Bloomsbury
Central Baptist Church
26 March 2017
‘Siege and
Salvation’
Lamentations
4.1-22
Matthew
26.36-46
Listen to this sermon here: https://soundcloud.com/bloomsbury-1/2017-03-26-simon-woodman-lamentations-in-lent-week-4
Listen to this sermon here: https://soundcloud.com/bloomsbury-1/2017-03-26-simon-woodman-lamentations-in-lent-week-4
Sometimes,
this week included, as we have heard,
the world can be a pretty dark and
terrifying place,
and the
question I want us to think about this morning,
is whose fault is this?
Where, if
anywhere, are we to apportion blame
for the pain, suffering, and death
which dominates the media,
and sometimes our own lives also.
This is not
an abstract question, asked out of theological curiosity,
because the issue is too real, too
raw, for disembodied philosophy.
What I want
to know, in very real and concrete terms,
is who I can blame for the awful
realities of so much of human existence.
The
ever-wonderful Stephen Fry gets to the heart of this issue
with a interview in which he sees
the suffering of humanity
as ‘the final and clinching proof of the
non-existence of God’
(as Douglas Adams once
famously put it).
Let’s watch
this clip now…
Stephen Fry[1] https://youtu.be/-suvkwNYSQo
The logic
which Stephen Fry uses here is fascinating;
in a nutshell, his argument is that
if God exists,
then God must be held
responsible for the sufferings of humanity;
but that such a God would be so
monstrous
that atheism is a better
alternative.
For Fry, the
sufferings of humanity are not ultimately God’s fault,
because for him God does not exist;
rather,
they are the responsibility of natural processes,
such as competitive evolution, or
random genetic mutation.
So who do
we blame for suffering?
Well, says Stephen Fry, blame
nature!
We need to
be careful to hear his argument in the context
of the ongoing attempts by some
Christians to discredit the theory of evolution
by asserting their belief in an
all-powerful benign creator God;
and in this
debate I think Stephen Fry’s argument is highly effective.
Let me say
this very clearly:
I don’t believe in the God he
doesn’t believe in either!
I don’t
believe in a monstrous tyrant who capriciously visits suffering upon the earth;
or who sets in motion some
determinist system
which leads inexorably and
unavoidably
to acts of terrorism, war, and
violence.
But I do
still want to know where to lay the blame for all that suffering,
and I’m not sure that pointing the
finger at evolution entirely removes the problem.
As Stephen
Fry well knows, the wisdom traditions of all the major world religions
have been wrestling with the problem
of theodicy, as it is called, for millennia.
People of
faith are no stranger to the question
of how to sustain any kind of belief
in God in the face of suffering;
and have
long faced the conundrum
of whether all attempts to do so
simply end up making God monstrous.
Which
brings us to the book of Lamentations.
This week is the fourth, and some of
you may be glad to know, penultimate,
sermon in our Lenten series looking
at the little-read book of the Bible
that makes the
depressing Psalms read like happy ditties.
This week
we re-join the lamenting poet in the ruins of Jerusalem.
The
Babylonians have done their worst, the temple is destroyed,
the city is devastated, and the
ruling elite have been taken into exile.
A famine
has set in, and people are dying in the streets of the holy city.
The
language used to evoke this situation is heartbreaking,
and stands as some of the most
beautiful and yet bleak poetry of all time.
‘The
precious children of Zion, worth their weight in fine gold,
are reckoned as earthen pots.’
(v.2).
‘The tongue
of the infant sticks to the roof of its mouth for thirst,
the children beg for food, but no
one gives them anything.’ (v.4).
‘Those who
feasted on delicacies perish in the streets;
those who were brought up in purple
cling to ash heaps.’ (v.5).
‘Happier
were those pierced by the sword
than those pierced by hunger.’
(v.9).
And perhaps
most devastating of all,
‘The hands of compassionate women
have boiled their own children.’ (v.10).
This is the
biblical equivalent of the current late night news reports
on the growing famine in East Africa;
as the
unflinching gaze of the camera
brings starving children,
dehumanized mothers, and despairing fathers
right into our living
rooms,
to challenge our own security and to
hold us to our humanity.
And who is
to blame for all this?
That is the
question on the lips of the poet of ancient Jerusalem,
just as it is the question on our
lips
as we see suffering, starvation, and
sorrow in our own world.
We search for
a reason, we long for culpability to be declared.
So is God
to blame?
If God does
exist, should we turn to him in the white heat of our anger
to demand mercy, judgment, or indeed
any response
beyond clinical, calm
disinterest?
Well,
maybe.
The poet of
Lamentations certainly has God firmly in his sights
as he fires his words into the void
of history.
Hear verse
11: ‘The Lord gave full vent to his wrath;
he poured out his hot anger, and
kindled a fire in Zion
that consumed its foundations.’
So maybe
that’s it, then.
God, if there is a God, is to blame.
It’s his fault.
Except, I
cant help but feel this answer is too easy.
