QUESTIONS THAT TRANSFORM
Romans 12: 1-2 and Matthew 16:13-15
By Pastor Mark Becker
Saint Paul Lutheran Church
Stillwater, Minnesota
August 24, 2008

“I appeal to you therefore brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

“Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked His disciples ‘Who do others say that the Son of man is?’ And they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’  Simon Peter replied, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’”

 I have a problem here.   3     Can somebody quickly tell me what the answer is?
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The answer to my problem is not 1 or 5 or 6. The answer to this problem is:   What is the question?  Is it 3 Times 2? or is it 3 Plus 2? or is it 3 Minus 2?  What is the question? I f I were to know the question, I’d have some direction,  wouldn’t I? Sometimes it is especially more important to know or to live with the question than it is to come up with an easy answer.

Many people today (in fact) want easy answers, and I think that this is one of the reasons that fundamentalist churches and the religious right seems to thrive in our nation is that there is desire for easy uncomplicated answers. Sometimes there is something in us all that would rather kill a question than let it live. We like certainty and sometimes we squirm with uncertainty.

But consider with me that answers have sometimes been more dangerous than questions: Hitler had answers. The Ku Klux Klan had answers.  Karl Marx had answers The Taliban had answers and Saddam Hussein had answers, and our government began a war with answers that turned out to be false.  Answers; black and white; self-assured rigid answers; straight talk that passes itself off as honesty - often is more about human arrogance than it is about truth.

In matters of faith - the fundamentalist’s demand for unbending answers is often less faithful than a willingness to allow for questions. The humility of faith learns to live with the questions for the sake of greater truth, and for the sake of the flexibility of Grace. In fact, a good definition of faith is (I think) when one can live with the questions and not have to answer all the uncertainties – and yet still trust in the Presence of God that we see in Jesus Christ, a Presence that has yet more to teach us.

To be a Christian however the one question that absolutely needs to be answered, perhaps every day, is the one in today’s Gospel reading.
Jesus asks: Who do you say that I am? Interestingly, he starts with a more philosophical and theoretical version of the question – perhaps where we all begin – with “Who do others say that I am? Well, what do you think people are saying?

That is often how it is, isn’t it? We can talk about theories of Jesus (who He might be) without being transformed into a person of faith. Students do it all the time at college.  Students even do that in seminary, and often in church the same thing happens. We think about Jesus theoretically, but Jesus shows that He is not just interested in the theoretical.

People can say a lot of things about Jesus. In fact, there have always been (in both church and society) – many theoretical answers. From the beginning people speculated and expressed great skepticism about Jesus. Some were threatened by Jesus and scoffed. They said He was a phony, - a glutton and a “wine drinker”. They said he was a friend of sinners and a rabble rouser.

On the other hand there were those who saw God at work in Jesus and said, “Well maybe He was the return of John the Baptist – or Elijah –or Jeremiah – or one of the prophets.” People were speculating, talking, looking for a category – a place to define Jesus – and maybe even to keep Him in His place (at arm’s length) where He wouldn’t effect their lives.

But Jesus is not just interested in theoretical speculation. In the Gospel reading.   Notice, Jesus takes the question from What do people say? to WHAT DO YOU SAY?  From the theoretical to the more personal – Who do YOU say Jesus Is? – that is WHO IS JESUS FOR YOU? That – you see – is a question that will transform you life!  That is the question with which you – as a Christian will live with every single day.
If, like Peter, Jesus is for you “The Messiah, the Savior, the Son of the Living God and your Lord,” then your life will be continually transformed as you ask the question daily. In wrestling with the question, you are often changed from casual observer to a disciple and a witness.

The Gospel writer Matthew wants us to see here that Jesus gets personal with us too, and every day of our lives should be shaped by that question: Who do you say that I am? You will answer not with doctrine, but by the way you live your life.  By your actions – by how you do you job – by how you treat your family and friends – by how you live and pray and worship and by how you use the gifts God has given
-by how you are a steward of creation and by how you give of yourself: in all these ways and more, you answer that question every day. Who do you say Jesus is? Is He for you Messiah – Savior and Lord?

