce Almighty on the Will of GodI’m guessing many of us have felt that way, even as people of faith when bad things happen—like God is a mean kid on the ant hill with a magnifying glass focusing on us so we feel picked upon. This is why each year I try to preach a few times on this topic. We have to talk about this issue on a regular basis because life happens. I think I get to a place where I have sorted out why bad things happen and then something terrible happens like a pandemic and I feel like I have to start all over again. I think to myself, “How does this work again? How do I understand God in the midst of this difficult time? Because it sure doesn’t feel like God is just and loving right now.” Today were going to talk about how thinking people might begin to look at the problem of suffering in the world and how we might respond. This is one of the great dilemmas when it comes to faith. It is one that is pushed many people away from faith and left people questioning their faith. How do we reconcile the idea of a good and loving and all-powerful God with the horrible things that happen on our planet sometimes? We call this the problem of theodicy.SLIDETheodicy = God + JusticeTheo is the Greek for God and Dikaios?ni is the word for justice. How is God just when horrible things happen in the world and God is supposed to oversee the world he created? Those who reject God because of the hard things that happen in the world often word this in two ways. If God is all-powerful and just and loving, then God wouldn’t allow these horrible things happen. If God allows these horrible things to happen and God is all-powerful then God must not be good, or God would let them happen.Specifically, this week, we are going to talk about the horrible things that happen when human beings misuse their freedom. Next week we will talk about sickness and illness and unanswered prayers. Today, we will focus more what happens when human beings harm one another and where God is in the face of genocide and other human catastrophes.I want to invite you to get out a pen and paper and have something to write with. I am confident that every single one of us will need this sermon sometime in the next year. When that happens you might ask, “I don’t remember. How did that work again? What did we talk about during that sermon series?” I hope you will write down at least of the ideas that you are going to hear today. This is 50 years in my life of trying to wrestle with this issue in the light of the experiences I have had; experiences in the lives of others in churches that I have served, and in reflecting upon the Scriptures. I hope this will be helpful to you and taking notes might allow you to think more deeply in the future about this topic.I also want to encourage you to go to our website, if you are not there already, and download the Meditation Moments. They are daily Scripture readings that tie back into this topic. I think you will find a blessing if you will do this each morning or each evening. SLIDEThe Bible and sufferingLet’s begin by talking about the Bible and what it has to say about suffering. Many people have this Pollyanna idea that when you become a Christian or a person of faith you will have an ideal life and everything will go well because all the people in the Bible were always happy and everything went well for them. I have heard some people say that when bad things happen that is proof that the Bible is not helpful because in the Bible bad things don’t happen and things go well for everyone in the Scriptures.If that is what we think then you haven’t taken the time to really read what is in the Bible. From cover to cover, the Bible is the story of people who are persecuted, people who are oppressed and people who were made to be slaves. For 400 years the Israelites were slaves and cried out to God: BIBLE“How long oh God will you forget us? Will you forget us forever?” The longest book in the Bible is the book of Psalms and the largest category of Psalms are called, “Psalms of complaint or lament.” There is an entire book in the Old Testament that means “complaints” and that is the book of Lamentations. The longest epic poem in the Scriptures is a book called Job. Job is about a man who had everything taken away and he wrestles with how to make sense of that with his idea of God. The final section of the Old Testament are the prophetic books and the prophets are basically writing about something terrible that is about to happen or something terrible that has just happened.In the New Testament the story is not really any brighter. It begins with the story of Jesus Christ, the man who Christians believe is the Savior of the world, who at the end of his life was not celebrated but instead was crucified. From the cross, Jesus cried out the words of Psalm 22, BIBLE“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!” Of his 12 disciples, one completed suicide, one lived out his full life but was imprisoned and tortured with boiling oil poured over his body, and the rest all were put to death because of their faith. Then you have the apostle Paul who wrote most of the letters in the New Testament and was tortured, imprisoned and