Where is God?
Dr. Roger Firestien
October 30, 2022
St. John’s United Church of Christ
Greeley, Colorado
A couple of weeks ago when Mom informed me about Juvenal’s very serious accident and asked me if I could do the sermon today, I immediately agreed.
I figured I could pull a few passages from my latest book that I am working on, add some scripture and viola’ a sermon is born.
That’s exactly what I did. And here it is. Rip it up.
About 12 days ago I began thinking about today and my plan just didn’t feel right. I thought I would take on a topic that is much more relevant right now.
My latest book is based on the power of asking questions. More specifically asking the right kind of questions. Questions that help your mind look for answers instead of stifling your thinking.
I thought that I would take on a question that all of us, I am sure have asked ourselves at times.
Where is God?
On Friday October 14 Pastor Juvenal is making his way to the hospital at 10:00 at night to minister in his role as a chaplain. He is hit by an impaired driver who actually leaves the scene of the accident.
And as we all know he has been hospitalized with serious injuries.
Where is God?
Juvenal’s wife and Sylvia and Luneta’s mother Lamar is diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer several years ago.
Where is God?
I began to think, what is up with Juvenal’s family. Did they take a chapter out of the book of Job?
In January of 2004, Judy and my Dad, my mother’s husband of 52 years, gets into his pickup and drives into town to get a value on a pipe fixed. He is hit by a reckless driver. He dies a little over an hour later. He never comes home.
Where is God?
On May 14 of this year about 7 miles from my house in Buffalo New York a deranged, angry young man of 18 years old, walks into a Tops Supermarket, opens fire with an AK47 and murders 10 black people and injures three. These were innocent people who were who were just doing their Saturday morning shopping.
Where is God?
A maniacal dictator invades the Sovern nation of Ukraine. Killing men, women and children and purposefully targeting Russian missiles to hit schools and hospitals and apartment buildings. So far the count is that over 60,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in this eight-month war.
And when Russian soldiers are killed they are left to rot. They don’t even bring the bodies home for the families to grieve.
Where is God?
By last count there have been at least 25 mass shootings in this country this year.
Where is God?
Oh, and don’t forget that world-wide pandemic that killed over a million people in the United States alone in a little over a year.
Where is God?
Why doesn’t God step in and save his people?
Is God too busy running the universe?
Is this planet and its plants and animals and people just some cosmic experiment?
Where is God?
We are not the only ones who have asked Where is God?
Job, the poster child for suffering asked this very question in Job Chapter 23 when his family had been killed, his crops and livestock destroyed and as he was plagued by painful illnesses.
Job said:
“Today I complain bitterly, because God has been cruel and made me suffer. If I knew where I could find God, I would go there and argue my case. Then I would discover what he wanted to say.
Would he overwhelm me with his greatness?
No! He would listen because I am innocent, and he would say, “I now set you free.” I cannot find God anywhere- in front or back of me, to my left or to my right.”
We all know how things turned out with Job. At the end of the book Job gets rewarded for his steadfast trust in God.
“The Lord now blessed Job more than ever; the Lord made Job twice as rich as had been before. He gave him fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand pair of oxen, and a thousand donkeys.
In addition to seven sons, Job had three daughters. They were the most beautiful women in that part of the world.”
The end of Job’s story is sort of like what happens when you play a country western record backward. Do you know the joke? It goes something like this.
Do you know what happens when you play a country western record backward? You get your girlfriend back; your dog comes back and you get a new tractor.
What does Job represent in the Bible?
Job represents the truth that innocent people suffer, but by the end of his story it also shows that God is in control the entire time. God allowed Satan to attack Job spiritually, emotionally, and physically, but never to the point of death.
I find that pretty difficult to stomach that the God of the old testament would allow that.
Let’s try another angle.
What does the story of Job teach us about trials?
What principle can we learn from Job's example as he experienced these trials?
We can choose to have faith in God even in the midst of our trials.
OK – So we can choose to have faith in God even in the midst of our trials. The emphasis here is on choose.
That answer gave me some insight, but I was still looking for the answer to my original question.
Where is God?
In the book of Luke chapter 17 verse 20
Jesus is asked by some Pharisees when God’s kingdom would come. He answers, “God’s kingdom isn’t something that you can see. There is no use saying, ‘Look! Here it is’ or ‘Look! There it is.’ God’s kingdom is here with you.”
And this shows up again in the writings of the apostle Paul in his letter to the Corinthians in chapter 3- verse 16. Paul said, “All of you surely know that you are God’s temple and that his Spirit lives in you.”
Why did Paul write this letter to the church in Corinth in the first place? Among the many problems in the Corinthian church were: claims of spiritual superiority over one another, suing one another in public courts, abusing the communal meal, and sexual misbehavior.
Paul wrote to demand higher ethical and moral standards.
Higher ethical and moral standards.
Does this resonate with our world today?
But there are other situations in which innocent people suffer. I can imagine no more horrible place than the concentration or “the death” camps of Nazi Germany in World War II.
One of the most influential books in my life was written by a German Psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl. The title of the book, Man’s Search for Meaning.
In addition to being a psychiatrist Viktor Frankl was a jew and a prisoner of the Nazi regime in the infamous death camp – Auschwitz.
Often times the men in these camps would lose hope of any kind of rescue. Weak from starvation and exhausted from brutal work, they would commit suicide. Dr. Frankl could see it coming in these prisoners. He writes:
“Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on. He was soon lost. The typical reply with which such a man rejected all encouraging arguments [to keep on living] was, “I have nothing to expect from life anymore.”
Frankl laments, “What sort of answer can one give to that?’’ (That’s a tough one to answer, right?)
Frankl continues, “What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men that it did not really matter what we expected from life; but rather what life expected from us.”
Let me run that by you again, it did not really matter what we expected from life; but rather what life expected from us.
Here is Dr. Frankl again, “We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life –daily and hourly. Our answer must consist not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answers to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.”
Can you imagine thinking these amazing thoughts while starving in a concentration camp?
What an extradentary human being.
I think I am getting close to an answer. If God is in us as Jesus and Paul tell us. How is it that we are to deal with the evil that causes so much suffering in the world?
Let’s turn to Viktor Frankl one more time.
“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.
They may have been few in number but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
Let me repeat this phrase once again, “everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
To choose one’s own way.
I think I found an answer at least for now, and I would like you to try this on for size.
Where is God?
My answer: God is our ability to choose how we will react to any situation that confronts us.
God is our ability to choose how we will react to any situation that confronts us.
Whether we choose to react with loathing or love. In love, there is God. Whether we choose to react with hate or healing. In healing, there is God. Whether we choose to react with division or togetherness.
In togetherness, there is God.
Mom and Jude and I were able to visit Juvenal yesterday afternoon in the hospital. After such a devastating accident you might expect someone to be resentful, angry and bitter.
Not Juvenal, he was as loving and kind as if he were greeting you on a Sunday morning. He was even “ministering” to the people who were attending to him – through a kind word, praise or the assurance of a prayer for them or their family.
I am absolutely certain that Juvenal Cervantes would have been one of those men in Victor Frankel’s account of the concentration camps who would have… “walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.”
Over the course of my life, I have had the opportunity to meet many extraordinary people. But none I would call a saint. The man we visited in the hospital yesterday afternoon, Juvenal Cervantes, truly is a saint.
May God speed your healing, Juvenal. The world needs you.
Let me end with Paul’s words again in his letter to the Philippians chapter 4 verse 6-7.
Don’t worry about anything, but pray about everything. With thankful hearts offer up your prayers and requests to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Amen.
And thank you.