GOOD FRIDAY (4/5/85)

St. Mark's Episcopal Church Paw Paw, MI

THEME: "Through His wounds we are healed......

(Isaiah 53.5)

BY: Fr.  Joseph Clayton Neiman

"Why do bad things happen to good people?" That's the title of a recent and popular book by Rabbi Harold Kushner.  And it's a good question, for it is one each of us has been tempted to raise when suffering has come into our lives or into the lives of people we know or love.

It is a question we ask when we look at the thousands of People dying of starvation at this moment in Eastern Africa - 900,000 alone have died in Ethiopia this Year according to United Nations statistics.

Suffering brings out those kinds of questions.  It makes us move from the day to day activities and discussions to the more profound questions about the meaning of life.  We ask "Why?" when something bad happens, and we begin to formulate answers that have a lot to do with our own self concept and our concept or understanding of God, and especially our understanding of why Jesus died on the Cross on that Friday evening in Jerusalem so many centuries ago.

Rabbi Kushner has this to say at the end of his book about the question of why God allows suffering to happen today:

"God does not cause our misfortunes.  Some are caused by bad luck some are caused by bad people, and some are simply an inevitable consequence of our being human and being mortal, living in a world of inflexible natural laws.  The painful things that happen to us are not punishments for our misbehavior, nor are they in any way part of some grand design on God's part.  Because the tragedy is not God's will, we need not feel hurt or betrayed by God when tragedy strikes.  We can turn to Him for help in overcoming it, precisely because we can tell ourselves that God is as outraged by it as we are." (P. 134)

This conclusion, this outlook stated so well by Rabbi Kushner is the profound conclusion that can be drawn by a person of faith out of the Law and the Prophets, out of what we Christians call "The Old Testament." It is a profound and deeply religious outlook, a statement of deep and abiding faith, but it is not the teaching of Jesus.  It is not the conclusion which we as Christians should reach for we know that Jesus has come to fulfill the Law and the Prophets.

And we know as well the message of Good Friday: that Jesus died so He might bring us healing and the fullness of life in a way that our ancestors in faith, such as Moses, Elijah, David, Solomon, and even Isaiah, could not conceive of or even hope for.

But first let's see how Rabbi Kushner comes to his conclusion.  Let's understand a bit of the Law and the Prophets before probing briefly the teachings of Jesus and the meaning of His death on the Cross.

The first point: God created everything that exists and as we are told in the Book of Genesis, "God saw all He had made and it was very good" (Gen 1.31). There is nothing in the whole of the universe that was created evil or bad.  There is no evil force that struggles with God and may somehow overtake the universe and kill us all - including God.

Evil and the forces of wickedness do exist, as we will discuss in a moment, but they exist within the orderly universe which is in the good hands of our Creator whom we have learned from Jesus to call "our Father."

The second point: God created humanity and placed us in charge over all that is created.  "The Lord God took the human and settled him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate and to take care of it" (Gen 2.15). We, the human community, are responsible for planet Earth.  We are responsible not only for one another, but for creation itself.  To us was given the responsibility of naming, and therefore, caring for all living creatures and the very elements of earth and sky and sea - as the Lord directs, that is, according to His teaching of what is good and what is evil, what ought to be and what ought not to be.

The third point: We goofed!  In hundreds of ways Sacred Scripture reminds us again and again of how we have been unfaithful to that charge.  From Adam and Eve, whom misused the resources they were given and then blamed one another, right up to King Herod, who exchanged political favors for the life of the last great prophet, John the Baptist, the record of our ancestors in faith has been one of unfaithfulness.  We are all born wounded in our human nature, or as we have traditionally said, we are born with a weak and sinful nature.

What this means is stated most clearly in the Book of Deuteronomy and elsewhere.  Our sin, our unfaithfulness, brings suffering, disaster, disease, and ultimately death to ourselves and to one another.