eventually beheaded for his faith. These are hardly stories of a Pollyanna life, which is not what you find in the Bible.Instead, what we find in the Bible are people who, in the face of terrible suffering, held onto their faith with white knuckles and said, “I refuse to NOT believe.” Job it says in chapter 13: 15 these words:BIBLE “God might kill me, but I have no other hope. I am going to argue my case with him.” The dominant message of the Gospels is that God, when he walked in human flesh as Jesus Christ, experienced the same kind of suffering that you have experienced, if not worse. He was beaten, mocked, abandoned, tortured and crucified in one of the most painful kinds of death any human can experience. But the story does not end with his crucifixion or his burial in the grave, the Christian faith proclaims that on the third day Christ rose from the dead and that changes everything. The Gospels in the New Testament give us stories of people experiencing great suffering in this world and people who trusted in God in the face of that suffering, and then ultimately that the suffering never had the final word. The Good News of the Gospel is that God redeemed the suffering and used it for good. As Paul says in Romans 8:28: BIBLE “And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good for those who love Him and are called according to his purpose for them.” That is the message of the Gospel and the Bible—that the worst thing in your life will never be the last thing in your life. As we talk today about the issue of God and suffering let me mention that there is one answer that is often given to this problem which I think is totally inadequate but is one that most of us have been guilty of accepting and maybe even saying without critical thought. This is the answer that was given to the young man Jeff about the death of his sister which made him ask me why God killed one of the most important people in life. Roger Wilson, a professor of theology at Baylor University’s Truett Seminary, wrote a wonderful book called Questions for All Your Answers and in it he called this reasoning, “folk theology.” SLIDEFolk TheologyThese are commonly held beliefs that nobody stops to ask questions about. At first look it seems like this theology magnifies God and glorifies God’s position, but if you stop and ask critical questions about these doctrines of folk theology you will find that they diminish God, and sometimes even turn God into a monster. He writes this in his book:SLIDE “You do God no favors by being gullible, credulous, irrational or uncritical. God gave us minds and expects us to use them.”You hear me say this to you all the time, “Don’t check your brain at the door.” I get e-mails and letters from you all the time asking critical questions about something that I said, and I think that’s good. I want you to ask hard questions and I want you to bring those hard questions here so we can wrestle with them together. That’s why we’re doing this series of sermons. When somebody else is experiencing suffering, one of the things that we say in folk religion is this phrase that we have also called “half-truths.” SLIDE“Everything happens for a reason.” I am guessing that if I asked and you all were honest that most of you have said that at some point sometime in your life. I know I used to say this phrase when I was younger, and it seems to make sense. When we say, “Everything happens for reason,” that is supposed to comfort the other person. We are in essence trying to say, “This terrible thing that happened must’ve happened for a good reason. We just can’t see it right now, but someday, with enough time we will see the good reason for the terrible thing that happened to you.” Another thing we say that is sort of like this saying is that: SLIDE“It must have been the will of God.”In that clip from Bruce Almighty we find Jennifer Aniston’s character saying that, “Everything happens for a reason.” That may be comforting for some people; that this terrible thing will turn out to be okay and we will understand it later. If by saying that, “Everything happens for a reason,” we mean that there is cause and effect in the world than that is correct. But usually that is not what we are saying. Usually we are saying something like this, “God has this plan for your life and God wanted this thing to happen to fulfill some other greater objective in your life.” Even that sounds okay most of the time, which is why we don’t often take the time to critique that response— until you get an e-mail like this one.Our baby died this past spring when he was six weeks old. So many Christians that we have encountered since that time tell us, “This was God’s plan.” Before this tragic event I guess I thought that was how life works too. But there is no way that the death of an innocent six-week-old could be a part of the intentional plan of a God of love. And if it is, then I am simply not interested in that God. What Christians were saying to this woman did not comfort her but instead drove her away from the God who might have provided comfort for her. It drove her away by offering a picture to her that God kills babies. Do you believe that?Maybe some of