“Where
Was God?”
John
11:1-45
First
Presbyterian Church
The
Reverend Donald E. Ray
April
10, 2011
Fifth
Sunday in Lent
At my son’s church we attend when visiting in
My style of preaching is to look at the day’s
text with the question in my mind: What is it the writer wants us to learn from
this story in the Gospel? Most texts have several stories to tell that
requires selecting a sermon focus from among the many. A companion
question I ask of the reading: What is it the church today needs to learn from
this text. For that reason, we need to hear the rest of the story
in today’s lesson.
John 11:17 - 45
John’s Gospel, the writer identifies as a witness
to the signs Jesus did which are
written that the reader may come to
believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing
you may have life in his name (John 20:30-31). The answer to my first
question of today’s story is that the raising of Lazarus from the dead
obviously offers conclusive evidence that Jesus is the messenger from God, the
Messiah.
That is not so likely to be the answer to my
companion question. The story of Jesus calling Lazarus, four days dead and
buried, to come out of the tomb, has become more a source of debate between
conservative and liberal Christians as to its authenticity than convincing
evidence to prompt belief in Jesus as Messiah. Why do such miracles not
happen today? More specifically, why does such a miracle not happen for me
in my hour of desperation?
Perhaps its only an idiom from my birth home, but
when we wanted to dramatize how often we had heard or done something we would
say; “If I had a nickel for every time I . . . I would be rich.” This
winter it has been “if I had a nickel for every time I’ve swept snow off the
back steps to let the dog
out . . .”
If I
had a nickel for every time I have heard “Where was God?” . . .
“Where was God?” – the husband whose wife had
just died from her injuries in a skidding accident traveling
a snow covered road to their family celebration Christmas morning.
“Where was God?” – a young woman whose father
had just died from a ruptured aneurysm, his family having prayed for his
recovery through the hours of his surgery.
“Where was God?” – a family that had prayed
for mom’s healing through months of her agonizing battle with cancer that now
ended in her death.
“Where was God?” – parents of a young man who
had been at a party where there were drugs and some bazaar
things going on and he had now been declared brain dead.
Where was God? I think I have heard nearly
every attempt at answering that apparent question from intimations that faith
was not deep enough, prayer not sufficiently fervent to elicit God’s presence;
that God was present but just said, “No;” to
the misguided attempt to comfort parents whose baby has just died, “God needed
another little angel.”
“Where
was God?” is in reaction to a common proffered religious image of God.
If God is all powerful, able to do anything; is ever present, always with us in
every circumstance; a good God presumed to do the best for us; prayed to in the
midst of our crisis without our desired result, "Where was God?"
voices the pain of the believer, who subscribing to that idea of the
omnipotence of a good God, has lost not only a loved one but the very pillars of
their belief system. Where was God is the anger of the non believer
driving one more nail in the coffin of the dead, non-existent god who
paradoxically is now the object of rage.
I learned long ago that “Where was God?” is not
a theological question and the answer is not a religious one. In fact,
"Where was God?" is not really a question, but the anguished cry of
grieving, frustrations, disappointment, fear, despair. Taken as a
question, probably the most honest answer I have heard has been from the few who
have said, “I don’t know.” Not having an easy answer at least places
one by the side of the hurting, troubled soul.
In response to Martha, Jesus said "I am the
resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will
live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” (John 11:25
– 26) By the time John’s Gospel was written, it would seem Lazarus was
no longer living, or surely he would have been offered as exhibit A for the
story. Resurrection and life, it would seem, has a greater dimension than
one walking out from burial in a cave.
Imbedded in this story of Martha and Mary and
Lazarus is a model of pastoral care.
“Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died” was said to
Jesus first by Martha, repeated in turn by her sister Mary. “Could not
he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” was
voiced by some among the crowd of mourners. Jesus offers no defensive
explanation. He listens, accepts, shares in their tears. It is the
comforting presence of love and compassion, most often embodied in the presence
of a messenger of God that is the answer to the distressed cry, “Where was
God.”
Is there no value then in praying for healing,
expecting, at least hoping, that God will work a miracle. I would not for
a moment say that.
Yesterday, a clergy friend shared that his son had
been rushed to Buffalo Children’s Hospital the beginning of the week in a
critical asthma attack. A boy in the next room was also in grave
respiratory distress. The boy’s mother, seeing my friend praying by his
son’s bed, assuming he was a
minister and perhaps not even realizing he was also the father, asked if he
would come and pray for her son. Our friend did, and within the hour, both
boys condition turned for the better. Our friend’s son was running track
yesterday.
If you thought interpreting today’s forty-five
verse reading - verse by verse - would take long, you don’t even want to
imagine how long it would take to tell the stories of miracles that have
happened, and the ones that never happened. The issue is, to hang one’s
beliefs on the hook of a miracle working god rescuing us from suffering and
grief may all too likely leave us at some point lamenting, “Where was God?”
Reality is that we live with tragedy, death, and
the sometimes worse fate, dying. Reality,
I am assured, is that we live in God so that always there is love, compassion,
hope, sometimes healing, always life. Jesus
said, “I am the resurrection and the
life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and
everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”
I’ve not been much of a fan of the New Testament
book of Revelations. I know it has been the too common fascination with
Armageddon, the contrived prophecies that turn me off. Eugene Peterson has
stirred in me again a sense of intrigue in the vision of the book.
Commenting on the 8th chapter, Peterson writes:
Silence
in heaven for about half an hour (Rev. 8:1): God listens.
Everything we say, every groan, every
murmur, every stammering attempt at prayer: all this is listened to.
All heaven quiets down.
The loud angel voices, the piercing
trumpet messages, the thundering throne songs are stilled while God listens.
The prayers of the faithful must be
heard: the spontaneous hallelujahs, the solemn amens, the desperate “Why hast
thou forsaken me?,”
the agonized “Take this cup from me,” the tempered “Nevertheless not my
will but your will,” the faithfully spoken “Our Father who art in heaven,’
the joyful “Worthy art thou, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and
power, for thou didst create all things, and by thy will they existed and were
created.”
All the Psalms said and sung for
centuries in voices boisterous, subdued, angry, and serene are now heard.
Not one of our words is lost in a wind
tunnel of gossip or drowned in a cataract of the world’s noise.
We are listened to.
We realize dignity.
Dramatic changes take place in those
moments of silence.
The world rights itself.
We perceive reality from the vantage
point of God’s saving work and not from the morass of desperate muddle.
We acquire hope. (1)
Lord, if you had been here . . . In the silence of
love and compassion, we are heard - sometimes with the miracle we would seek,
always with the greater miracle beyond all we might ask or think - resurrection
and life. In the midst of the desperation of the cry, Where is God? - I
have learned it helps when there is a messenger of that love and compassion.
I think the Christ calls the church, us to be that messenger.
Amen.
(1) Living the Message by Eugene Peterson p. 104
Copyright © 2011 by First Presbyterian Church