LESSON: Matthew 2.16-18, NRSVA

SERMON TITLE: God! Where are you?

INTRODUCTION:

1. A cattle rancher heard gun shots and knew that something was wrong.
1. He went to investigate and found a dead eagle.
2. It had been illegally shot by a party unknown.
3. It was nesting season.
1. He looked up the side of the cliff and saw a probable place where eagles would nest.
2. Climbing up he discovered several eggs unattended in the nest.
3. Carefully he put them under his shirt where his body heat would keep them warm and viable.
4. On reaching home, he put the eggs in the nest of a sitting hen.
1. Only one of the eggs hatched, but something strange and curious happened.
2. The eagle thought it was a chicken.
1. It lived like a chicken.
2. It acted like a chicken.
3. When threatened it went into the defensive mode of a chicken.
5. Did the eagle know what a burden it was to think and act like a chicken, I don't know.
6. Did the eagle ever ask itself why questions?
1. Why did this happen to me?
2. What did I do to deserve this?
7. Did the eagle ever realize that it was an eagle, I don't know.

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2. We are not eagles acting like chickens.
1. We are human beings with minds that can think and evaluate.
2. We have an incredible amount of information to help us avoid being an eagle in the chicken coop.
3. Yet, it is probable that we all have why questions.

MAIN BODY:

1. Why, God, where are you? Is a question that must be here in this horrendous moment.
1. Herod infuriated by the action of the Magi orders the death of all children. Two years of age and under, in Bethlehem and its surroundings
2. Based on population estimates it may have been as many or as few as 20 children.
3. That's 20 children to many.
2. All that we know is summed up in one sentence.
1. ¹⁷Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:
1. ¹⁸"A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation,
2. Rachel weeping for her children;
3. she refused to be consoled, because they are no more."
2. 2:18 The quotation is from Jer 31:15. Ramah is an Ephraimite town between Bethel and Jerusalem, where the women of Israel, symbolized by Rachel, bemoan the loss of their offspring, as occurred during Israel's exile in Babylon (cf. Jer 40:1). ⁽¹⁾
1. It was a collection point for the captives who were sent to Babylon.
2. There is wailing and loud lamentation.
3. There is no consolation.

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3. Is it possible that in the intense and overwhelming grief of losing a child there comes unbidden a why question?
1. Some of our why questions have no answers.
2. Many of our why questions have answers if we are willing to hear them and apply them.
1. It means that we are confronted by the need to revise our view of God.
2. It means that we are confronted to revise our world view.


ILL: A young mother is taking her three-year old daughter to swimming class. There is a tragic accident and the child is killed, Why God, where are you?

ILL: Two students from Columbine High School go on a rampage of death and destruction, Why God, where are you?

ILL: Cancer strikes and takes the life of a young man, Why God, where are you?

ILL: There is a terrible storm with costly damage and loss of life, Why God, where are you?

3. Herod order the death of the children.
1. The voice of Rachael is heard wailing with loud lamentation in Ramah.
2. Why God, where are you?
4. There are those who teach that everything happens for a purpose.
1. It is part of God's design.
1. God is punishing for sin.
1. If what happens is punishment for acts of sin committed against God or our human family, and we are in relationship with Jesus Christ seeking to live according to the divine plan, when will the punishment stop.
2. And if it does not what doe that tell me about God and my faith and trust in him.
3. If this is the best that god can do, why bother.
4. There is no reason on earth or in heaven why you should.

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2. God is setting out a wake-up call to the uncaring or insensitive.
1. The same rational applies that is stated for the first of these questions.
3. God is providing corrective instruction to change the course of a life.
1. The same rational applies that is stated for the first of these questions.
2. We sit with Job in the ashes scraping our boils and listening to our friends for these conclusions are what Job's friends, and our friends often offer us.
1. Job rejects their conclusions.
2. God agrees with Job.


ILL: Harold Kuschner in his book Why Bad Things Happen to Good People sets out a ver different understanding, and one that I have come to accept.

Bad things happen to good people because:

3. We make faulty, and often life threatening decisions.
1. Can you really drink and drive.
2. What happens when your vision is blurred and your reaction time is extended?
3. What happens when you drive too fast for conditions.
4. Whose fault is it?

