Where is God in all this?

Sheffield Cathedral – Trinity 8 (Year C) 17.07.16
Readings: Colossians 1.15-28; Luke 10.38-end

With commemorations for the start of the Battle of the Somme still very much in mind, we are reminded of the question ‘Where is God in all this?’ The senseless carnage of the Great War leaves us struggling to comprehend God’s place in it all. Sadly the ‘war to end all wars’ proved not to be so; the lessons were not learned and millions have died since in a subsequent global war and in countless regional conflicts.

‘Where is God in all this?’ is a question that has no less potency whether uttered by a dying soldier on the beaches of Normandy, a bereaved wife of a soldier killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan, the mother of a family killed by a suicide bomber in a Baghdad marketplace, or those fleeing the devastation in Syria.

‘Where is God in all this?’ is a question no doubt on the lips of the loved ones of the black men shot to death by police in the USA in recent weeks, and also on the lips of the families of the American policemen murdered by a sniper in a sick reprisal.

‘Where is God in all this?’ must have been the cry of those killed and injured earlier this week in the Italian rail crash.

‘Where is God in all this?’ is a question that certainly looms large as we ponder the horror of the Nice waterfront massacre.

‘Where is God in all this?’ is a question that poses itself to all of us in the trials and tribulations of everyday life that come to us all. The death of a loved one out of time or unexpectedly; a relative or friend struck suddenly with illness; the experience of personal suffering; the break-up of a relationship; the loss of a job, and the list continues.

To ask the question is perfectly understandable because so much of what is happening in our world, and even within our own daily lives, seems to conflict with our understanding of God as loving and compassionate. Yes, when we stop to think, it is possible to locate the causes of wars and violence in both the sinfulness of individuals and in the prevalence of unjust structures. Our negative impact on the environment driven by materialistic and economic goals also contributes much to the suffering of our world.

We might still ask the question ‘Where is God in all this?’ but it is tempered in the knowledge that human beings, not God, are responsible for the very situations that cause us to question God’s apparent absence. It is harder to rationalise the suffering of the innocent when it strikes out of the blue without rhyme nor reason. When children out with their parents on a night of celebration are murdered by the vile action of a man driven by an evil ideology.

The question, of course, presupposes an image of a dispassionate God who sits aloof from human suffering content to see us reap the harvest of our own sinfulness. Which is why I feel that before asking the question: ‘Where is God in all this?’ the more important question is ‘What is God like?’: Because if we are able to reflect deeply on that question we will see God in a different light, and seeing God in that different light will come to recognise a different answer to the question ‘Where is God in all this?’ than might otherwise be the case.

So ‘What is God like?’ How can we know the unknowable and understand that which, by definition, is beyond the limits of our human understanding? The answer is to look at the person of Jesus Christ and learn from him. He is the prism through which we see the glory of God and touch the transcendent. Through him, God has drawn near to us all, whatever our circumstances in life might be.

In our first reading from the letter to the Colossians the writer makes one of the most powerful statements in the New Testament about the divinity of Christ, identifying him completely with God. As the NRSV puts it (1:15):

‘He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation;’

Or in the Contemporary English Version

‘Christ is exactly like God, who cannot be seen. He is the firstborn Son, superior to all creation’.

This is not just the clue, but the answer to what God is like, and the deeper we go into our journey as Christian disciples the more we learn and discover about the very nature of the God who called us into being. The late Jesuit priest Anthony de Mello once wrote of human beings sometimes needing ‘a God with skin’, driving home the point that God is not an abstract subject for theological and philosophical debate – though such disciplines of course have their place. His emphasis was on how God knew this deep human need, and entered into our humanity in Christ that we might draw closer to God’s divinity.

God became one of us in Jesus Christ, fully God and fully human, so that we can indeed know what God is like by reflecting on that divine humanity. It does not mean we can know everything about God – God remains transcendent and beyond us as well as immanent and closer than our very breath – but the incarnation of God in Christ does mean that we have a direct answer to the question ‘What is God like?’

A previous Bishop of Durham, David Jenkins, made this point succinctly when once asked how he would share the gospel if he only had a minute to spare. He thought for a few seconds and replied: ‘God is; he is as he is in Jesus; therefore there is hope.’ In less than half of what would nowadays make a tweet, the Bishop nailed it. What is God like? Like Jesus! We need look no further.

Perhaps the reason why we sometimes find it difficult to see where God is in the hard places of life, is because we do not always spent enough time reflecting on the life and teaching of Jesus; of how he lived his life responding to the needs of those around him and also how he faced his own suffering and death.

Jesus was completely immersed in the life of his people, in all their joys and sorrows. He rejoiced at the wedding at Cana and enjoyed the hospitality of the tax collector; he wept at the death of his friend Lazarus and was moved to compassion for the wayward people of Jerusalem; he healed the sick, stood with the outcast, and challenged the corrupt. At the end he was brutally executed alongside two criminals. ‘Where was God in all this?’ Right in the thick of it!

Our gospel reading today leaves us with some food for thought about the importance of finding and taking the time to listen Jesus. We see in Martha and Mary two very different responses to the presence of Jesus in their midst. Both wanted to serve their Lord. Martha is the typical activist focused on getting things; Mary is the typical listener, more concerned with attending to the present moment.

Those qualities are present in all of us to one degree or another, and both are needed. Sometimes we need to be doers, sometimes we need to be watchers and listeners. At first, then, Jesus’ criticism of Martha seems a little unfair. Martha, after all, seemed to have a fair point.

There was Mary, sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he had to say, while Martha slaved away over a hot stove to make sure all was ready. As St Teresa once said: ‘If Martha had imitated Mary, Christ would have gone without his dinner.’ But rather than taking up Martha’s cause, Jesus replies to Martha:

‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her’.
There is no harshness in this response. We can picture Jesus smiling and putting his arm around Martha as he says it. He is not criticising Martha’s commitment to getting things done, but gently encouraging her to see that there are times when it is not only best, but right to stop and listen to what he has to say.

I wonder what effect that evening with Jesus had on the two women in the days ahead as Jesus went through his passion and crucifixion. There is no way of knowing, but I would hazard a guess that the time spent by Mary listening to her Lord strengthened to face the pain of losing her Lord in a way that Martha might not have known. Mary might well have been more attuned to the compassion and love of Jesus because of the time spent with him.

What we know now, of course, that Martha and Mary did not know on the occasion of Jesus’ visit to their home, was that death would not hold him. The resurrection means that the risen, ascended, and glorified Christ is with us always in the power of the Holy Spirit. Christ, the one who knows us from the inside, in all our joys and sorrows. It is the same compassionate, merciful, loving, justice seeking Lord who we see so clearly in the gospel stories.

The answer to the question: ‘Where is God in all this?’ is simply this: With us in the midst. God suffers with the victims of war and violence; he weeps with those who mourn; he works through the lives of those seeking to heal the broken; he sits with those who watch and wait as a dying loved one slips away, receiving the loved one into his care; he is with the prisoner incarcerated for standing up to corruption and oppression.

This we can know and say with certainty because we have a definitive to the question that goes before, namely, ‘What is God like?’ As David Jenkins put it: God is; he is as he is in Jesus; therefore there is hope. Profound theology, simply put. May those words bring comfort to us all as we face the difficult things that are part of our journey through life.

As the question ‘Where is God in all this?’ surfaces, may we remember first what God is like. God is, he is as he is in Jesus, therefore there is hope.