To put it in blunt modern language: we suffer as consequence of our own evil actions or those of others which affect us.  Humanity causes suffering for ourselves and one another. This is far from a simplistic pious statement.  Science is just beginning to show us how profoundly interdependent we are in body, mind and spirit.  Science can show us the relationship between personality types and heart disease, between diet and illness, between habits or living and their painful consequences.  Thousands of us are addicted to alcohol, sugar, tobacco, and a host of other substances and only occasionally do we see the full relationship between our visions of what is meaningful or important in life and the resultant life style with the wellbeing or suffering which our choices bring into it.

As for the impact we have on one another's health, think of the health problems caused by drunk driving, by the pollution of air or water, by the faulty design of automobiles, by the deployment of weapons of death and destruction.  Or think of the violence and suffering caused by persons serving idols, some self-image or political cause.  As biblical scholar John L. McKenzie once noted, we don't need to discuss the question of whether there is a supernatural evil person or force called the devil.  We do so much harm to one another we hardly need help from any outside source.

The fourth point: there is suffering and death which comes to the just not as a result of their own actions or through the evil of others.  There is a whole lot of suffering that is like that of Job's.  We simply don't know where or how it originated within the broken universe and wounded human community over which humanity is in charge.

Insurance companies delight in calling this type of suffering "acts of God" because they are then not responsible for Paying for the consequences.  We don't understand earthquakes and hurricanes and such natural disasters sufficiently Yet to be able to protect ourselves and others against them.  Nor do we understand the origin or all disease or genetic disorders.  Day by day the human mind of those dedicated to science increase our understanding of both the causes of these and the ways to protect one another from them, but this is a slow process and one to which we seem as a human community to devote little energy.

We don't know all of what caused the current drought and famine in Africa, for example, but we do I...-.now some groups of people could forsee part of it and prepared for it like the Biblical Joseph in ancient Egypt.  We do know there is sufficient food on the face of the earth to feed those who are starving and that what is lacking is simply the will on the part of the human community, capitalist and communist alike, to solve the problem, to feed those who hunger and thirst.

The fifth point: Sacred Scripture also tells us again and again that God has entered into human history to redeem, to set humanity free, to liberate us from suffering and death in their many forms.  From His commissioning of Moses (Ex 3.7-12) to bring our ancestors out of Egypt through to His prompting of Cyrus to free our captive ancestors from Babylon and allow them to return home (2 Chr 36i22), God has again and again entered human history to teach His people how to live faithful, and therefore, how to have a life in which peace and prosperity, health and wellbeing, are the consequence of their life style.

God has continually been present with His people, with our ancestors in faith, to teach, to inspire, to comfort, to console, to lead them, to a way of life that would result in their own wellbeing and that of others.

The sixth point: Living in the midst of that tension between an unfaithful humanity and a faithful God, people of faith have always lived with hope and thanksgiving seeing life itself and all that comes in living as a gift from God.  They have lived with an outlook like Rabbi Kushner's that sees the world as broken and suffering as inevitable, and God as present and seeking to help us, and so they have that profound attitude of thankfulness that was summed up so well by Job:

"Naked I came from my mother's womb, naked I shall return.

The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away.  Blessed be the Name of the Lord" (Job 1.21)

This is essentially the teachings of the Law and the Prophets, and yet Prophets like Isaiah also saw that God could even use the suffering of a just person in a redemptive way for others as well.  He saw how the suffering servant (Is 53.1-12) could become a gift of greater life for others, how suffering could be in itself an opportunity for redemption, how something good could even come out of tragedy and pain as we heard in the Old Testament lesson this evening.  That is why the Church has always seen in this great passage about "the suffering servant" a prophesy about the death of Jesus on the Cross.

The seventh point: The apostles and disciples of Jesus of Nazareth slowly but surely discovered that in Jesus God had entered -more fully and more completely into human history than Previously in order to save them and us more completely from suffering and death in all their forms in and through the death and resurrection of Jesus, whom they came to know as the Christ, as the Messiah, as the Suffering Servant whose suffering and death had consequences for good that far exceeded what had ever before been hoped or imagined.

We need to look at the Cross with the suffering and dying Christ upon it with great attention to the intense pain and anguish which He suffered.  We need to see that He did suffer and that He can, therefore, understand our suffering of whatever type.  We need to see the consequences of our unfaithfulness and that of others.  We need to see that sin brings death.  We need to see that the worse that could happen in human history has already happened because we unfaithful humans killed the innocent Son of God who came into this world to save us from the effects of human sin.