you do but I do not believe that God kills babies. I don’t believe that God does things to people that if another human being did to a person that they would be arrested and put in prison. How do we say that a God of love, justice, mercy and kindness does things that are unthinkable? One response that I hear often is that, “There was some higher purpose that we can’t see.” In the field of ethics this kind of reasoning is known as utilitarian ethics where the end justifies the means. Most people have rejected that as a form of appropriate ethics. The ends don’t justify the means. We can’t justify immoral or destructive things in order to achieve some higher purpose—so why would we claim this of God? I have been a pastor for 35 years and during that time I have sat with people who have been raped. I have been with one couple whose child was murdered. I have been with people who have told me about being sexually molested by their fathers and having to live with a baseball bat in their own homes to protect themselves. Do you mean to tell me that God wanted some father to molest his child because there was some better plan and all of that was to fit into God’s plan? I am not saying that God can’t take all those terrible experiences and force them into something good and beautiful. I do believe God can bring good out of the worst kind of evil. The redemptive word of the Gospels is that God takes the most awful and horrendous things that can happen to us as humans and can force them to serve his purposes. But that is different than saying that God predetermined something to happen that was terrible and that God made it happen and that God put it in the heart of somebody to do this terrible thing. I want us to be very careful about when we use these kinds of phrases.If this is how you want to look about God, then that is your choice, but I want you to be sure that you have critically examined where it takes you and where it may take others who are struggling with the problem of suffering. I want to invite you to be very careful when you say, “Everything happens for a reason,” when someone has had something terrible happen in their life. The reality is that when we say those words, we are saying that God made sure that this thing happened and there are many things I can’t imagine that God would want to have happen. In fact, when you read the Scriptures, what you find is story after story of people doing a whole bunch of stuff that God did NOT want to have happen. Then God comes along after the fact to help try and pick up the mess and save them from themselves. That is the story of the Bible, of people choosing things that God did not want to see happen and then God bringing redemption out of hurt and pain and suffering. So, if God is not making everything happen than what is God doing? How does God work in this world? Aren’t you grateful that you are not just a pawn on a chessboard that somebody is moving around all the time, but instead that you get to make decisions that count for something? SLIDEHow does God work in the world?As we do that, I want us to head back to Genesis, to the very first chapter of the scriptures, verses 27-28 in the Common English Bible.BIBLE27 God created humanity in God’s own image, in the divine image God created them, male and female God created them. 28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and master it. Take charge of the fish of the sea, the birds in the sky, and everything crawling on the ground.”I love this version which tells us to take charge! Let’s begin by recognizing that God has given us the ability to take charge and make decisions. Our decisions can bring joy or pain into our own lives. Sometimes we get mad at God because of something that happens in our lives, but we are the ones who made all the decisions leading up to the cause of our suffering. God basically says, “You can’t have it both ways. You can either have freedom and you get to experience the consequences of misusing of freedom, or you can have me control everything and you end up being puppets.” Which would you prefer? It is not just that we can do things that hurt ourselves, but other people can do things that hurt us as well. That is how it works if everybody has freedom. If everybody has freedom, then you have the freedom to get drunk tonight and to drive your car if you choose to do that. If nobody catches you and you are not arrested and thrown in jail then you might, in exercising your freedom, strike an innocent child walking on the sidewalk. Then, an entire network of people suffers because of your ability to exercise your freedom and making a poor choice. Last year, 3000 teenagers and 2000 adults died driving while texting. They didn’t mean to hurt anyone or themselves, they just decided to do something they knew they shouldn’t do but decided they needed to do. We make choices and exercise our freedoms in ways that have consequences to other people.When whole societies choose to exercise their freedom in ways that are horrible and horrifying then you find catastrophic consequences. The Holocaust was not just about one person doing something wrong but about one person who led an entire group of people