When my kids were little I remember an incident in which they were playing with a tape recorder, and making quite a bit of noise recording themselves. Now they weren’t doing anything they shouldn’t have, but I was tired and a bit irritable. Finally, I was about at the end of my rope, and I was just about ready to say something out of my irritation – when all of a sudden, I remembered – I remembered that the tape recorder was going and whatever I said - and how I said it – would be recorded and on that tape. Well, that stopped me short and I know that I said something a lot more mildly than I originally intended to say. It probably would be good – in fact – if all of us would always respond as if a tape recorder were on somewhere.  In many ways, our lives are displaying what we believe, and answering for all to see,
that question from Jesus: “Who do you say that I am?”

It is a question that is meant to transform us every day– as Romans suggests: Be not conformed to the world but be transformed. The world as Romans says, seeks to conform us; it seeks to give us answers and then says “Live by those answers, with no shades of gray.” There are Republican and Democratic answers. There are male and female answers. There are answers of class and status and ethnic identity. There are the answers of commercials that try to shape us up so that we smell good and look good and live well by buying products. There is the military industrial complex that depends on a significant percentage of citizens who are conformed to assumptions or answers about the place of war in our society. There are answers all over the place in this culture, answers to conform us and shape us and most are “of this world” and keep the question Jesus asks speculative. Remember the lesson from Romans says, ’Be not conformed to this world – rather BE TRANSFORMED.”

Consider the difference: Conform means to control and transform means to set free.  The Gospel of Jesus Christ doesn’t seek to control us but rather to set us free to be something new. The Greek word for conform seems to speak more of being controlled by culture – molded, shaped, boxed in, made to fit where a child of God should not fit.  Be not conformed says Paul to the Romans. Sometimes as I hear the more conservative or fundamentalist Christians, it almost seems that they are more interested in conforming than they are in being transformed. The question is for fundamentalists – a thing to be banished by being answered. But, as a contextualist Christian, I have really come to respect the question, and let it shape me.

Therefore let me lift before you some Biblical questions that are meant to shape your life. These are questions with which you are meant to live.   After the big question of “Who do you say Jesus is?” proceeds the questions of discipleship. Hear them well, and don’t kill the questions with easy and quick answers. Rather, let these Biblical questions shape your life: (Hear them well for they are meant to transform you.) They are questions like: 
What shall I do to inherit eternal life (Luke 10:45)
What does it profit a person if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? (Matthew 16:26)
If God is for us, who can be against us? (Romans 8:31)
Who is my neighbor? (Luke 10:29) Am I my brother’s keeper? (Genesis 4:9)
What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun? (Ecclesiastes 1;3)
How can anyone be born after growing old (John 3:4) What is truth? (John 18:38)
Where can I go from your Spirit? (Ps 139:7)

Some questions are not meant to be answered once and for all, but are better to carry through life. Doctrine has its place primarily because it keeps us from asking the wrong questions. But trusting Jesus Christ and letting His questions live keeps us growing. Let these Biblical questions live in your life, and they will transform you day by day, so that you are not conformed to the world but rather transformed by the renewing of your mind …and soul, as Paul suggests. Let the questions shape you – beginning with the big one-“Who do you say Jesus is?” AMEN

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NO MORE BOXES
Matthew 15; 21-28
By Pastor Mark Becker
Saint Paul Lutheran Church
Stillwater, Minnesota
August 17, 2008

This Gospel reading from Matthew 15 has always bothered me. But let’s work with it a bit. Consider with me: Each of us tends to live in a box, a box with walls that define us,  a box of our own making. I know who I am, for example, - in contrast to you – because of things like political party or age or hobbies or whether you have or don’t have the same ethnic background or skin pigment, and then we box ourselves in by saying “this is who I am,” but boxes have never been God’s idea.

