Sermonizing

I preached again! I'm becoming old hat here.

Here's the lectionary as usual: 

http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Epiphany/CEpi4_RCL.html

Love. It is the cornerstone of our faith and a theme that is carried throughout the bible, inspiring and upholding millions of Christians the world over. Today’s reading from 1Corinthians lays it out about as perfectly as one could ever hope to; the passage so completely captures the primacy of love that I am loath to quote just a part for fear of disregarding the rest. It’s one of the bible’s greatest hits and is well deserving of its long-lived popularity. 

But it is important to highlight, very briefly, exactly what kind of love Paul is referring to here. The word used in the original Greek is agape which is defined in one source as the “highest form of love; the love of God for man and of man for God.” 1Corinthians is a reminder that this kind of love, this agape, must be foundational to our life and work as Christians; that without love we are essentially nothing. But it is also assures us that “love never ends” and that God’s love will always be with us. These two ideas--the essential, foundational nature of God’s love in our actions and the all-encompassing, limitless gift that is divine love--cannot be overstated. One of the unfortunate affects of popularity is how quickly genuine appreciation can turn into jaded familiarity; these are words most Christians have heard and read dozens of times and despite even our best efforts the message will lose some power in repeating. But try again to hear them with fresh ears and draw strength from the encouragement Paul is offering to us. Hold onto the love of God, cherish the awesomeness that is agape. God loves you and you have a Christian duty to share that.

With that in mind I would like to turn today’s gospel passage. It’s not something generally discussed but this is one of those occasions where Jesus is being difficult, one could even say mean. Love seems to be lacking. As Jesus is dismissive of and aloof to his former neighbors he recalls two tales from the early kingdom of Israel when God was similarly distant. Despite the presence of many widows in the time of Elijah and many lepers in the days of Elisha it is to two lowly gentiles outside the borders of Israel that these holy men visit. Despite the desperate need for God’s love within the body of God’s covenant, agape makes itself known where it seems to have no business being. In his retelling Jesus does not emphasize the singular qualities of the widow at Zarapheth nor does he applaud the positive attributes of Naaman the Syrian, it is God’s apparent absence within Israel that is noteworthy. Why did God abandon his people? Where did God’s love go?

This is one of the singular challenges of a life lived in faith: the unanswerable question of why bad things happen to good people. Why, if God is good, is there so much suffering? The simple answer, of course, is that all evil is the result of human action, that the greatest sources of human suffering are born of our own misguided free will run amok in the world. Even when we look at catastrophic “natural disasters” and their inflated death tolls we see the ever present hand of unequal human structures. The Irish Potato Famine was one of the great tragedies of the 19th century killing approximately 1 million people over a period of seven years, but the disease which struck Ireland’s potato crop would not have been as fatal should English policy and rule been more kind-hearted. Reflecting after the crisis had abated author and activist John Mitchel wrote “The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the Famine.” 

More recently, in 2010, a 7.0 earthquake in Haiti killed at least 100,000 people  (possibly as many as 316,000) while the 1994 Northridge earthquake--a 6.7 which had an epicenter just north of downtown Los Angeles--killed exactly 57 people. These differences in building safety, emergency response and even basic death accounting demonstrate quite starkly the unequal distribution of resources between two countries that are less than a thousand kilometers apart. It is important that we acknowledge and accept our role in the suffering caused by natural forces but even that reasoning can only go so far. Why blight in the first place? Why earthquakes at all?

I will not pretend to have the answer to those questions; it is a struggle that all thinking men and women of faith must tackle in their own way. It is a difficult truth we must all reconcile ourselves to and I will not presume to instruct you as to the best approach. 

That said, I must personally reject the notion that “God’s way are not our ways”. The idea that millions of violent, painful, and premature deaths are part of God’s plan is untenable for me. If massive death tolls are the intended result of God’s order then I want nothing to do with God. If widespread suffering is what God wants then our primary message of love and grace is hopelessly misguided. I do not know what God’s place in all this is. And not knowing is hard. We long for certainty so to embrace indecision, to comfortably accept the limits of our own knowledge in this most elemental of questions is extremely difficult. But I think it is essential, for an overly deterministic view of human pain will inevitably blame the victims for whatever tragedy befell them. What did the Haitians do to deserve that earthquake? God must be punishing them for something. 

No one can provide a good answer to that; no one living can offer the basic truth of why there is pain. But I’d like to return to where we began this morning and highlight what still remains in spite of that. Agape. The love of the divine who knew us before we were formed in the womb. That love which “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Whatever suffering’s ultimate source is, know that God is with you while you endure; that God is with us all. Know that God’s love extends beyond our darkest places and that God is present for all humans in spite of the hell they may find themselves in. Elijah and Elisha may have gone outside Israel but God was still there for all widows and lepers. As we are promised in 1Corinthians, “love never ends” and though suffering will always be around, agape is enough to hope in.