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Sermon: “What has God
to do with Natural Catastrophes?”, 09.01. 2005
The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Love
of God and the Communion of the Holy Spirit be with us all. Amen.
Dear Congregation,
2005 is the Anniversary
Year of our Congregation. We will plan and organize events, celebrate
festivities and will observe this occasion appropriately. I have thought
that this anniversary year can also be special in other respects; namely,
that we, during the course of the year, will go through the entire Bible
so that you will hear sermons from several different books of the Bible.
Sometimes there are texts among them which you know, and sometimes texts
which you perhaps have never heard before. And, of course, I want to
attempt to establish a relevant connection and deal with topics that are
relevant.
Because of the
circumstances at hand, the topic of the sermon today is: „What has God to
do with natural catastrophes? “
When such unimaginable
tragedies as in the Indian Ocean happen,, there are two different and
absolutely opposing reactions, and this was the case again.
Some people ask
themselves: How can God allow this? And here, all the religious doubts
come alive again which make people insecure when disasters, war and death
make it into the media, or if something happens in personal life.
Others seek support
particularly in religion, in faith, whenever something like this happens;
often even people who are normally not religious at all, turn to God as
they do not know from where else help should come, or how they can
otherwise process such a disaster.
Perhaps you, too, saw
pictures this week, where people in Thailand sat in a stadium amidst of a
sea of candles, and remembered the victims in prayer – Buddhists, Muslims
and Christians together in unity, by the way.
So what then has God
really to do with such a Tsunami?
Well, in the Bible there
are a few stories in which natural catastrophes happen, in the story of
Noah, for instance:
Genesis 6:
5The
LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every
imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
6And the LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth,
and it grieved him to his heart. ,
7So
the LORD said:” I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of
the ground, man and beast and creeping things and birds of the air, for I
am sorry that I have made them.”
8But
Noah found favour in the eyes of the LORD.
This is how the story begins, which we all know well.
40 days and forty nights rain, raining buckets, everything perishes,
except Noah, his family and the animals in the ark.
In Isaiah 51,15 it says: For I am the LORD your
God, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar.
God brings fire and brimstone to Sodom and
Gomorrah, ever heard of it before? Why does the town perish?
Genesis 19, 13: We are
about to destroy this place, because the outcry against its people has
become great before the LORD, and the LORD has sent us to destroy it.
Genesis 19: 24+25:
24Then
the LORD rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out
of heaven;
25and
he overthrew those cities, and what grew on the ground.
The ten plagues, which God sent over Egypt,
they were all natural catastrophes.
At the liberation of the Israelites from Egypt, when
the Israelites could walk through the Red Sea with dry feet and the
Egyptian soldiers then perished in the water:
Exodus 14, 28-30:
28The waves returned and covered the
chariots and the horsemen and all the host of Pharaoh that had followed
them into the sea; not so much as one of them remained. .
29But the people of Israel walked on dry ground
through the sea, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and
on their left. .
30Thus the LORD saved Israel that day from the
Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore.
Still other examples can be found:
That God sends storms (Psalm 48, 8; Psalm
83, 16; or hail: (Psalm 78, 47; Psalm 105, 32)
I want to leave it at
that. For what actually should follow here from this is the conclusion
that God has also sent this wave that has cost the lives of more than
200,000 people in Asia. But how does such a statement compare to the fact
that we have a merciful, a gracious God, who, after all, makes a covenant
with Noah after the Flood and promises:
Genesis 8: I
will never again curse the ground because of man, for the imagination of
man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I ever again destroy
every living creature as I have done. .
22While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.
Genesis 9, 15: I
will remember my covenant which is between me and you and every living
creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to
destroy all flesh.
How do punishing catastrophes fit a God, about
whom is said elsewhere: God is Love. Not: God loves occasionally whomever
he wants, but God is Love.
The first thing that we
learn is, perhaps, that people who become Pastors, study theology to have
sufficient time to find answers to questions like this. Much depends on
the question how we basically can understand and see the Bible. But that
takes us too far now.
But first I want to
emphasize something that is very critical in these texts which I have
mentioned: The natural catastrophes in the Bible are connected to the
wickedness of people. In the First Book of Moses, God nearly annuls
creation of man – except Noah – for the reason, as it says there, that he
was so tired of the wickedness of man that he was sorry to have created
people at all. Sodom and Gomorrah are the quintessence of wickedness and
disorder which stinks to heaven.
But does that not make the
problem even worse? Would the conclusion then be, that obviously so many
bad people live around the Indian Ocean, that this was the reason for
their destruction? – Fortunately, so far, I have not heard a fundamental
Bible preacher who has claimed this. Normally, in these circles, one is
quick to say, that people are responsible for their misfortune, whatever
it is, because one simply cannot put the blame on God for something like
this.
I will presently entangle
the threads which I have just tangled up, but I want to invite you to come
with me a step further in thoughts, so that you understand the root of all
these questions in regards to God’s participation in natural catastrophes,
yes, also in wars, and in all wickedness of the world. And that has to do
with this: that in faith one believes in the God of Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob and Jesus Christ as the creator of this world. And when God has
created everything that is, then, yes, it would logically also include all
earthquakes, volcano eruptions and tsunamis, and then, ultimately, he
would also be the source of all disasters. Sorrow, pain and death caused
by catastrophes as the final stage of a development which has begun with
God’s creation. God is the creator, therefore, nothing can exist that God
has not created. On this problem, people, believers and scholars have been
bogged down from the time they believe in God
For that also has to do
with the question of God being almighty. God would not really be the
almighty, if something existed which he has not under his control.