I long to
stand with Stephen Fry,
to pass the responsibility for it all
to God,
and then to walk away from him
and stand in rational
post-faith fury at the futility of faith;
taking such crumbs of comfort as my
post-enlightenment cosmology can offer,
and devoting myself to
works of humanity and justice.
But I don’t
see that it helps.
It’s too easy an answer, or maybe
it’s no answer at all, I’m not sure which;
but the
question still remains hanging in the air
like a disconcerting dis-chord
awaiting resolution.
Thankfully the
poet of Lamentations doesn’t leave it there either.
God, if God
there is, is certainly angry in Lamentations.
But angry at what, and wrathful with
whom?
And here we
enter the darkness of suffering at a different level.
Jerusalem
was always more than a city,
more than a home for its
inhabitants.
It was to
be the embodiment of a dream,
it was to be the light of the world,
it was to be the place where God
dwelt with people.
Jerusalem
was the hope of the nations,
the joy of the whole earth,
and that
dream had been betrayed.
The city of
peace had become a city of violence.
The leaders
of Jerusalem, her priests and prophets,
had shed the blood of the righteous
in the midst of the holy city (v.13).
They had so
far departed from their mandate
to care for the people,
and to embody the gracious covenant
between God and Israel,
that they
are held responsible for the downfall of the city
at the hands of the Babylonians.
It was
their failure in leadership that led to the catastrophe,
and simply pointing the finger at God,
saying ‘he did it!’,
starts to
sound more like an attempt to offload guilt and responsibility
than it does a theologically nuanced
answer to the suffering of the people.
It’s too
easy for us to make God the scapegoat
in our efforts to avoid our own
complicity in the suffering of others.
And so the
Babylonians, sensing the weakness at the heart of the Israelite position,
did what empires will always do and
swooped in to destroy the city.
The analogy
with Sodom offered in verse 6,
the city mythically overthrown in a
moment by divine fire,
looks less
and less relevant to the Jerusalem scenario of the 6th century BC.
The
citizens of Jerusalem were betrayed by weak, self-serving leaders,
which left them prey to a hostile
military force
seeking conquest and imperial
expansion.
This wasn’t
God’s fault at all!
Humans did it, and we do it still.
The current
famine in Africa,
the world’s worst humanitarian
crisis since 1945, according to the United Nations,
is firmly the result of human
activity.
As Saudi
Arabia and Iran conduct their proxy war in the Yemen,
vast numbers of people are being
displaced
from their homes, their land, and
their food sources.
In Nigeria,
Boko Haram, the Islamic extremist group,
have driven 2.6 million people from
their homes.
South Sudan
has been ravaged by a 3 year civil war,
leading the United Nations
Humanitarian Chief Stephen O’Brien
to conclude
‘the famine is man made.
Parties
to the conflict are parties to the famine,
as
are those not interfering to make the famine stop’.[2]
It’s
Jerusalem under Babylon all over again,
and it’s happening in our time and
in our world,
and it isn’t God doing it, it’s us.
The present
tragedy in Africa owes much to the history or European colonialism,
and to the ineffective and corrupt leadership
that flourished in the vacuum
created by the withdrawal of the western powers.
When you
factor in the failed harvests due to the changing climate
as a result of the developed world’s
consumption of fossil fuels,
our collusion in this situation
becomes ever more compelling.
And it is
not acceptable for us to blame God for it,
because to do so is to add cowardice
to complicity.
Similarly with
acts of terrorism,
including that which enacted itself on
the streets of our city this week.
God is too-easy
a target for our outrage and anger,
as Julia Hartley Brewer demonstrated.
She tweeted
this week, in the wake of the events in Westminster,
‘Can everyone stop all this
#PrayforLondon nonsense.
It’s these bloody stupid beliefs
that help create this violence in the first place.’
According to
her logic,
the man in the car with a knife in Westminster
is God’s fault,
and those who continue to turn to God
are as responsible as he is…
So, taking he
challenge seriously,
should we pray? And if so how, and what
for?
If we
simply beseech God to end the famine,
and cry out to him for
the starving children,
and ask him to take away the anger
that
burns in the heart of a violent and disturbed man,
we are no better than the hired
mourners of biblical times
who were paid to shriek
and beat their breasts at funerals.
If we pray
for the suffering of others without recognizing our own sinfulness,
we make God our scapegoat;
and in
doing that we make him a monster unworthy of worship.
Giles Fraser,
writing in the Guardian this week, said that
Prayer is not a way of
telling God the things he already knows.
Nor is it some act of collective
lobbying,
whereby
the almighty is encouraged to see the world
from
your perspective if you screw up your face really hard
and
wish it so.
Forget Christopher
Robin at the end of the bed.
Prayer is mostly about emptying your
head waiting for stuff to become clear.
There is no secret formula.
And holding people in your prayers
is not wishful thinking.
It’s a sort of
compassionate concentration,
where someone is deliberately
thought about
in the presence of the widest
imaginable perspective
– like giving them a mental
cradling.
But above all, prayer
is often just a jolly good excuse
to shut up for a while and think.
