Sunday Homily - March 29, 2020 - "If God is good, why do people suffer?"

The Raising of Lazarus Icon

Lent V

Ezekiel 37:1-14

Psalm 130

Romans 8:6-11

John 11:1-45

I.

"If there is a God,
 Why do terrible, tragic things happen in the world?"

Have you heard this question before?
 If not, have you at least considered this question at some point in your life?

It is the classic question
 in what theologians and philosophers call
  "The Problem of Evil."

And this problem is as old as time itself,
 answered in many different ways
  with many different approaches in thought
   from people with hugely diverse cultures
    all trying to get an answer to this same question:
     "If God is good, why is there evil in the world?

If God is good and loving,
 why do I see so much suffering in the world?

If God loves each one of us,
 why do people suffer from tornadoes ripping their homes and communities to pieces,
  such as the tornadoes that went through Jonesboro, Arkansas last night?

If God is so good, why do evil people in the world get it so good,
 while the poor, oppressed, needy, and lonely only sink deeper into despair?

If God desires the good of everyone,
 why does God let the disease of COVID-19 spread globally,
  infecting hundreds of thousands of people,
   and killing the most vulnerable of them?

If you haven't stopped to consider the problem of evil,
 we at least need to stop and think about it.
  And we need to go to the source for the answers:
   Jesus Christ.

What can we see in the life of Jesus our Savior,
 what can we glean from the teaching and living that he did
  when we became incarnate long ago in Israel?

Well, you may be interested to know,
 that subtly,
  Jesus gives a small window into the shape of an answer this morning
   in one of the most famous accounts of Jesus's miracles in the Bible:
    the raising of Lazarus from the dead.

II.

Most of us know the account that I'm talking about,
 but what we might need to do is examine even closer
  what exactly happens in this incredible sign
   that Jesus works.

Because the passage is VERY strange
 from a certain point of view.
  And Jesus Christ our Lord lives through this account
   in a very strange way.

At the beginning of the passage,
 there is a messenger sent to Jesus to tell him that Lazarus is ill.
  Lazarus is the brother of Mary and Martha,
   a family that Jesus loved very much.

In a time before modern medicine,
 when someone is sent to tell of an illness,
  that was really a cry out that Lazarus was on death's door.
   Jesus, known for healing miracles,
    was summoned by the sisters because they believed he could heal Lazarus.

But, instead of urgency,
 instead of dropping everything that was going on
  and running back to Bethany,
  Jesus instead responds in what seems to be a very cryptic and cold way:
   "This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory,
    so that the Son of God may be glorified through it."
     And then Jesus stays where he was for two more days.

Mystifying.
 Perhaps, for those of us who have lost loved ones,
  this choice by Jesus at this moment also brings up grief and anger.
   "Why, God, are you allowing evil to happen?
     Why, Jesus, are you not here to save?"

But we press on.
 And the account gets even stranger.

Jesus, after a couple of days THEN decides to return to Bethany,
 and uses a turn of phrase that confuses the disciples:
  "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him."
   The disciples are like, "Uh, big deal, Jesus. People do sleep sometimes. He'll be fine.
    Besides, you know that some people in Judea want you dead, right?"

But we all know what Jesus meant.
 And Jesus says it plainly:
  "Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe.
   But let us go to him."
    And so Jesus and the disciples travel back to Bethany in Judea,
     even prompting St. Thomas to say,
      "Let's go and die with him, since he is walking back to the region where they want him dead."

Martha doesn't even wait for Jesus to get all the way to Bethany,
 but instead goes out to meet Jesus on the road.
  And Martha, even in the depths of her grief and sorrow,
   comes to Jesus with a faith in Jesus that is honestly quite astounding,
    given their situation.

What does she say?
 Well, it is so good that we might need to just read it again:
____

[Martha said] “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.”

Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
____

Even in her sorrow,
 Martha shows a faith in Jesus that foreshadows something incredible that is about to happen.
  But even though Lazarus is dead and in the tomb,
   Martha still holds to the hope of the resurrection.

But Mary is quite different than Martha in this passage.

 Mary doesn't even get out of the house to see Jesus,
  but instead when Jesus comes near,
   he calls for Mary,
    and Mary, finally getting up out of the house,
     can only say, with breaking voice,
     "If you only had been here, my brother would not have died."

Mary, from the depths of her grief,
 can only muster enough to cry out her sorrow at losing her brother.
  And perhaps she cries out her anger as well,
   "Why, Jesus, were you not here to save him?
    If you love us, why did you let this happen when you could have saved him?"