who made a decision to exercise their freedom in a way that ended up with 6 million innocent people dying and a World War were 60 million people died. Did God do that? Or did we do that? A few chapters later in Genesis, we have the story of Noah and the Ark. That story tells us God looked at human beings and saw we are constantly violent towards each other. God is grieved that he made us because of the way we treat one another. But God promises at the end of the story that he is not about destroying humanity. Can you imagine how many times God must have wept as he watched what we humans do to each other with our freedom? But what is the alternative?As a parent, I have worried about my children being safe when they are not around me and when I cannot be in control of what is going on in their life. I have this illusion that somehow, I am in control of them. I know this is not true, but I’m working on that with my therapist! I keep thinking that as I get older, I will be able to let go and worry less. Instead, it only gets worse! We try to teach our kids all these things about life and how to live life in a way that they will be safe. We are constantly talk about making good choices. Does anyone else have these conversations with their kids?The reality is that when our kids move away from home what they will experience more than anything else is freedom! They are going to be free to do things that they were not allowed to do at home. They will not have any rules that their parents put in place to worry about. They will be euphoric and excited with this newfound freedom! While we can’t wait for that day when are kids are younger, we also dread it because I know they are free to make decisions that could lead them to suffering or destruction. We realize we must pray more than we do when they are young, and we really end up giving them back to God in that prayer. Then, they move back in during a pandemic and the whole cycle starts over again! But what is the alternative? The alternative is that you lock your children up in a room and you never let them out. You slide the food under the door, and you provide them a Stairmaster for exercise, kind of like what we’ve done the past month! Are you going to do that to your children? I know some of you have thought about it, but is that what you really want? I realize that my children have taught me more about God than anything I have read in a book. When I have found myself stressed about my kid’s decisions or saddened or disappointed or heartbroken, I have wondered if that is how God feels about us sometimes. God tries to teach us all the right things to do. God tries to give us his wisdom. But we turn away from that and go our own way. We hurt others and we hurt ourselves. I wonder if God grieves in those moments. Is that God’s fault or is that our fault? As followers of Jesus, who died on the cross, we believe God redeems us and save us from the messes that we make. God pulls us out of the pit, but we are responsible for our decisions. Other people are responsible for their decisions that have consequences in our lives. Why do we blame God for those unless we really want is not to have any freedom in all?GRAPHIC Rwanda mapThis last year was the 25th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda. 100,000 tootsies were killed in 100 days, or about four months. Rwanda is a small country in central Africa, just east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and just west, across Lake Victoria from Kenya where we take mission teams every year. There were three main groups in Rwanda that made up a sort of cast system, based on socioeconomic status. The three groups were the Hutu, Twa and Tutsi which are commonly, but misleadingly, called ethnic groups. These groups are not ethnic groups in any meaningful sense. The three groups are one people with a common ancestry. They share the same language and culture. Whereas tribal societies are usually divided by geographical boundaries, the three groups have lived together on the same hills throughout the country from time immemorial.The differences between the groups have always been more a reflection of caste. Rwandan society was always stratified, with the royal family, army commanders, chiefs and rich cattle keepers being Tutsi who represented 14% of society. Citizens who lived by growing crops and a few of the chiefs were Hutu, the lower caste, which represented 80% of the culture. A small group of hunters and potters were Twa and they counted for about 6%.In the early 1900s, the Belgians were the colonial power of this part of Africa. They noticed that many of the Tutsi were taller and had slender noses and a longer neck and seemed more European. The Belgians actually measure their noses and their height to see if they were Hutu or Tutsi and so it became also about looks even though their skin tone was the same. The Tutsi then were taller with slender noses while the Hutu were shorter on average and had flat noses. The Twa for the shortest of all and considered pygmies, being several inches shorter than the Hutus.In 1990, the Hutus gain control because they are more than 80% of the population. They begin systematically