We draw walls around ourselves and feel secure with all who fit in the box because they are like us. For example, the church used to thrive on its ethnic background – - almost more than on its creeds or beliefs. In the Twin Cities, those walls were mostly Norwegian or Scandinavian and here at Saint Paul Lutheran the walls have been German, and if you fit, you were secure and comfortable. But if you didn’t fit, you would notice it. In my first parish (out of seminary), I remember going to meetings of area pastors, and they all told Norwegian jokes and all of them talked about going to THE seminary (which of course was Luther Seminary in St. Paul) and I knew that I didn’t quite fit into that box.
As a person of German and Swiss descent and as a graduate of Wartburg Theological Seminary, I sometimes felt like I was an outsider – and that wasn’t a very good feeling.

Now those pastors were all good people, and in many ways it was a pretty minor issue. After all, I am married to a Norwegian Swede, and many of my friends are Scandinavian (even some of the non-Lutheran ones) and I really do like to tell Ole and Lena jokes. Still there was this sense of being outside of the box and not fitting in. – and I admit – sometimes that was a lonely feeling.

Sometimes the box gets even more personal and confining for you if I decide that you fit or do not fit because of your appearance or your ethnic background or color of skin, or if I decide you don’t fit because of your weight or your gender. Sometimes the box is social or economic and a type of classism that presumes superiority and privilege.   For example, an intellectual (schooled in philosophy or classical music) might look down on a “redneck” – or a blue collar construction worker might goad a fellow worker because he is a “college boy.”

Boxes abound, and because we define ourselves with those boxes they sometimes become pretty important to us. I’m a Shriner or a Packer fan (bleeding Green and Gold – as they say. Or ‘Im a member of a fraternity or a farmer or a pastor or teacher or a Rotarian or a Lutheran. Boxes abound, but make no mistake, those boxes are not God-given. They are made of cardboard and not of steel, and their walls are a poor excuse for identity and a flimsy place to call home because they are not eternal.

Some of the most unfortunate boxes (for a Christian witness) are the walls that Christians sometimes draw around themselves because of judgment and self-righteousness. Phillip Yancy in What’s So Amazing About Grace, remembered Mark Twain’s cynical words about people who were ”good in the worst sense of the word.:” Yancy said that “recently I have been asking a question of strangers -(for example – seatmates on an airplane) “ He asks: “When I say the words ‘evangelical Christian; what comes to mind?” ’’In reply, mostly” he said, “I hear political descriptions: of strident pro-life activists, or gay-rights opponents, or proposals for censoring the internet.
Not once,” he said, “not once – have I heard a description of grace.”   (Philip Yancy, “What’s So Amazing About Grace, Zondervan Publishing House, pg 31)

Do you feel the walls of the boxes that Christians sometimes draw around themselves, boxes of self-righteousness, boxes that judge and exclude, boxes that condemn or discriminate and say: “you don’t fit?” (We fit….but you’re outside the box.)  I really fear that this view of Christianity (so dominant in today’s culture) is the biggest wall that blocks the Christian witness from being considered by others.   The grace-filled, loving, and forgiving power that God intends to share in Jesus Christ,  sometimes gets boxed out, and that grieves me profoundly. Excluding others from Grace is just not the way of Jesus – which is why this Gospel story troubles me so.

In today’s Gospel reading, it almost seems as if Jesus is also drawing a box around himself and his disciples, and that leaves me with questions and caution. Is this the Jesus I know and love? An outsider comes to Jesus and begs Him to heal her daughter. The story then tells of a reaction from Jesus that sounds strange and harsh, a bit out of character and it is almost upsetting to me when I read it. Is Jesus perhaps testing this woman’s faith? Or are we seeing Jesus’ human reluctance to do more than he is called to do? Perhaps His response reflects an incomplete understanding of His mission,  an understanding that then is adjusted by the woman’s persistent faith?
I’m not sure, and neither are most scholars who wrestle with this text.

