The Church Responds to the Crisis in Haiti
Keep up to date with the United Methodist Church’s relief efforts in Haiti here.
The above site also provides important information concerning making donations and preparing health kits.
Where Is God When an Earthquake Occurs?
Yesterday’s catastrophic earthquake in Haiti has me thinking once again about the reality of human suffering.
Throughout my ministry, I have often heard people give expression to a profound and ultimately unanswerable question in the midst of their experiences of suffering:
Why?
“My child has been diagnosed with inoperable cancer. Why would a loving God permit such a cruel reality?”
“People in the village that I visited in Africa are so poor that, every morning, parents there have to choose which of their children will get food that day. I don’t understand why God would tolerate that kind of hunger for so long.”
“I trusted my husband completely, but he shattered my life by telling me that he doesn’t love me anymore and running off with someone else. Why would God permit me to fall in love with a person who would cause me such pain in the long run?”
I am sure that all of you could add your own personal conversations to this list.
Today, while standing in line at Starbucks, I overheard a new expression of the “why” question. It went like this: “These people who talk about God and praying…I just don’t get it. If there is a God worth praying to, then he wouldn’t permit thousands of Haitians to die in a 48-second earthquake. Why would a good deity allow that kind of widespread tragedy?”
In my own arrogance, I long to be able to answer the “why” question in a way that is succinct, poignant, and reassuring, thereby impressing people with my theological acumen while at the same time putting people back on the right theological track. I long to be able to fit human suffering into a concise theological equation that validates the comforting axiom that everything happens for a reason. The fact of the matter, however, is that this humble preacher is as ill-equipped to answer the “why” question as anybody else in the world.
The narrative that I preach, after all—the Scripture of the Old and New Testaments—never provides its readers with a detailed theodicean apologetic. In the Old Testament, for example, the man named Job never receives an answer to his impassioned “why” in the midst of his hardship. The man named Abraham is never pacified with an explanation of the divine mandate to sacrifice his son (a mandate that is eventually rescinded, but not forgotten). In the New Testament, Jesus offers to us no elaborate explanation of why poverty exists, why leprosy seems to have the upper hand, or why the journey to salvation must include a sickening cross.
All that Scripture offers to us concerning our “why” questions is a cryptic affirmation that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts and that God’s ways are not our ways (Isaiah 55:8), which can hardly be described as a satisfactory explanation for a cancer diagnosis or a Haitian earthquake.
And yet, while Scripture stubbornly refuses to answer the “why” questions related to human suffering, Scripture does place before us the strangely unsettling image of a weeping and suffering Christ. We find him weeping over the sin and brokenness of Jerusalem. We find him weeping over the death of his dear friend Lazarus. We find him breaking and bleeding on that Roman instrument of death called the cross.
Such images are significantly more than theological masochism designed to titillate the sensibilities of future generations. Rather, if we believe that Jesus represents the fullness of God’s self-disclosure (and I do), then the image of a weeping and suffering Christ is nothing less than a stark and worldview-altering revelation of the very character of God. To put it in the simplest of terms, if Jesus represents the fullness of God’s self-disclosure, then a weeping and suffering Christ means a weeping and suffering God.
Not a God who remains at a safe observational distance, orchestrating and micromanaging human suffering for the purpose of testing our mettle. Not a stoic God who refuses to be moved by the tragic segments of the human pilgrimage. Not a coldhearted and emotionally hardened deity who capriciously dispenses rewards and punishments—“Here, let’s see how those Haitian people deal with this!”
Not that kind of God.
Instead, the blood and tears of Christ bear witness to a God who is so thoroughly invested in humankind’s journey that the divine heart actually has the capacity to break to the point of weeping; a God who has poured himself so thoroughly into the human condition that he cannot prevent himself from breaking where we break, bleeding where we bleed, weeping where we weep; a God who loves us with such a wild and profligate love that he takes every portion of human suffering personally, receiving it into himself in such a way that human and divine teardrops commingle in a mind-boggling relational intimacy.
And, according to Scripture, that’s not even the best part.
The best part is that God refuses to allow death and suffering to have the final word to speak. When the weeping is finished, when God and the people of God have wept for long enough, God goes to work in transformationally redemptive fashion, thereby ensuring that the weeping gives way to resurrection.