oppressing the Tutsis who had been in control for many generations. Extremists came to power and began to talk about the Tutsis as foreigners who came into their country centuries before. They talk about them as traitors to their people, and then enemies and snakes and finally cockroaches, who need to be exterminated. This was shouted in political speeches and on talk radio. Hutus and Tutsis lived together in the same communities, their children attended school together and they worship together because 95% of the country was Christian. They even intermarried.After four years of hateful rhetoric, 25 years ago in April, as children were returning from spring break, a call came from Hutu leadership to kill all the Tutsis in Rwanda. Machetes were distributed across the country and 37% of those killed happened in this manner, most often by their neighbors. The Sunday before, Hutus and Tutsis sang in the choir together. Hutu Sunday school teachers taught Tutsi children and their Sunday school classes. Hutu and Tutsi preachers across the country preached to mixed congregations. But on April 7, the call to kill came out and Hutus began searching out their Tutsi neighbors and began to kill them. Over the next 100 days, 800,000 Tutsis were killed, which was 80% of the Tutsi population at the time. The people who had sung together in the choir the week before were killing one another, literally, by the end of that week. The Hutu Sunday school teachers were killing some of their Tutsi children. Hutu congregation members were killing their Tutsi pastors or priests. Some Hutu priests and pastors were participating in the killing of their Tutsi members.Where was God during this is a question that many would ask? Why didn’t God stop it? Was this God’s will? Was God working out some grand purpose that no one could see? Or, was there even a God at all amid this kind of tragedy? These are questions we come to in moments like this.Let’s remember that the second story in the Bible after creation was the story of one brother, Cain, who farmed the earth, killing his brother Abel, who had animals that he herded. The story is not so dissimilar to what happened in Rwanda. Remember, the point of that story in the Scriptures is to remind us that this is not what God wants. The truth is that in order for us to have freedom, we have the freedom to do horrible things. What’s important to note about Rwanda is that only 200,000 Hutus were involved in the killing of their 800,000 Tutsi neighbors. What about the other 6.3 million Hutus? What were they doing? Most were remaining silent while their Tutsi neighbors were put to death. On the one hand, we can use our freedom to do evil. Or, we can sit on our freedom and refrain from doing good. Or, we can positively and courageously do the right thing and drive back the evil. I believe that everyone who calls himself a follower of Jesus tried to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God we would have genocides or hate crimes. If we were led by the Holy Spirit, we wouldn’t see the horrible things in the news every day that we do. But we exercise our ability to take charge at times by being silent or actively pursuing the hurt ourselves. Here’s the question this begs of us today we want to be the presence of Jesus Christ the world.SLIDEHow are we using our ability to take charge?How am I using my freedom? God is calling us to be the force of good and light in the world. God doesn’t send his angels to come and knock out the darkness. God sends people, you and me. We are God’s angels and called to stand up and speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves. We are called to drive back the darkness and overcome evil with good. As I think of Rwanda and the Nazi Holocaust, I’m reminded of that quote from Edmund Burke.GRAPHICThe only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.While a small percentage of Hutus participated in the genocide of their Tutsi neighbors, and the majority stood by and did nothing, there was another small group that resisted.Jacqueline Murekatete is Tutsi and was nine years old and just coming back to school after spring break, having no idea what was about to happen. In the coming 100 days her mother, father, grandparents, all six siblings, most of her aunts and uncles and cousins were killed. Most of them were killed by their neighbors and people from her church whom they had attended weddings with and brought food to during a recent famine.Jacqueline, her grandmother and a cousin were taken to a Hutu family’s home where her uncle arranged for them to be hidden. Many Hutus took in Tutsis this way, creating safe hiding places. A week later, someone discovered they were being hidden and a group of men showed up on the front doorstep screening, holding bloodied machetes. They demanded Jacqueline and her family be brought out and killed. She and her grandmother and cousin came to the front porch.But, the Hutu father of the house, stood in front of the men with the machetes and said, “You cannot do this. Why would you kill these people? They are not enemies of the state. Look at this old woman in these young girls? She could be your grandmother and they