However we understand Jesus’ reaction here, I think we need to look at the cultural setting of the text and see that Jesus is really defining the lines of a box that already existed. Around every first century Jewish male was a box that was drawn in self-righteous superiority, and that included sexism and a sense of ethnic and religious superiority. Now hear me clearly: By His actions through-out the Gospels – it is certain that Jesus Himself didn’t accept the walls of those boxes, but he had to live in a society that did. Consider the culture: Upon arising every morning, the first century Jewish male would pray a prayer that said, “I thank God that I was born neither as a Gentile, nor as a slave nor as a woman.” A rabbi like Jesus would normally not expect a Gentile to approach him, and certainly it would be scandalous to have a woman approach and talk to him in public. Religious expectations built high walls shutting out Gentiles and women. The people who first read this Gospel, unlike us, would immediately understand this.

As a Canaanite, that is as a Gentile, this person approaching Jesus was a stranger to the covenant of Israel, and there were intense feelings against those kinds of people. But, more than being a Gentile, it was also the fact that she was a woman which made this seem so scandalous.  In that culture, for a woman to be seen talking to a man in public was something that would bring judgment on both, It was perhaps like being noticed talking to a prostitute. So when Jesus at first seems to ignore this Gentile woman, and then declares that He had come for Israel and not for one such as she, Jesus is really tracing the lines of a box that already exists. He is defining the box, a box and walls that, in fact - He is about to break down.

I do think that the structure and purpose of this Gospel story may be designed to set up the reader to hear the unexpected. What IS absolutely expected by 1st Century readers is that Jesus would respond just as He did, drawing lines and keeping the boundaries clear for the sake of the purity of the faith. What was unexpected, however, is that the Canaanite woman would be persistent in her faith and that Jesus would respond to that persistence by breaking through the cultural barriers to praise her, saying: “Woman, great is your faith.”

This is the point I think, Jesus is breaking down the BARRIERS and saving people who are persistent in faith, people who aren’t expected to be “included in”. This may, in fact, be the point - Jesus starts in the box, in the box of the first century Jew and in the boxes of our human confinement (in whatever shape that takes in each generation). But He DOESN’T stay in that box. He breaks down the walls that we build up and He gets us to see that people are not meant to be confined OR DEFINED by human prejudice and judgment. The woman is a good role model for us, a model of persistent faith that trusts in the ability of Jesus to go outside the boxes of an imperfect world. So, whatever questions we have about the way that Jesus first responded to the Canaanite woman, I think that the message of Matthew’s Gospel is that Jesus is really FOR ALL PEOPLE! Look, Matthew is saying, Jesus has come for Gentiles and for women too, not just for those who fit the boxes of cultural acceptability.

To hear the Word of God for us today, we need to ask: Who are the ones in our world that don’t fit in? Who are the ones excluded and shunned? Is it the homosexual that feels unwelcome and despised -or might it be the Arab or person of Middle-East descent in post 9/11 America? Could it be one who dresses differently in goth clothing or one who has a nose ring or tons of tattoos, or could it be as simple as one who hasn’t been a long-time resident of the community? Who is that person that might be boxed out? This is an important question for Christians who want to follow Jesus.

Diana Buttler Bass in her book, Christianity for The Rest of Us tells the story of a wonderfully diverse church. One Sunday morning she said that she saw three teenage girls all dressed in the goth style with black clothing and hair, nose rings and black make-up stopping to greet an elderly woman in a wheelchair. After hugs and smiles they all went in to worship together. (Christianity For The Rest of Us, Diana Butler Bass, copyrite 2006 HarperOne – Harper Collins Publishers, story told on pages 78- 79)

That you see is the kind of church Jesus wants, a church where the boxes matter little to the strength of the relationships. Superficial stuff just doesn’t matter to Jesus and to people who follow Him. For people of faith, it is clear that BAPTISM is our identity, and nothing else.
We need no cultural box to define us, for in baptism we are clothed in the love of Christ as Galatians 3 says: the white robe of Christ’s righteousness covers all the cultural stuff that might separate us, and therefore, things like nose rings and tattoos and bow ties and goth clothing and preppy pants and wheelchairs all become virtually and eternally meaningless. Anyone who is baptized into Jesus Christ is our sister or our brother.

