God Works…

“The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls (and on bumper stickers) and whispered in the sound of silence….” so sang Simon and Garfunkle.

“You don’t need a weatherman to tell you which way the wind blows…” says Bob Dillon.

Leaving our hotel a few months ago, a sticker caught my eye on a new SUV in the parking lot. A bumper sticker that a few might have missed, if it were placed down low on the bumper, this one was not. It was placed at eye level, on the rear window, broadcasting these words in black and white like a personal vendetta:

"God works in mysterious, inefficient and breathtakingly cruel ways!" 

I took a picture. These things interest me. I ponder them. They haunt my thoughts. I pray. I ponder the owners motivation, no their angst. Yes, I want to help…

I didn't believe the words... I do however, feel the bitterness or anger and in your face feeling, of them. I understand something went very wrong. We all live the reality of its inference. In short, why is there so much suffering, cruelty and injustice that appears to go unaddressed in our daily existence? Why? Huh? It is said, very sincerely, "If there is an all loving God why does he let the crappy stuff happen, unless he is the designer of it and perhaps inflicts it." If you haven’t heard this, or something like it, you need to get out more… Subtly this thought sits like a small sharp stone in an irremovable shoe of human perception; poking, burning and reminding of a pain that questions who God is, and why is there such malady doled out to mankind, wholesale and unexplained.

If I were to stand up in a gathering of Christ believing people, spread my arms and shout loudly, "God is good?” At least some would say, with enthusiastic, practiced sincerity, "All the time!" It is a mantra of the forgiven and thankful. They pretty much experience and understand life and death as encounters with a loving Christ, who bled and died, once for all. They have a theology of suffering that works for them; hopefully.

Were I to make the same proclamation in a group of people who have never tasted of the forgiveness of God, the response would be quite different at least from a few. They would not say, “all the time” or even know the language! Some will have endured bitter cruelty and much pain in life. My friend Al Judovitz is a Holocaust survivor and my tennis partner at 80 some years old. 2500 people went into the concentration camp where he was imprisoned in Romania. 250 came out alive. He was a lucky one. I asked him, "How did you survive?” He said, “We prayed” very dryly; and then he smiled and chuckled a little. And looked me in the eyes deeply like a man who had seen enough, enough.

I knew a rape victim that suffered at the hands of the rapist and then at the hands of the police that were supposed to help her. They mocked her and said, “You were asking for it weren’t you?” She wasn’t.  She is still asking, "Why is God so hard on me, Christians say He loves me, where is that love?" I once sat on the curb, ambulance lights whirling, with a young sobbing mother whose baby had died from SIDS. She had laid him in his crib in the evening with a tender kiss goodnight and found him still and silent hours later. She asked between shallow breaths, "Where is God pastor, and why did He take my baby?"

There are millions of questions embedded deep in the hearts of dear questioning people. They wait for someone to speak to this paradox of opposing claims. God is good all the time vs. why is he is so cruel and indifferent. 

 How come? What if? 

How come so much of what is taught in churches and circulated as food for the soul leans to the “…good all the time…” and so little offers insight into “…so cruel and indifferent?”

One young author, Soong-Chan Rah says, “America has no lamentation in its common language, only joy and rejoicing.” That is weird isn’t it? One sided? The ancients didn’t live life like this exclusively, rather they sang, “…by the rivers of Babylon where we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion…” something went wrong for them and they really felt it, for 70 years.

I wonder how Hagar felt after banishment with her son Ishmael…watching him die slowly?  Did the family of St. Stephen grieve with hot tears because their loved one was stoned for doing right? Who spoke to the victims of the Tower of Siloam that came down violently, on the unsuspecting crowd? Even Jesus said they did nothing wrong, and died, unexpectedly, cruelly.

Recently there was a tragic shooting on a military base. I called (and prayed with) the military chaplain who was preparing with his team to care for the victim’s families. He said, “We start now, helping people to pick up the pieces of their lives…to understand that God is…with them in the suffering they are experiencing.” To speak to the suffering is heroic isn’t it? The shooting was amazingly cruel and it happened with God watching.

What if the title of my (or your) next sermon series was called:

“Why does God work in such mysterious, ineffective and breathtakingly cruel ways” Or better yet, what if I turned this bumper sticker into a billboard that could be seen by thousands with an invitation to be a guest at our church or Christian gathering? It might be epic.A church would be standing room only wouldn't it?  This is our stuff! This is my God. I’m supposed to get this and be able to give an answer for the hope I have in God’s love for people.

In spite of the inconsistencies that trouble people’s souls there can be answers or at least sincere willingness to wrestle with the question, why?

Isn’t this window sticker a plea for help from an honestly hungry, perplexed or angry heart? What is their story and what compelled them to paste a caustic indictment against God on an expensive car, for all to see? Isn’t it a challenge in a way? Isn’t it a ‘tell me why…please?’ Is there courage to speak to this and even to say, “I don’t know but I want to discover, weep, pray, pound my fist on the table and scream to heaven with you until there is more of an answer?” And find reason for hope in the loving presence of another who will feel together what is unknown and presently unexplained.

Here is a thing interesting: the owner of the car with the window sticker has faith. God works…

They have my attention…and God’s for sure.