I probably don’t have to tell you that Scripture is replete with resurrectional experiences: the people of Israel finding new hope and new life in their Egyptian captivity; Lazarus coming forth; the church in Acts moving from Stephen’s martyrdom to newfound evangelical fervor; Jesus of Nazareth walking out of a tomb that could not contain him. When we dare to move beneath the surface level of these resurrectional experiences, we find the beating heart of a God who seems to specialize in bringing new life out of certain death—a God who loves to grab hold of despair for the purpose of transforming it into hope; who loves to grab hold of tragedy for the purpose of transforming it into an opportunity for sacrificial ministry; who loves to grab hold of brokenness for the purpose of initiating a powerful movement toward wholeness.
None of this, of course, implies a twisted system of cause and effect. That is to say, we need not believe that God’s way is to CAUSE an earthquake as a means to some redemptive end. Such a methodology would make no theological sense to the heart of a God who weeps so easily and deeply.
But, in the mysterious and often inexplicable progression of the human journey, when a tragedy does occur, our comfort and hope are to be found, not in the answering of the “why” question, but in the revealed nature of our weeping and resurrecting God, whose intimacy and vulnerability enable him to weep and whose creative grace enables him to redeem and resurrect.
Please do not interpret this post as a theological sidestep. Believe me, I would still like to have an answer to the “why” question in the aftermath of Tuesday’s earthquake in Haiti. But, in light of the fact that the “why” of such an earthquake is nothing short of inscrutable, I am compelled to consider the possibility that the more significant and urgent question to ponder is “where?” More specifically, where is God when a catastrophic earthquake occurs and when hundreds of thousands of lives are suddenly lost? That is a question that we CAN answer, and the answer is this:
God is right there, in the heart of Port-au-Prince and the surrounding towns. God is right there, in the thick of it all, feeling the pain of every death, sharing the pain of every tear. Because that is who God is. Intimate. Personal. Vulnerable. Emotional. Incarnational. Wounded. Crucified.
And, when the weeping stops for a while, God will still be right there, gradually but steadily leading a devastated people into a new season of hope and redemption—leading people out of death into new life.
That, too, is who God is.
For most of my childhood and youth, there were three pets in my house. Or, perhaps more accurately, for most of my childhood and youth, there were three pets that permitted the rest of us to dwell in their domain. One dog and two cats. The dog’s name was Jiggers. He was part Toy Terrier and part Pekingese. One of the cats was Siamese. Her name was Wing Wong. The other cat, Muffy, was a tabby.
Jiggers. Muffy. and Wing Wong. It still feels very natural to me to say their names.
The three animals got along pretty well. In fact, they would even sample one another’s food periodically. But every once in a while, if Jiggers the dog became a bit too aggressive in his playtime with the cats, one of the cats would turn toward him and hiss. Whenever that happened, Jiggers, the mighty dog, the fearsome hound, would turn around and run away with his tail between his legs.
No matter how many times it happened, that moment would always fascinate me. It seemed humorously and ridiculously out of order. Dogs were supposed to scare cats. It wasn’t supposed to be the other way around.
We tend to pay particular attention in those moments, don’t we—those moments in which things are out of order? When a cat chases a dog out of a room, we chuckle at the role reversal. When a young child puts her hands on her hips and corrects a parent—“Mommie, you shouldn’t be saying that bad word”—we find humor in the transfer of authority. When a student corrects a teacher’s mistake—“Uh, Mrs. Smith, the correct answer is 14 not 16”—the entire class enjoys the sudden pedagogical shift. We tend to pay uncommonly close attention during those moments in which things and relationships seem to be out of order.
Perhaps that is why the story of Jesus’ baptism has always captured my attention in a very particular fashion. Perhaps I’m intrigued by the story because it places before us a situation that is clearly out of order. Jesus, the Son of God, the incarnation of God’s very heart, comes to John (commonly known as John the Baptist) in order to be baptized in the river Jordan.
According to the Gospel of Matthew’s description of the event (which has always been my favorite description, even though it is not a part of this year’s lectionary), John himself senses that Jesus’ presence before him is out of order. After all, the baptism that John offered was a baptism of repentance, meaning that people would come to him for baptism only when they were ready to turn away from their sin. Why would Jesus, God’s messiah, God’s chosen one, connect himself to such a blatantly human practice?