BUT we also need to see afresh that Good Friday leads to Easter, that Jesus overcame the Cross, that God walked through the valley of the shadow of death with Jesus and raised Him up from the grave on the other side.

This is the essential message of the Cross: Jesus embraced and overcame death and human suffering, and because He has been raised up from the grave and in present among us, He shares with us this victory now in the form of healing and later in the form of life eternal in the full presence of God after our own death.

Consequently Christians from the writers of the Gospels to present preachers have always emphasized that healing is an essential part of Christ's mission, of Christ's gift to us.

St. Matthew tells us God became human in Jesus to be present with us more fully and therefore to save us from our sins (Mt. 1.21-23). He tells us how Jesus himself taught the disciples of John the Baptist that healing was one of the signs of the coming of the Kingdom of God, or God's increasing ruling presence over our lives (Mt. 11.2-6). And there are a great many examples in all four Gospels t.hat show Jesus at work healing as an integral part of His ministry, of His seeking to teach us how to live that we may inherit the fullness of life, now and for all eternity.

St. Matthew tells us: "Jesus went round the whole of Galilee teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom and curing all kinds of diseases and sickness among the people" (Mt. 4.23).

The eighth point: Jesus commissioned His disciples to preach, to baptize, and to heal in His Name.  St. Luke tells us: "Jesus called the Twelve together and gave them power and authority over all devils and to cure diseases, and He sent them out to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to heal" (Lk 9 .1 -2 ) .

St. Mark and St. James both tell us they went about healing not only by preaching how best to live, and therefore how to have the fulness of life that comes as a consequence of such a life style, but also that they anointed with oil those who were sick and laid their hands on them with Prayer and fasting (Mk 6.13, Jm 5.14-16). And we have many examples in the Acts of the Apostles of how healing was associated with the ministry of the earliest disciples of Jesus (c.  Acts

5 .1 2-1 6 ) .

Thus my ninth and final point: God not only does not cause our suffering, He became human in Jesus and overcame death and suffering on the Cross in order that He might continue to be present among us in Word and Sacrament to heal us and to give us the fullness of life He intended for us from the beginning.

Jesus has been raised up from the grave and is present with us when two or three gather in His name, when the Word of God is proclaimed and shared among us, and when we break the bread and share the cup as He taught us to do in remembrance of Him.  He is present to reconcile us, to restore us to a way of life that will lead to greater peace and wellbeing when we have gone astray.  He is present to teach us to forgive those who wrong us, and thus to let go of the painful consequences of the suffering they have inflicted upon us.  He is present to lead and to teach us how best to live that we may have the peace and wellbeing - what we call salvation - that God has given us as our destiny.

So I urge you this evening not to blame God for the suffering in your life, but to look deeply at its cause and see wherein you or others have been responsible so you can change your own life style and incorporate God's forgiveness into that area of pain, forgiveness both for Yourself and for others who have sinned against you and therefore brought suffering into your life.

I urge you to hear the Gospel and risk living it out day by day so as to reap the harvest of joy and peace and health which it can bring into your life.  Just as stress brings about a biochemical reaction in our bodies which can be unhealthy, so also joy brings about a biochemical reaction in our bodies which is healthful.  We are only beginning to seek the unity between body, mind and spirit, and how, therefore, our peace of mind that comes from living as God directs us can be the best diet for living known to humanity!

Finally I urge You to turn to the Lord whenever you suffer in body, mind or spirit both in private prayer and in worship, but also by opening up your suffering to the prayer and anointing of other Christians in whom Christ is at work and through whom He can be present with you and bring you healing.  We need to touch one another not only with loving and kind words and deeds, but also with Prayer and anointing wherein we carry one another's burdens and so fulfill the Law of Christ.

Good Friday suffering is real and part of all of our lives, but so is Easter because of Christ's victory on the Cross.  Alleluia.  Praise the Lord.

God bless you and keep you this day, and show you how He is present in your life to overcome suffering and death that You may know and feel the healing power of His love.

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