Remember that prayer of the Jewish male? Because of Jesus, Paul in fact grew from his 1st century male prejudice to say in Galatians that baptism in Jesus actually covers all the false boxes and makes them irrelevant. In that text, Paul says that since we are all one in baptism, ‘there is neither Jew nor (Gentile), neither slave nor free, and neither male nor female.” Can you hear the prejudice and the old prayer crumble under the Gospel?   That was a very radical a statement for a first century Jew, and I think that Paul says it because Jesus got through to him.

Now Jesus wants to get through to us too.   Our identity in Christ is not about the superficial boxes that include or exclude people. Our identity has nothing to do with race nor ethnic background, and nothing to do with economic or social standing. Our identity in Christ is not about intellectual preferences, and is not dependent upon gender nor sexual orientation nor political inclination.   Our identity in Christ is only defined by this: I know who I am - because I am baptized. That’s it! In Jesus, we are all on the same equal ground, and in Jesus, we are included in because of the grace of God that defines us.

In the world of religion, only the grace of Jesus breaks through all the things that would box people in …or out. Shouldn’t that grace therefore, be the clearest truth that  we witness to the world? AMEN
 

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FACING THE HARD QUESTIONS OF LIFE
Romans 8: 18-27
By Pastor Mark E. Becker
St. Paul Lutheran Church
Stillwater, Minnesota
July 20, 2008

“Mommy, why does God send tornadoes?” asked the little girl when her town was severely damaged. Her mother answered, “To teach us to be strong.”  The television reporter who was telling the story said: “And that - was a costly lesson.”

How do we make sense out of tragedy? How do we explain the brokenness of the world that causes heartache for God’s people? You may have asked a question or two like this. You may, in fact, ask that question often, as in the news you see a story about
the death and destruction of an earthquake in China, or a cyclone in Myanmar,  or wild fires in California or floods in Iowa or tornadoes across the midsection of our nation. Since we are also part of the creation that groans, you may ask the question as you face terminal illness in someone you love - or in yourself, - or you may ask such questions as you consider the tragedy of war around the globe.  Is there meaning? Can we find hope and answers when we face life’s hardest question’s?

Paul’s letter to the Romans reminds us that we are in a world that is groaning as in labor, waiting to give birth to a new world of redemption. Paul reminds us that even creation waits to be set free from the bondage to decay, and that freedom comes through the power that is in Jesus Christ, a power that is meant to be at work in the world through people like you and me. The hope we lean on and carry to the world is the unique Word that death and destruction are not the last word when we face the hard questions.

Several years ago, on a family vacation, I visited the cemetery in Toledo, Ohio, where many of my relatives are buried. I walked with my aunt, the wife of my Dad’s brother, and we visited the grave of this uncle, a fellow who had a twinkle in his eye and who always seemed like he was glad to see me- and in fact, would let me puff on his cigar once in a while when my mother wasn’t looking. We came then to the graves of my grandfather and grandmother,- and I remembered the last conversation I had with my grandma, a woman who left her family in Switzerland and entered the United States through Ellis Island. I’m pretty sure that she never saw that family again. It also reminded me of the last time I saw my Grandpa Becker, lying immobilized in the sunroom with a stroke, as my father kissed him and said good bye for the last time.
It was good to be there, but as is often the case in a cemetery, gratitude was mingled with sadness.