It is interesting that, in Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 3:13-17), we are told that John would have prevented Jesus from being baptized: “No, Jesus, this is wrong. This is out of order. This isn’t how it should be. You are God’s Messiah. You are God’s Christ. YOU should be baptizing ME, not the other way around.”
Jesus’ response is significant. “John, let it be this way. Let it be out of order. Because my baptism will fulfill all righteousness.”
What does Jesus mean by that, do you think? “My baptism will fulfill all righteousness.”
In Matthew’s Gospel, righteousness normally means accomplishing the will of God. Therefore, when Jesus says that his baptism will fulfill all righteousness, he may very well be telling John that his baptism will accomplish or bring to fruition God’s perfect will. And why would it be God’s will for Jesus to be baptized? Perhaps because, by allowing himself to be baptized, Jesus creates a public solidarity and oneness with the very people he came into the world to save. By allowing himself to be baptized, in other words, Jesus is making clear to John and the people that he is willing to enter the very same water that they are occupying. He is willing to connect himself to human sin through the water of baptism.
Is God pleased with this moment of baptism? Apparently so. I say that because, during the baptism, something happens. Something supernatural. Something revelatory. Jesus discerns that the heavens have opened. Jesus discerns that God’s Holy Spirit has descended upon him and anointed him. And Jesus discerns the voice of God, whispering a parental word of affirmation: “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.”
I wonder how many parents have thought the same kind of thing during the baptism of their son or daughter? “This is my beloved child with whom I am well pleased.”
It is an out of order moment. John the Baptist knows that. But according to Jesus, it is God’s will for him to subordinate himself to the water of John’s ministry. “John let it be this way, let it be out of order. Because my baptism will fulfill all righteousness. My baptism will accomplish the will of God. My baptism will make tangible the incarnational solidarity with the Divine that my ministry represents.”
I invite you to consider a possibility. Consider the possibility that we, like John the Baptist, actually have the wherewithal to baptize Jesus all over again. This, of course, is not an effort on my part to minimize or distort the foundational baptism that only Jesus can offer. But perhaps the baptism that we experience in Christ is first received from him and then offered back to him in response.
As people who carry on with the ministry of John, preparing the way for Jesus’ coming and heralding his arrival, perhaps we, like John, actually have the spiritual capacity to offer back to Jesus the ministry of baptism. Only, instead of baptizing Jesus with water as John did, perhaps we have the opportunity to baptize Jesus with the outpouring of our ministry and our discipleship.
Nineteen years ago, I officiated at my very first adult baptism. The one baptized was a 67-year-old woman who had been a woman of faith for many years. Somehow, however, she had missed the sacrament of baptism. Her parents had not pursued baptism for her when she was an infant, and, although she had come to a rich and vibrant faith in Christ, she had simply put off the sacrament. In fact she had put it off for so long that people stopped asking her about it. But it never stopped troubling her that she had not experienced the baptismal water.
And so, at the age of 67, Lottie Cavanaugh came under the water of baptism, and I had the honor of officiating.
Following that worship service, I asked Lottie what she was going to do now that she was a baptized believer. This was her response: “Jesus baptized me with his grace,” she said, “and now I’m going to baptize him right back.”
“Lottie, I’m not sure what you mean by that. What do you mean you’re going to ‘baptize Jesus right back?’”
“That’s how I look at it,” she said. “It’s like this: I look at my life as a pitcher of water. And what I’m telling you is that I want to pour that pitcher all over Jesus so that he can be drenched with my outpoured life.”
Lottie was a bit of a poet—and perhaps a bit of a sacramental theologian.
If I truly believed that I have the wherewithal to baptize the Lord Jesus afresh with the spiritual water of my outpoured love and compassion and mercy, I wonder how it would impact the way I treat people. I wonder how it would change the way I looked upon my possessions and my financial resources. I wonder how it would affect the way I worship and commune with other believers. I wonder how it would deepen the way I live out my discipleship.
It seems out of order, doesn’t it, that we would have the opportunity to baptize Jesus (the very One who baptizes us in grace)? And yet, as John discovered, such an “out of order” experience may very well be a portion of the fulfillment of all righteousness.