could be your daughters. They are human beings you cannot do this.”To their surprise, the three men with the bloodied machetes said they would not tell them now, but they needed to leave town. Their lives were spared because one person uses dominion to stand up and speak out for these two children and their grandmother. I want you to hear their story from Jacqueline and to reflection on the entire episode of genocide in Rwanda.VIDEOJacqueline Murekatete on rescue from Rwanda GenocideWe learn to hate, and we can be taught to love. In Rwanda, it was a four-year campaign on the radio to dehumanize in ethnic group. Part of what worries me in our own country is how we call each other names and dehumanize people on social media. I couldn’t imagine that something like Rwanda could happen in the United States, but I continually see people who call themselves Christians saying horrible things on Facebook and Instagram and other media platforms where we don’t have to look people in the eye when we call them a name. Looking back at history like this and the Holocaust should make all of us pause before we start demonizing and vilifying those in another political party, or group different from us, on Facebook or any public platform. It doesn’t take long for us to demonize and turn others into objects if were not careful.We all have a choice. God has given us the ability to take charge. God has given us guidance and direction and how we are meant to live our lives. There are times when God weeps because he sees the way we misuse our freedom. Those who have died because people have misused their freedom, I do believe are safe in the arms of God. I also believe that God ultimately will defeat evil. God sees evil by us who are followers of Jesus listening carefully and choosing to use our freedom on behalf of serving others. We choose to risk in order to save, and we choose to overcome evil with good because this is what God does in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.The apostle Paul tells us not to be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good. It is by the power of love that evil and hate are snuffed out in the end, and we are called to this as people of faith. GRAPHICJacqueline MurekateteAfter watching the interview with Jacqueline, I wondered if she was still a Christian. I was afraid to find out, because many who have lived through genocide have said they can’t reconcile a good and loving God with what happened to their family and their culture and their people. I find a powerful and profound that as I read more of her story, she shared that she was a follower of Jesus Christ and from him she finds comfort and strength. She has hope that one day she will see her family again. What she knows from him and his death and resurrection is that evil will not have the final word. His life and his story are what defines her life.Today, Jacqueline is an international human rights attorney New York City who has dedicated her life to try make sure genocide never happens again. She spends most of her time encouraging people to overcome evil with good.We have two choices when suffering happens. We can be angry with God and push God away. In the face of apparent injustice and unfairness in our life we can turn away from God. Then, what to do we have left? We still have the suffering and the injustice and the unfairness, but we have given up on the One who can redeem the pain. We often end up bitter and resentful. I have seen people choose this and it can define their lives for years or decades. We have given up on the one who can bring beauty for ashes and become the source of your hope, because there is no faith or trust that God can redeem suffering. However, every person I have known who, after suffering, has continued to trust in God and offered their suffering up to God and asked to take their suffering and make something good from it—I see them two years or five years or ten years later and I see the joy that has come back in their lives. My invitation for you today is that if you have been angry with God for a long time—if you have been running from God—if you have pushed God away— would you at least consider today that it is possible that God is good and loving and just and there for you? Would you open your heart that you might find a life that is rich and full by putting your trust in God? Would you be willing to take a risk by following God so you might be used by God to make a difference in this world? Today I want to give you a simple invitation to say yes to God. Would you bow with me in prayer?SLIDEPrayer While your heads are bowed, and your eyes are closed I would give you this simple invitation. If you feel like in anyway you would like to return to God or turn back to God or to trust in God, would you say this prayer quietly under your breath? God, help me to believe... Help me to trust you… When I see suffering in the world, help me to respond as your hands and your voice… God, take the painful things in my life and bring something good from them… Lord, I offer my life to you… Help me believe… Help me trust… In Jesus’ name. Amen. ................
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