Searching for Answers

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

October 10, 2010

Searching for Answers

John 10:10

“I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

He was a good Christian,

a man who went to church regularly,

a lawyer by vocation,

a family man, with a wife, four daughters and a son.

His life was humming along when tragedy struck:

a devastating fire destroyed property he had invested in,

all but wiping him out financially.

Then two years later, a ship carrying his wife and four daughters

collided with another ship

and sank in the frigid waters of the Atlantic;

only his wife survived.

Tragedy struck yet again when their young son

died of scarlet fever.

We can almost picture this man raising his voice,

even raising his fist to heaven,

raging at God,

“Why? Why? WHY??”

“What have I done to deserve such sadness, such grief?

Have I done something so wrong, so truly awful, so sinful

to deserve such pain?”

But this man didn’t do any of that.

He didn’t raise his fist or his voice.

Surely he shed tears and plumbed the very depths of grief,

but he knew that God had not afflicted his son with disease;

he knew that God was not the one who struck the match

that burned his buildings;

he knew that God was not the one who steered the ships

on their fatal collision course.

He also knew that God would not answer his question, “why?”

He knew that God in his own inscrutable way,

would be silent.

But it didn’t matter, for his faith was his strength;

God was his strength.

He knew the Psalmist’s words and trusted them,

“God is our refuge and strength,

a very present help in trouble.”

(Psalm 46:1)

This man knew that God would help him work through his grief;

he knew that God would bear him up

so that he could keep walking forward in life,

as scarred, as deeply wounded, as he was,

as scarred and as deeply wounded as he always would be.

One day the man sat down with a pencil and piece of paper

and scribbled out some words

as he tried to give voice to his emotions.

He wrote,

“When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,

When sorrows like sea billows roll;

Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,

It is well, it is well, with my soul.”

This is the hymn we just heard,

the words of a wounded man,

a man named Horatio Spafford,

a man who even in spite of his wounds, his scars, his grief,

still knew that God’s everlasting, everloving arms

were wrapped around him,

so firmly lifting him up that he could say,

“it is well with my soul”

not just in good times,

but also in times of tears and turmoil,

“When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,”
as well as “When sorrows like sea billows roll;”

Can any of us feel confident that if we had to endure

all the things Spafford endured,

we’d be singing,  “it is well with my soul

whatever my lot”!

Even the most faithful among us

might find ourselves struggling not to ask, “why”,

struggling not to demand some answers from God

when things seem so obviously wrong,

even unjust.

Job wasn’t the only one who wanted answers,

who demanded that God answer his question, “why, God, why?”

When tragedy strikes, when calamity blows through our lives

it is so easy to confront God:

“Where were you?

Why didn’t you stop it?

Are you that callous?

That uncaring?

Or perhaps you are not as powerful

as we think you are,

perhaps there was nothing you could have done.

Well, God, what do you say to that?”

And it doesn’t have to be something we suffer personally;

We ask why when we see tragedy on television

or read about something in the newspaper,

flood, earthquakes, hurricanes, war.

The question “why”, “why”

comes so easily, so naturally.

Rabbi Harold Kushner addressed the question

in the classic book he wrote back in 1981:

“When Bad Things Happen to Good People”

as he wrestled with a very personal tragedy –

the death at age 14 of his own son,

death from a rare disease,

a disease no doctor could do anything about.

All Kusher could do was sit by his son and watch him die.

How easy, even natural and normal

it would have been for him to have shouted out,

“why, Lord, why?”,

to have shaken a fist at the heavens,

to have turned to another verse from the Psalmist,

“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

(22:1)

It clearly wasn’t well with Kushner’s soul in the months

that followed his son’s death.

As he said in the book, his son’s illness and death

contradicted everything he had been taught about God.

So, like Spafford, Kushner picked up a pencil to try to put in words

what he was feeling,

wondering why the answer to the question, “why”

was so elusive.

But in writing the book, he realized

that he would not know “why”,

that for as many times as he might put the question to God,

he would never hear God’s response.