Then we moved on and also saw the graves of my aunt’s family, and there, beside her parents were the stones that spoke of the death of a three year old and a four your old child in one year. My aunt told the story, and I tell you this with a sense of reverence for it felt like holy ground as grief still returned to her voice after perhaps 60 or 70 years. The first child had come down with a high fever, and for some reason (the story is told), his jaw locked and it was not possible to give him medicine. After about 30 hours, my aunt said, his jaw relaxed and the child said, “Goodbye Mother...Goodbye Father”…and then he died.

That same year, my aunt (as a younger girl) was tending to a new washing machine.   She was having some trouble and she called her father to come and help her. He came in carrying a bucket of boiling water for the wash, set it down to help, and the little 4 year old sister fell in. She lived (also) for 30 hours after the accident, and then she died.   My aunt tells of her father going in and grabbing the old stove in the kitchen and just shaking it in grief, and as she told this, the pain was there for her all over again.  How do you answer the hard questions, when all of creation groans in agony?   What do you say?

The Bible really has three different words to speak to the hard questions of life.  The first answer is that - no matter what, GOD IS IN CHARGE.
The second answer is that EVEN THOUGH CHAOS DOES REIGN IN THIS BROKEN WORLD AND THERE IS GREAT GRIEF AND PAIN FOR HUMAN BEINGS, GOD IS IN THE BUSINEES OF REDEEMING EVEN THE MOST TRAGIC SITUATIONS.  And the third answer is not as simple or easy. It may not even be an answer that you will like and it certainly is not an answer that the logic of the world understands.
The third answer to the hard questions of life is the one for those times when chaos seems to bring more questions to all of the other answers. This is the answer of THE CROSS.

So it is, there are three Biblical Words that are spoken to the hard questions of life, summed up in these: GOD RULES – GOD REDEEMS – and when there finally are no easy answers, when the whole creation is still groaning to be set free, the answer that finally brings hope in this broken world is GOD SUFFERS ON THE CROSS.

The mother who replied that God is teaching us to be strong by sending tornadoes was perhaps reflecting the view that GOD RULES. It is a Biblical view, but by itself – it is,  I believe - inadequate. It is the theology that is most clearly seen in the book of the Revelation to John, and it says that no matter how things might seem, God is still in charge. There is grace and comfort in that. For those who, in fact, were groaning under the persecution of Roman rule at the time of John’s writing of the Revelation, this was very good news. It was good to know and trust that God was ultimately in charge, and not the Romans.

That also can give me great comfort when chaos and injustice seem to have the upper hand in this sinful world. No matter what, God will right all the wrongs, and when the chaos of the world and its power moves toward injustice, I trust that the power of God in Jesus Christ is always moving on behalf of the poor and for those whom others oppress.

But what about chaos in nature? Can we say that - it is God who (being in charge)  sends floods and tornadoes and earthquakes? Does God give illness that afflicts people in terrible ways? Many Christians stop here, and do say that God is behind even these signs of chaos. I feel uncomfortable with that and I don’t think it is Biblically complete, though there is comfort in trusting God’s will in times of fear and sorrow.
One illustration I have heard is that life is like a tapestry, of which we only see the underside. We see no pattern when tragedy strikes, no clear indication of God at work.  But God sees the beauty from above. God sees the great design that we don’t see.
Well, that perhaps fits with the Word from the Revelation to John and sometimes that is enough for me. But it doesn’t fit completely, for I can’t ignore the power of evil and the pain it brings, and I can’t say that God controls all of life’s situations, as if we were puppets on a string.

So there is a point for me where this word is - just not complete, and the rest of the Bible paints a different picture of my loving God who is in battle with the evil and chaos that is both in nature and in human behavior.

The second Word to answer life’s hard questions comes from passages like today’s Word from Romans. The Apostle Paul, like the Gospel writers, did not believe that God was the cause of suffering and pain. Rather suffering and pain are God’s enemies. This is, I believe, a more developed theology, as there is a progression theologically as you read scripture, a progression from primitive reflection to a more a complete revelation of God’s person and God’s will in Jesus Christ.

