One cannot possibly stand before you today and neglect to
say a word about the tragic events of recent days. I would be remiss in my duties to take the
pulpit without reference to an event that has drawn the whole world into
itself, has caused so much suffering, so much soul-searching.
At such times one’s pastoral duties must reflect the needs
of the people. To one, consolation. To another, a listening ear. To still another, an explanation (as if one
can be offered, no matter how crucial an attempt may be). For some the greatest consolation may come in
the form of an explanation. For others,
a prayer or silence. At the present
time, from this stage, it is hardly possible to do all these things.
One should not forget that a pastor too is caught up in history,
in the same events we are all caught up in.
She is not above such events, but in her own way must come to terms with
them. In other words, this platform is
not a privileged place where suffering and soul-searching are absent as if, as
pastor, one has greater spiritual fortitude and tranquility. On the contrary, the question of innocent
suffering and the growing culture of death around us shakes the pastor to her
core. For this question is one that begs
two others that necessarily follow: Where is God and where are God’s people? The first wonders at God’s seeming absence while
the innocent suffer and die: in the present time, young children, six and seven
year olds. This question is really quite
an ancient one. The second one, which is
also ancient, wonders at the child of God’s place in the world. That the Church of God is surrounded by a
culture of death is certain. That the
Church of the Father of heavenly lights is already highly influenced and even
saturated with this culture is equally certain.
The lesson of Luke 4, in which the Lord encountered a demon-possessed
man in the synagogue, is not lost on
us here. Today we must be prepared to
admit that among us too there lie powerful forces of evil. One cannot be naïve in this regard. There will always be weeds among the wheat,
not just people of poor character among other people of relatively better
character (!), but within our own hearts too we find weeds and wheat.
We will start with our first question: Where is God? This is necessary because the answer to our
second question regarding the people of God flows naturally from this. First I think we can all agree that God was
not there as the tragic events unfolded.
But we must be clear what we mean when we say “God was not there.” We know that God, according to Paul and the poet
he quotes in Acts 17 is that Being in whom we move and have our own being, and
that for this reason he “is not far from any one of us.” Presumably then he was not even far from the
one responsible for the school tragedy.
That is, he is present-for-us at all times. He is not, in some crude manner, a
material substance that fills in the spaces between objects, but rather God is
Spirit. When we say “God was not there”
we mean then two things: 1) The actions of the murderer do not reflect the will
of any God we know, and 2) God was not there in the form of substance, however
powerless, i.e. God did not physically restrain the murderer. In these ways God was absent. We must admit, as those who believe in a God,
that God was nevertheless present in some way.
This way we call “Spirit.”
One might ask, “what good is it if God is only present in
Spirit, but cannot even lift a finger to help.”
One is entitled to ask this question, and indeed it should be asked quite openly, even perhaps,
especially in the Church of God. For
when we call on God for aid in troubling times, we should not imagine the most
fantastic things, as if the greater our imaginings are, the greater our faith
is. We are not unaware of God’s chosen
instruments of action, of the place where Spirit moves. We are not ignorant of the meanings or
implications of the Incarnation. We have
seen how consistent is God’s plan in that in our Saviour dwelt bodily the fullness
of the Deity (Col.2:9), and now in his Church so too his Spirit dwells and moves. The apostles were not in error to fall upon
the ground and worship him, a man who hungered and grew thirsty, who defecated and
shared all our bodily functions, though by all appearances their actions were shear
madness. So too the body of Christ today
is made up of many undesirable parts and yet here Spirit moves. God is Spirit. This Spirit, who moves where Spirit wills,
was surely moving in those present at the recent tragedy, those who made every
effort to save the lives of the children in their care, those too who dashed to the
scene to stop the murderer, even if it meant losing their own lives in the
process. This spirit of self-sacrifice and
love is surely the Spirit whom we are speaking of. So while we reject the crude notion of a God
made up of particles of matter, and absent this type of God from the scene, we
simultaneously acknowledge a much more tragic, yet for that very reason,
triumphant Spirit present in the self-giving love and care of those
present. We cannot forget that if God
can be pierced on a cross, he can be pierced in the heart of his people.
This is the answer to our second question: “Where are God’s
people?” They are where the Spirit of God moves. When they act and love they manifest
the Spirit to and in the world. Just as
Eternity miraculously made its way into the body and form of a human being, so
too Eternity now rises up out of this same body, each one of us -out of our
finitude and smallness, it nevertheless rises!
You see God was not helpless to act in these tragic events, God did
act. Just as God once relied on a frail
human body, so too God continues to rely on frail beings, beings afraid to act,
to speak out, afraid to challenge the forces of nihilism and death that pervade
our culture, afraid to meet the cross on our own, these creatures God lives
amongst and shows himself to the world through.
Yet we have seen in the self-sacrifice of a few for the many that this
is not a spirit of timidity, that in the end the will of the Father is our
spiritual sustenance, a cup we are capable of drinking if we will take it
in our hands as the few have done.
The time has come to dispense with false notions of a God,
with the individualism that runs so rampant we are not able to recognize in the
Church the collective body of Christ, the Spirit of God. One should not read the promise: “And surely
I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Mt. 28:20) without
simultaneously reading “He was put to death in the body but made alive in the
Spirit” (1 Pet. 3:18): the Spirit that now dwells among us. “You, however, are not in the realm of the
flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in
you” (Rom. 8:9).
What will be your basic orientation to the world around you
dear child of the Spirit? Will you
confront the forces of death and decay with your comrades, shining a light into every
dark corner, even those corners of your heart?
Will you participate in this culture of death and sit idly by, allowing
the cup you've been offered to pass to others?
Or will you take this cup and drink it to the dregs with the conviction that today, as far as you and the great company of your comrades are concerned, Spirit will rise?
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