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4. We are victimized by the faulty and often life threatening decisions of others.
1. My car was parked in the parking lot of Peninsula State Park Golf course.
2. A few good men had pushed it to the place where the battery could be jumped.
3. One of the men who had just pushed the car into the parking lot got in his car and then backed into mine.
4. Whose fault is that?
5. The world we live in is a very dangerous place in which to live.
1. We contend with nature that has been corrupted by the impact of human sin.
2. Rattlesnakes bite and kill.
3. Bears maul and destroy.
4. Sharks attack and injure or kill swimmers.
5. Whose fault is it?
3. Kuschner sets us down in the midst of life and confronts us with the frailty and failures of life.
1. He confronts us with the need to be responsible and to accept responsibility for our lives.
2. This is exactly what Jesus does in two separate conversations with his disciples and they wrestle with this same question.
4. One of the dialogues is in Luke 13, verses 1 to 5.
1. ¹At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.
1. ²He asked them, "Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?
2. ³No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.

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2. ⁴Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them--do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?
1. ⁵No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did."
5. The second dialogue is in John 9, especially verses 1 through 4, where Jesus heals a man born blind.
1. The question of the disciples reflects the current understanding of the time.
2. Jesus answer offers clarification.
1. ¹As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth.
2. ²His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"
3. ³Jesus answered, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him.
6. People are worshiping and there is trouble, Pilates soldiers enter and kill some of them.
1. They are at the wrong place at the wrong time.
2. It is an act based on the decision of another.
7. People are sitting in the shade of a tower seeking relief from the heat of the sun.
1. There is movement in the tower.
2. It falls and some cannot escape.
3. We place too much confidence in what we have made which constantly proves faulty.
1. Automobiles breakdown.
2. Planes crash.
8. A man is born blind which has noting to do with sin and all to do with genetics.
1. The human gene is faulty.
2. Anomalies occur.
3. We are all too familiar with them.

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5. We have some possible answers for our why questions.
1. We may not like them for it is much easier to blame God and avoid responsibility.
2. We may not like them because these answers requires us to change our personal religious and world views and accept responsibility.
6. But even then, we can still ask, Where is God.
   

ILL: Elie Wiesel's firsthand account of his own experience in the camps, Night, chronicles a similar failure to make the meaninglessness of the Holocaust meaningful in any standard religious or philosophical way. ⁽²⁾

A fellow inmate in Buchenwald, Akiba Drumer, whose traditional faith was eventually destroyed by the suffering around him, pronounces,

It's the end. God is no longer with us, and offers himself to the executioner when the selection comes.

The result of Wiesel's own confrontation with the horror of what is being done to him and to his people can only be expressed in a contradiction:

In spite of myself, a prayer rose in my heart to that God in whom I no longer believed.

1. I was taught there were places I could go that God would not.
2. I was taught that there was a sin so horrific and dark that it could never be forgiven.
1. One would be totally alone and defenseless against the power and the forces of evil.
2. For a long time I believed that this was true.

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3. Then one day I was confronted with a question that begged for an answer.
1. A close friend was critically injured on his way to a meeting of ministers.
2. The announcement was made that his condition was critical and he might not survive.
3. The leader invited us to pray.
1. He prayed that if it was God's will that Jerry should live that it be done, but God's will be done.
2. What it God's will that Gerry should die?
3. No?
4. If you seriously study the life of Jesus you will discover that he is not the life taker, but the life giver.
1. He could not give a better life to those who refused to accept.
2. He could help only those who wanted to be helped.
5. And in this process there is implied a wonderful promise.
1. It is found in Hebrews 13.5
2. "I will never leave you or forsake you."
6. Jesus will never leave you nor forsake anyone.

CONCLUSION:

1. Here are some words that were found written on a wall in a cellar in Cologne, Germany after World War II
2. 
   I BELIEVE ⁽³⁾

   I believe in the sun,
   Even when it is not shining
   I believe in love,
   Even when I feel it not
   I believe in God,
   Even when he is silent.

   1. But is God ever silent?
   2. God speaks constantly.
   3. We may not hear.
3. Well, I have given you a lot to think about this morning.
1. It all comes from my own life and experiences as I have attempted to understand our God and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
2. I have found that these answers to my why questions have increased my love for God.
3. I have found that these answers to my why questions have impacted on the decisions that I make and the ways in which I relate to others.
4. This is the way of faith and love.
5. Let me know what you think ands perhaps we can continue to wrestle with our questions to conclusions that will be of benefit to us and our community of the faithful and the wider community of which we are a part.


1. Cambridge Annotated Study Bible NRSV with Apocrypha

2. As quoted in Robert H. Hopcke, There Are No Accidents: Synchronicity and the Stories of Our Lives (New York: Riverhead Books, 1997), 247.

3. Words Found Written on a Wall in a Cellar in Cologne, Germany after World War II

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