Paul’s view contrasted with that of Revelation. Paul saw pain and suffering as the result of human sin. “It is a broken world” Paul would likely say, “ a world that groans in travail” as he did say, “ a world that groans for freedom from the bondage of decay.”

Along with Paul, I and most Lutheran theologians and teachers, can not believe that God would will that a child die from disease, or that an accident with boiling water would kill another child in the same family, or that a tornado or a flood or an earthquake would be a part of God’s design. I just don’t believe that this is the complete witness of scripture. Evil and chaos and sin are a part of this world, a part that opposes God’s good will. But, God does not cause them. God might allow for them in a world that has freedom of the will but God does not orchestrate that which brings sorrow.

I believe that the world is broken and affected by sin. In Genesis 3:17, God tells Adam and Eve, “Cursed is the ground because of you.” Specifically as we observe Global Warming or Climate Change and all of its consequences, we might be seeing exactly this. “Cursed is the ground because of you.” The witness of Genesis is that all of nature has gone haywire because of the sin of those who inhabit the earth.

But am I hopeless because of this? No, because there is the assurance that God is always bringing order to chaos and redemption to the evil we bring to the human community. God’s redemptive power is always at work, even in the midst of the most tragic and chaotic situations of life. This is reason for hope and we are agents and stewards of that hope.

Perhaps you know the story. I understand that many years ago, Rochester, Minnesota, was demolished by a tornado that took many lives and caused great injury. Yet even out of that tragedy and destruction came a blessing. An elderly doctor and his two sons worked for days caring for the injured. Their work drew attention; and financial backing for a large hospital was offered, provided they would oversee it. They agreed, and in 1889, the Mayo Clinic was founded. Therefore, out of tragedy came a hospital that has been a blessing to millions. Did God send the tornado? I don’t believe so. Was God in charge? Yes…..ultimately, and in redemptive ways. God’s hand does not create chaos but rather works to bring order and redemption to chaotic situations.

Yet, these two Biblical answers – that GOD RULES and that GOD REDEEMS finally give way to the limitations of human logic when we have to face the hardest of questions, especially the question of our own death. When there is no more reason, when there appears to be no meaning and no purpose, when we can’t see good coming out of tragedy, then there is only one WORD left. When I face the fact (as we all must) that death is my enemy, and that there is no more meaning or purpose in this world for me, then the only answer is NOT an easy one. The only answer is then THE CROSS.

In the cross, we know that Jesus, who cares about us and who walks beside us with redemptive power, has also died with us and for us. The Cross shows us that death tries to have its way even with God, but once it spends itself and does all the destruction that it can, Jesus gets up and rises above it. That is not just some tale of wishful thinking. That is truth that changes life and gives real hope.

The Cross says that death is not a friend, but it is an enemy that is defeated.   In the Cross of Jesus Christ, we are led through and not around the meaninglessness of suffering. In the Cross, we can have hope over and against all that would bring chaos and sorrow, and this can indeed have personal as well as political, world-wide implications.

The late Dr. Alvin Rogness, former president of Luther Seminary and father of our bishop Peter Rogness, wrote about losing his 24 year old son in a traffic accident.  He said that he was angry – but not at God. Rather, he was angry at the broken nature of the world, and he said that he realized that God was angry at that also. In that he found great comfort. Dr. Rogness articulates my belief exactly. God angry? - of course!
God hurt – absolutely. That is what the cross is about.  God is angry at all the suffering and evil and injustice that brings pain to human beings

The cross is not an answer that tells us why. It doesn’t make us comfortable nor does it make sense out of meaningless evil. But it really is the only answer that tells us that God is with us and that chaos and death finally do not have the last word. When all other answers fail, and all that is left but the groaning of a broken creation (broken by war and hunger and global warming and racism and sexism, and even by natural catastrophe) the cross of Jesus is the sign of real hope. And that is meant to make a difference in this world now – through us - as well as in the hope that we have for the life to come. AMEN