The adrenaline that
comes from shock
does not make for clear thinking or
considered judgment.
Those who rush to
outrage say the stupidest things.[3]
But this is
not to say that God is not present in suffering.
Historically speaking, the cup of
suffering passed, in time, from Israel to Edom.
The merry
go round of imperial oppression turned on its axis,
and the strong became weak, and the
weak became strong again.
Edom’s turn
came, and her betrayal of Israel
was met with her own period of
violence and suffering.
As was
Babylon’s.
No empire
can hold sway for ever,
and the collapse of power always
engenders suffering in the population
as the weak pay the price for the
shortcomings of the powerful.
And so the
world shares the cup of suffering,
and we pass it from hand to hand
like a chalice of blood,
each nation drinking deeply in its
turn from the wine of destruction.
Empires sow
the seeds of their own downfall
and reap the harvest of their
suffering,
and the
cycle seems endless through history,
from ancient Israel, to East Africa,
to our own city.
Which
brings us to Jesus, in the garden of Gethsemane, praying:
"My Father, if it is possible,
let this cup pass from me;
yet not what I want but
what you want."
"My Father, if this cannot pass
unless I drink it, your will be done."
Where is
God in the midst of suffering?
He is there, in Gethsemane, drinking
the cup of suffering with the rest of humanity.
This,
surely, is the message at the heart of the incarnation.
This is what links the birth of the
baby in the manger,
with the death of the man on the
cross of Good Friday.
In the book
of Lamentations the Jewish king, the Lord’s anointed,
is taken into the pit.
This is
almost certainly the king Zedekiah,
who fled from Jerusalem into the
desert through a breach in the city walls
but was captured by the Babylonians.
The second
book of Kings tells the story of what happened next:
“They slaughtered the sons of
Zedekiah before his eyes,
then put out the eyes of
Zedekiah;
they bound him in fetters and took
him to Babylon” (2 Kings 25.7)
This moment
of personal torment and torture for one man
was also the end of a national
dream:
for a King of David, to
rule over the people of David,
in the capital of David
for ever more.
It is the
ultimate moment of defeat, and not just for the people of Jerusalem,
it is the end of the dream of a people of God in
Jerusalem.
The
covenant project of ‘God with us’
fails at the hands of the
Babylonians.
Which is
what makes the last two verses of chapter four so startling.
The siege
and destruction of Jerusalem is complete.
The ideology of the city is
shattered along with its walls,
and its hope has died as its king
has gone into exile.
And into
this hopelessness, the poet offers a glimmer of hope.
One day, this too shall pass.
The wheel will turn, the cup of
suffering will go to the next person,
the world moves on.
God is not yet finished with
humanity.
But that is
a story for another day, for another week.
We can’t get to Easter too soon.
We must sit
a while with Jesus in the Garden,
with the cup of suffering at his lips.
We must sit
with the disciples as they see Jesus betrayed and beaten,
and recognize their own complicity
in his sufferings.
We must sit
with the Marys at the foot of the cross outside the walls of Jerusalem
as hope departs from the world.
We must sit
in the long exile of Holy Saturday
as the world waits in suffering and
darkness, and all hope is lost.
And who is
to blame?
Who nailed Jesus to the cross?
Was this
God, visiting the sins of the world on his only begotten innocent son?
I don’t think so.
A God who
would do that is a monster not worthy of worship;
worthy, perhaps, only of fear or
disbelief.
No, we nailed Jesus to the cross. You did
it, and I did it.
We are the centurions, and we bear
the guilt.
But, and
here’s the hope…
God does not leave us in our fallen,
broken, guilty, humanity.
The miracle
of the one on the cross is that he is God with us,
suffering alongside us,
taking our
guilt and shame upon himself
and forgiving us our sins.
I have long
thought that if we find ourselves wondering where God is,
in the midst of human suffering and
pain,
we probably
don’t have to look very far to find him.
This is the
God of the cross, after all,
the God of the incarnation,
the God who comes to us in Jesus and
transforms our story.
So today,
as we continue to grapple with this ancient poem of Lamentations,
as we stare long into the abyss of
despair
and sit with those who
hope has all gone,
and as we are confronted with our
own guilt an complicity
in the suffering of the
world,
let us
allow ourselves a moment of quiet repentance,
and let us dare to hope that God has
not yet, quite, finished with us.
[1]
He was asked what he would say to God if he met him. He said he would tell the
deity: “How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not
our fault? It’s not right.”
“It’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a
capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of
injustice and pain?”
Fry added that he would ask God: “Bone cancer in
children? What’s that about?
“Because the God who created this universe, if it was
created by God, is quite clearly a maniac, utter maniac. Totally selfish. We
have to spend our life on our knees thanking him; what kind of God would do
that?”
[2]
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/11/world-faces-worst-humanitarian-crisis-since-1945-says-un-official
[3]
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2017/mar/23/prayer-is-not-wishful-nonsense-it-helps-us-to-shut-up-and-think
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