Though this might not be
high theology what I say now: This originator-discussion around God is,
however, very theoretical and fails to solve the problem just as if I
said: ”Someone who produces kitchen knives is a murderer, because a person
can be murdered with a kitchen knife.” Or someone inventing cars agrees
willingly to a drunkard driving and causing an accident.
Untangling the threads:
Part one: It is quite clear, I think, that something is not always a
logical consequence of something else. Therefore, when people die, the
consequence does not have to be that God does not love these people. The
other way round, if you like, God does not leave those who follow his
will, unconditionally untouched. I know good Christians, to whom a whole
lot of misfortune happened. The poor people in Asia are absolutely not to
blame. The wave was caused by continental shifts, which had build up and
were released, and nature has a power which, perhaps, for a long time now,
has not been made so clear to us.
Therefore: Not everything
has a causal effect on another thing. This world is not calculable into
the last detail for us, and we will have trouble in many things finding
the originator, the guilty one. And as the last one, if you will, God
always stands in line.
Yet, you also need to know
that the idea of God being almighty is the attempt to clarify something,
which we, presumable, are not even able to do. This whole question was
discovered as a principle by the all-round genius Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibnitz. He was of this opinion: The explanation of the misfortunes
happening to people, is the fault of the people themselves. The
misfortunes that people suffer, are the consequence of their moral
failures, which again have to do with the fact that no other being except
God is perfect, and with this we are almost back with the Television
preachers.
I stand with Martin
Luther, who has saved himself with a thought which I actually find most
helpful until today: There are things which we do not understand. We do
not know why God permits suffering and lets people die who have obviously
not deserved it. He speaks of a “hidden” God, of “Deus absconditus”, who
does not do us the favour to explain why he does not prevent certain
things. To explain the why-question would then be as if we could look into
God’s brain, in order to be able to bring everything into a larger
rational context. And that has to do with our search, that there must be
an explanation for everything. Presumably it exists, but not for us
humans.
What is God thinking about
evil happening? – Nobody knows. This, I find, is at least honest.
To come back to the texts
once again: These are not just stories, which report with delight the
destruction of something, where one has the feeling that God is pleased
with himself by turning a switch, and immediately it rains, hails or
storms. At the same time, these are also always stories of salvation. They
are stories in which God shows emotions not only towards victims, but at
the same time he has feelings for the saved. They are, if you will,
one-sided stories, which give an explanation for their salvation from the
perspective of the saved, just as we all would do when we had survived
something terrible. Have you heard what those said who came through the
disaster in Asia: They are thankful to God, that he has let them survive.
Who is God? What has he do
to with the Tsunami?
What we should know is
this: Our world is not an intact world, not a paradise, not an island
where grief and pain and death and sin do not exist. All that does exist,
in addition to unimaginable forces of nature, of which we have been
reminded once again. These forces of nature have always existed and will
always exist. As certain as we must die, however it may be, it is also
certain that this planet is active and we often have to defy it to
survive. This is not arranged, in order to make it difficult for us, but
it is simply the reality of life, from which, I think, we have distanced
ourselves more and more, because we think ourselves to be almighty, we
could, as humans, get everything into our grasp, conquer death, live
forever, predict everything and avoid suffering and catastrophes. We will
never reach that point. It is rather the case, that we will constantly add
to our living space further catastrophes caused by people: climatic
catastrophes, destruction of many kinds, exploitation of nature, wars and
unrest. Before we look at God, we must learn to discern anew, where we
have a part in these things.
What we know is that God
has solved the problem of the punishment of sins, according to Christian
belief, in this way, that he let Jesus Christ die on the cross in our
stead. God does not cause nor does he want any further victims. He does
not even send suffering to make up for something. We are saved – all of
us. That does not only include Christians, because this message from God
is for everyone.
What remains as the
question, why does God, when he possesses the power to create a universe,
not prevent something that costs 200,000 people their life and makes
children into orphans. Answer – once again: I do not know.
What remains: The clear
indication, that God does not, in spite of this, leave people alone in
suffering and says, what do I care. Even in suffering, miracles happen,
which would not take place otherwise; for instance, that the world finally
comes together and jointly gives aid; that Christians and Muslims and
Buddhists forget their silly conflicts for a moment and rebuild schools
together, or gather for prayers.
What remains is this that
we know whatever happens in this world, it is still not everything, as
overwhelming as this world can be sometimes, in a negative as in a
positive sense. Something will come, that brings order to things again. To
believe this is a way to deal with the catastrophe, to find support, not
to feel lost in a threatening world, but to be called away from this world
now already, to have a goal before you, which lies beyond this world.
This, for me, outweighs everything else by far, whatever it is, whatever
happens here in this world, be it caused by people themselves, be it a
natural event, be it with the knowledge and the presence of God. I hold
fast, even though I cannot entangle all threads, to this, that God will
surely keep his word. Amen.
And the Peace of God, which passes all understanding,
may keep our hearts and our minds in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. |
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