Scripture Romans 5:1-5
In your mind's eye: Draw a picture of the divine. What is God to you ... What is most important to you. What holds a position of ultimate importance in your life.
Drawing that
picture for me would be most difficult – if nigh impossible. For I see God as
love – meaning, a God of action. And I am challenged at best to draw
still-lifes … much less anything in motion.
A God of love. A God-in-action.
What does God-in-action look like?
Over the eons,
humanity has tried to pin God’s actions down. Especially actions we cannot
understand – actions related to God and suffering.
Theologians call it
the question of theodicy: How can God and suffering co-exist? This question
dominates the oldest of our Hebrew scriptures: the Book of Job.
Answers in our
Hebrew scriptures vary. A clear-cut example: In 2 Samuel, God tells David to take
a census, David takes the census, and God punishes him. In 1 Chronicles, Satan
tells David to take that same census, David takes it, and God punishes him. Times
had changed between the two writings; and with it, our understanding of the
nature of God had changed.
And still, the
question had not changed: What does
God-in-action look like, when it comes to suffering?
Insurance companies
have an idea: "Acts of God," they call it. I became familiar with this legal term
while a claims clerk a quarter century ago, and in my insurance studies at that
time.
"Acts of God." A term
we in the insurance industry used, and still is used, for disasters – such as
the tornado in Oklahoma this past Monday – that could not be controlled. Often,
companies could deny payment on a claim by writing policies exempting
themselves from what they called acts of God.
"Acts of God." Was
the Oklahoma tornado, e.g., an act of God? I hope not. I trust not. If it were, this
would not be consistent with a God of love in Jesus Christ, made known to us
in our times through the Holy Spirit.
In fact, two of
Hebrew lineage named Jesus and Paul have changed this nature-of-God question
for us. Changed it, into a season of Pentecost question – pregnant with our
new-found power of the Holy Spirit. Changed it, to a question less of divine
nature to more of one of human responsibility. Changed it, from, was this
tragedy or that disaster an act of God – to, how is God-in-action being made
known in the suffering?
The late William Sloane Coffin, Jr. puts it the best way I have ever heard. Like the Apostle Paul in our scripture today – like all the best theology I know – Coffin’s response to suffering and God was founded on deeply personal experience.
After his son Alex drowned when his
car slid into South Boston Harbor, Coffin, who was then pastor of the famous
Riverside Church in New York City, briefly secluded himself in his grief. Out
of his seclusion, he preached a sermon to his congregation called, simply,
“Alex’s Death”.
Coffin preached the following: “Nothing so infuriates me as the incapacity of seemingly intelligent
people to get through their heads that God doesn’t go around this world with
(the holy) finger on triggers, (the holy) fist around knives, (the holy) hand
on steering wheels.” To the contrary: “My
own consolation lies in knowing that it was not the will of God that Alex die;
that when the waves closed over the sinking car, God’s heart was the first of
all our hearts to break.”1
Later, Coffin would distill his
understanding of God out of the greatest tragedy of his life by saying – and I
heard him say it often – “God may be
short on protection, but God is certainly long on support.”
God may be short on protection … but
God is certainly long on support. How better to grasp God’s nature than
that - and resign from the debating society from there! Resign from it, if we are to focus not on God's role but ours, in claiming our Pentecost hope of responsibility for our world.
Our Pentecost hope, that begins and ends with us. That alleviates suffering, grows out of suffering, and prevents suffering ... knowing that God will support us, all along. Knowing that the Holy Spirit signs her love letter to us in this way: "Yours in the Suffering, God."
1Warren Goldstein, William Sloane Coffin Jr.: A Holy Impatience (New
Haven , CT : Yale University
