“Hurricane Katrina”

I had a great sermon prepared for today about what do we do 4 years to the day after 9.11, how do we best continue forward, etc. I’ll probably preach it in a couple of weeks, though it would have been more appropriate today. But we, maybe I would do better to say I, need to deal with Katrina. I’ve got two things I need to say.

And you aren’t going to believe this, but I promise it is true. Today’s passage, the Exodus, is the lectionary passage for the day. I kid you not.

So, hear now The Word of the Lord as it comes to us in Exodus. Listen. Exodus 14.19-31. The Word of the Lord…Thanks be to God.

If ours is a God who can move water, who protects the children of God, then where was God on August 29, 2005 during the storm, and maybe more importantly, where was God when the levee broke on August 30? And where has God been since. Can’t God teach a new Moses how to stretch out their hand, and move the waters back? The turmoil of Katrina overwhelms, and I know that some of you here are most touched by it because you, your families, and your loved ones are dealing with this firsthand. Where was God? And where is God now that we need him?

This is not a new question. The Psalms ask it again and again. I’m going to now read Psalm 22.1-11 for you. It may sound familiar, because both Matthew and Mark have Jesus quoting this scripture while hanging from the cross. So, hear now The Word of the Lord as it comes to us in the 22^nd Psalm. Listen to God’s Word for you today. Psalm 22.1-11. The Grass withers, the Flower falls, but the Word of the Lord endures forever…Thanks be to God.

We hide from God, as if we could, but we try. I’m not saying we hide our actions and deeds, or our intentions, but so often we hide our emotions. Folks across the gulf and surrounding areas have been through a catastrophic event. And it is okay to be angry, even with God. God knows the deep feelings of your heart. You won’t be doing God any favor by masking it and putting a teeth-clinched smile over your anger. And you won’t be keeping the faith of the ancestors of our tradition, at least not the ones who wrote the Bible. Read the Bible, you’ll see what I mean.

Job 35.12-14 “(God) does not answer when people cry out...Indeed, God does not listen to their empty plea; the Almighty pays no attention to it. How much less, then, will God listen when you say that you do not see God, that your case is before God and you must wait for God…”

Psalm 42.3 “My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me all day long, ‘Where is your God?’”

Psalm 42.10 “My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, ‘Where is your God?’”

Psalm 90.13 “Come back, God - how long do we have to wait? and treat your servants with kindness for a change.”

And I could give many more. The Bible is full of instances where people pour out the gamut of emotions to God. Including doubt, frustration, righteous indignation, and of course, anger.

If you want to know the answer to the question, “Why do bad things happen to good people,” it would take a series of sermons to cover it. And even then, it won’t really cover it. But, as timing would have it, that question is the center theme for this coming Wednesday night Joan of Arcadia discussion group. Come on over, have some good Mexican food at 5.45, and we’ll discuss God’s rules, or self-limits, as theological giant Douglas John Hall has described it in his wonderful book, God and Human Suffering. So, we’ll delve into that on Wednesday, but it is enough now to say this. Whatever you are feeling to God, thankfulness that you are alive, frustrated, angry, or probably an odd mix of the above with a few others, whatever you are feeling to God, do what the folks in the Bible did. Take it directly to God. Like Jacob in Genesis, wrestle with God. And like Jacob found, in doing so, he grew in his relationship with God and with others. My guess is that many of you feel like I do, overwhelmed. And the level of overwhelmed is directly related to how personally this touches you. If you’ve got friends and family that were there, that raises the level. If you’ve got friends and family with you now, living at your house, and figuring out where to get jobs and where to go to school, that raises the level. If you left a house, job, school, whatever, and are now dealing with the mortgage company, bank, and looking for a new chapter of life to continue here in town, that raises the level. Only by taking it, all of it, to God, will you find some release. If you won’t honestly go before God, if you will only say through the gritted teeth, “This is the day that the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it,” then you aren’t really dealing with God. Know that God is big enough to handle whatever you got. Now is the time to wrestle with God, and find that there are blessings there.

I said at the beginning I had two things to say today. That’s the first thing. Go ahead and be honest with God, even if that means anger. Pray the Psalms, you’ll see a gamut of emotion laid out that still resonates today, some 3000 years after they were written.

The second thing I have to say is this.

¹Somewhere a preacher is preaching. He or she shakes a fist at the ceiling and describes the wrath of God. That wrath has come, on the crest of a terrible storm named Katrina. God has shown power and might by smashing a wall of wind and water into cities along the Gulf Coast.

Strangely, folks gain comfort from this. Not that God has inflicted suffering on our neighbors. Comfort comes from the belief that God is in control. Things happen for a reason. We are not at the mercy of random forces of wind and weather. Only God can make a storm.

And so in an effort to find security and a sense of purpose in a world where nearly everything dwarfs our puny existence, we ascribe to God a terrible anger that lashes out from time to time in the form of a storm or earthquake or plague. God is angered by our sinfulness and a price must be paid. After all, we have heard, there were abortion clinics that got destroyed.

When big bad things happen it is hard not to believe that God is the cause. And because pain often feels like punishment, how can we help but ask what it is we have done to bring down the divine anger? 

But there is another portrait of God found in the Christian Bible. It is the image offered by Jesus. God, according to Jesus, is like a loving parent. This parent is so attuned to the needs of creation that even the fall of a small sparrow is noticed. This same attention is also lavished on the human part of creation. For God so loved the world, Jesus said once.

This parent-God whom Jesus knows is full of grace. God is like a farmer who hires people all day long to work in the fields. At the end of the day God pays those who have only worked one hour the same wage as those who worked all day.

This parent-God whom Jesus knows anguishes over the suffering and despair of the weak and vulnerable. Speaking for this parent-God, Jesus said that only when we have cared for the “least of these” in this world can we claim to have known him.

So how do we reconcile these two different views of God? Traditionally, for Christians, it has been our practice to allow Jesus to have the final say. And if that is true, then we must conclude that the storms that blow against us are not from God. They are part of the natural order which follows a course of natural law.

But if God does not send the storm, where is God in the storm?

God is where God is always found–standing beside the weak and the broken, comforting those who have lost everything.

Somewhere a preacher is calling down the wrath of God. But God is not there. God is in New Orleans and Biloxi and Gulf Port, and other devastated cities, binding up the wounds of God’s hurting children.²