Writing the book didn’t eliminate the pain,

didn’t cover up the deep scar within him,

but it did help make well his soul

as he found a sense of peace through acceptance,

as he came to understand the simple truth that,

“no one ever promised us a life

free from pain or disappointment.”

Read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation

and you’ll find Kushner is right:

neither God nor Jesus ever promises us a life without pain,

a life without disappointment, setbacks,

even calamities.

What God does promise, as Kushner learned,

is that God is with us even in the midst of the most searing pain.

God’s promise to us is that

“we would not be alone in our pain, …

we would be able to draw upon a source outside ourselves

for the strength and courage we would need

to survive life’s tragedies and life’s unfairness.”

This is the promise that God gives us,

even as God is eternally silent in the face of the

raging river of “why’s” flowing incessantly toward God. 

This is the promise that is ours in Jesus Christ,

the grace and love of God made flesh,

the promise bound up in the word Emmanuel,

that word we hear only during Christmas,

which is a shame because the word is Hebrew for

“God with us”.

It is a word we should use year-round,

to give us comfort,

to remind us of God’s presence in our lives

even in the midst of terrible tragedy. 

Listen to how the poet Emily Dickinson tried to capture

her struggle with the “why”.

She understood that the question would gain her no answer,

but even then, the anger that partnered with her pain

was enough for her to say to God,

“I will know why, perhaps in your time God,

rather than mine, but I will know why.”

She wrote,

“I shall know why, when time is over,

And I have ceased to wonder why;

Christ will explain each separate anguish

In the fair schoolroom of the sky.

He will tell me what Peter promised,

And I, for wonder at his woe,

I shall forget the drop of anguish

That scalds me now, that scalds me now.

The reality is that life has its times of disappointment,

sadness, tragedy, grief, pain, devastation;

We will be scarred by life,

wounded, knocked down,

sometimes hard,

sometimes with mindboggling frequency.

                 

But God’s promise to us is that

we will get through whatever life hands us,

because we will not be alone,

because we will never be alone:

God is with us, always with us,

suffering with us,

for God knows pain;

after all, he too suffered the brutal death of a son,

his only son.

And the Son knows our suffering, too,

for he suffered.

Jesus is empathy;

Jesus is compassion.

In Jesus we have the answer the Psalmist found

when he asked the question,,

“From where will my help come?

My help comes from the Lord…”

(Psalm 121).

Through Jesus, our pain can be transformed into assurance,

assurance grounded in the promise that what Jesus wants for us

is a rich and abundant life,

not richness and abundance in money and possessions,

but abundance in grace, hope, peace, and love,

the resources that will help us navigate even the stormiest seas.

Barbara Brown Taylor has written,

Jesus “dares us to believe that

God is at the bottom of everything,

especially the things we cannot understand,

with strong arms waiting to catch us when all our nets break,

with loving arms to cradle us…”

(B.B. Taylor, God in Pain, 94)”

Taylor reminds us that it was Jesus’ triumph over

that Roman tool of execution,

that crude device we call the cross

that teaches us,

“come hell and high water;

come affliction and hardship,

persecution, hunger, nakedness,

peril and swords;

come whatever may,

nothing can separate us from the love of God

in Jesus Christ our Lord”,

who has promised us that everything finally will be,

as the anthem teaches us, “well with our souls.”

(B.B. Taylor, God in Pain, 94)

You and I are called to believe this

that it can be well with our souls on good days and bad.

You and I are called to trust in this

so that we can share assurance with one another,

so we can be the love of God,

the peace of Christ

with each other as we each go through times of struggle,

our arms the arms of God reaching out in support,

hope and encouragement

Through us, - you and me –

we can help those who suffer

understand that God doesn’t prevent suffering;

God understands it and is with us in it;

and through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ,

is there to take even the most tragic situation

and make something holy of it.

(B.B. Taylor, 118)

                          

Make something holy of it,

to give us life,

to give us abundantly

that it will be well with our souls.

AMEN