WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE

An article in an AARP magazine listed a number of things that reminded people that they were aging. Depending on your age you may or may not think they are funny! Here are five of them:

You know you are getting older when:

- Your back goes out more than you do;

-your knees buckle but your belt won’t;

-you get winded getting the mail;

-you turn out the lights for economic rather than romantic reasons; and

-you sit in a rocking chair but can’t make it go.

Certainly people of every age have bad days! But we today are talking about things that can be debilitating, and, to our frustration, they seem to happen to us whether we have faith or not; whether we go to church or not; whether we have lived a good life or not; and whether we are old, young or somewhere in between. The list includes: disease, divorce, death, detachment from a joy, depression, and disaster to name a few. In 1982, when Rabbi Harold Kushner knew he was going to lose a son to rare disease called “progeria,” he wrote his book WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE. It struck a chord with the public and Christians also found his question good and timely. He came to his own conclusions as you will come to yours. But I hope our text today will stir you, perhaps even change your thinking, moving you from the question of “why” to his more helpful question of “when.”

In the list of questions for God when people get to Heaven is the question that is different from the title of this sermon; the question you may want to ask; the question that Job wanted to ask: Why do bad things happen to good people? Some child-like scowls scrunch our faces as we furrow our brows and shout skyward: “It’s not fair!” Alas, we have given our children the shortest answer to that question when they cry out to us “That’s not fair!” “Life isn’t fair” we tell them, and life tells us as adults. There is certainly no place in any religion that makes us think it is. Life is not a question of fairness. To coin the sentence that Dr. Scott Peck used to begin his bestseller, THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED, “Life is difficult.” It seems especially difficult these days, doesn’t it? There are times in everyone’s life when things go badly. Let’s think about the subjects of bad and good today.

We are aware that bad things happened to the good Jesus. Our gospel text points that out. On person put it this way: “Even though constantly tempted, Jesus did not succumb to evil, which constantly bombarded him. Think of it. God, in Jesus Christ, experienced the worst that this life could throw at him. [His Heavenly Father] did not allow Jesus to be insulated from pain and suffering, just as we are not insolated.” Alan Paton, in his book, CRY THE BELOVED COUNTRY, [remarked]: ‘I have never thought a Christian would be free of suffering. For our Lord suffered. And I have come to believe that He suffered, not to save us from suffering, but to teach us how to bear suffering. For he knew there was no life without suffering.’” Jesus put it plainly: “He began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, be rejected [by others], and be killed.” [Mark 8:31] All in one sentence, the one who was perhaps the embodiment of good on earth suffered, was rejected, and endured a death that would be called torture by any standard. Perhaps our question ought not to be, “Why me?” when it comes to suffering, rejection, or death, but “Why not me? So, dear ones, today let us consider what are we going to do with the hand life has dealt us. Some want to trade in their hand, or fold; but reality teaches that lessons are learned and people are changed by playing the hand we have been dealt. Our second hymn today is written as if it is God ministering to us: Here’s the line that describes our souls as if they were gold, and the heat of life is busy purifying them: “When through fiery trial thy pathway shall lie, my grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply; the flame shall not hurt thee; I only design thy dross to consume (which is the worthless stuff in gold before it’s heated and burned up) and thy gold to refine.” The bad things are not there to overwhelm you, though they sometimes do that; our bad days make us more aware of our good days. A woman was once asked what her favorite passage of Scripture was. “And it came to pass” she said. “That’s it?” her Bible study leader asked. “Yes,” she said, “it reminds me that bad things don’t come to stay, they come to pass.” After weeks in a dark valley, a day on a mountaintop evokes gratitude! Today we remember that sometimes bad things happen for a purpose, and sometimes redemptive actions are produced from bad situations. Bad things happened to Jesus for a purpose. Bad things can be purposeful, like the cross. For some, bad things defeat them. For others, bad things transform them, or even the world.

Second, bad things will never separate us from the good God. Paul assured us that “in everything, God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.” [Romans 8: 28] The Psalmist said the Lord is “our very present help in times of trouble.” And it was Soren Kierkegaard who created the famous saying about “Footprints in the Sand” when the man looked on the ground of his life and noticed that when things were especially bad, the two sets of footprints-one his and one God’s-were no longer, and just one set walked the sand. The man thought that meant that God abandoned him in his most trying times. But God looked at him, and shook his head gently with compassion. “No my precious, precious child; during those bad times I did not abandon you; it was on those days that I carried you.” God will not only see you through your bad days, if you are aware of it, you might even notice, in hindsight, that God carried you.

Third, bad things can create good things. Gemologists tell us that a real diamond is not created without intense pressure and time. Yet there are those in our lives who want to fold under pressure and do not have enough patience for time to do its redemptive work. Our teenagers, for example, rarely become their best selves by being allowed to sleep all day, play all night, and become couch potatoes. Pressure and trials forge boys into men, and girls into women. It has always been that way. Certainly there are some of you who feel like you’d be just as happy to skip the trials and pressures that you are enduring. But pressure has created cures for diseases, inventions for efficiency, and even music filled with glory. It was a deaf Beethoven who wrote his ninth symphony that includes the music that we sing as “Joyful, joyful, we adore thee,” without ever being able to hear it himself. As he conducted the symphony and choir at the inaugural performance, someone had to turn him around to let him see the thunderous applause he could not hear. What can a disability or a tragedy drive you to do, or create, or become, that you would not have had the pressure to do before?

We have noted that bad things happened even to the good Jesus.

We noted that bad things will never separate us from our good God.

And we noted that bad things can create good things.

Finally, we are left with a command from Jesus himself: “I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in Heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” The one who was not afraid as storms threatened to overturn his small boat on the Sea of Galilee; the one who endured the cross and the one who endured the grave heard the same voice that we can hear if we try: “Be still, and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10). Jesus came as the Redeemer, not the destroyer. May the Redeemer fill and lift your life today in the valleys of deepest darkness, using strong carpenter hands to carry you.

Jeffrey A. Sumner March 8, 2009