But now we need to pay close attention to Jesus's internal and external reactions.

Don't skip over how strong the language is in the Gospel.
 "When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping,
  he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.
   He said, “Where have you laid him?”
    They said to him, “Lord, come and see.”
     Jesus began to weep."

Jesus, who is the Eternal Word of God,
 who knows what he is about to do,
  who knows he has come to raise Lazarus,
   still weeps with those who are bereaved
    and sorrows in the same sorrow
     of someone who has lost a close friend that he loved.

And then the ultimate question gets asked by the surrounding crowd of people.
 The question that is hanging in the air,
   the very question of the Problem of Evil:
    “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

"If Jesus loved Lazarus so much,
 why did he not save him from dying?"

If God loves us,
 why does God allow us to suffer?

And then, with all of the emotional toil,
 all of the tragedy fresh in people's minds,
  all of the grief being processed in different ways,
   Jesus then does what he came to do.

Without further adieu,
 let's let the actions of Jesus our Lord stand for themselves:
_____

Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb.
 It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it.

Jesus said, “Take away the stone.”

Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him,
 “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.”

Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”

So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said,
 “Father, I thank you for having heard me.
  I knew that you always hear me,
   but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here,
    so that they may believe that you sent me.”

When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”

The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth,
 and his face wrapped in a cloth.

Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.
_____

III.

"If Jesus loves us to much,
 why does he let bad things happen?"

"If God really loves the world so much,
 why do I see so much suffering?"

"Why does God allow suffering to happen?"

Friends, if you are looking for an answer to this question that satisfies you,
 you will not find it in this passage.

Rather,
 you may find something far more important:
  That God,
   far from being distant,
    is IMMERSED IN the midst of the suffering of the world.

Jesus Christ our Lord,
 even in the depths of sorrow and death,
  is in the midst of all of those who are suffering.

Jesus is intimately with them, even in the grief filled emotional turmoil:
 the anger,
  the sadness,
   the numbness,
    the blank-eyed stare of those who have completely given up.
     Jesus is in the midst of it.

But Jesus is not just WITH us.
 Jesus Christ our Lord also points us,
  heavily, painfully, but patiently,
   to the fact that he is the resurrection and the life.

Jesus, out of the depths of his own self,
 cries out in sorrow,
  weeps with those who weep,
   but then performs a miracle the likes of which no one expected:
    he raises Lazarus from the dead by his word spoken from the Eternal Word:
     "Lazarus, come out!"

This is something that is hard to say, but has to be said anyway:
  Jesus didn't come to explain why bad things happen.
   Jesus came to sanctify our suffering by being with us in it.

As the Orthodox priest, Fr. George Calciu, said,
 "Christ did not come to explain human suffering, nor to eliminate it.
  Rather, he came to fill human suffering with His presence."

For us here who are in the depths of a global disease outbreak,
 it is good for us to hold fast to this truth,
  especially in the midst of something so tragic for those who have already lost their lives,
   and for those who are left behind.

And it also brings an important work for us as Church
 in the midst of this time:
  we are called to be present in the midst of the suffering of the world
   because we carry with us the flame of the fire of the resurrection
    that is found in Jesus Christ.

We cannot be so arrogant as to explain precisely why evil happens,
 because not even Jesus puts so fine a theological point on it
  even in passages like this.

But what we can say,
 without a doubt,
  is that Jesus Christ is WITH us, even in the deepest sorrow of our lives.

That's something that we must tirelessly tell the world right now.

That's a truth that we must tirelessly LIVE in our lives right now.

Be WITH people in the depths of their sorrow.
 Call people,
  check in on people,
   video call them if you can!

Pray for the medical community,
 that is on the front lines of dealing with the fallout of this disease.
  But don't just pray for them to be wise in their medical work:
   pray for their souls and their families.
    They are facing something that many of them probably never even dreamed of seeing
      in their lives.
       And the stress and immense amount of work that they are going to have to do
        for the next several months,
         will mean that some will die for their patients.

But again, we as Church
 more than ever in our lifetimes,
  MUST carry the hope of the resurrection in Jesus Christ
   and we MUST carry it into the suffering of the world.

We can't explain the evil that is happening,
 but we can be WITH people IN it.

And we may find,
 along with many others within the Christian Tradition,
  that in following Jesus into the darkness,
   we find the flame of the resurrection surely burning
    even in the darkest places and the darkest times.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.