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NRS Genesis 1: 27 So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created
them; male and female he created them. 28 God blessed them, and God
said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it;
and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and
over every living thing that moves upon the earth." 29 God
said, "See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the
face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have
them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird
of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the
breath of life, I have given every green plant for food." And it was so. 31
God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there
was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Now some of you may be wondering why I choose this scripture to talk about
the suffering of the innocents. Well the truth is, we are all sinners and we
all have that cross to bear thanks to Adam. I believe, that truth be told, we
have more than that we can blame on Adam as well. You see, Adam and Eve were
given everything they needed in the Garden of Eden. It was Paradise. All the
food they needed, all the things of the world they needed, all the sunshine,
the rain, the animals, and everything that was pleasant and good in the sight of
God was theirs. All they had to do was love God and love each other with all
their hearts. That is all they had to do to have everything they needed and
could possibly desire.
God in God’s infinite wisdom knew that perfect love could not have binds or
strings so God gave Adam and Eve Free Will to choose to love or not love. Into
this blissful world came evil. Evil in the personification of Satan, Lucifer,
the morning star as this being is called in certain places in the Bible. Evil
came into perfection and offered not something better, but something perverted
and twisted. Something from which anger, hate, jealousy and greed came forth.
There in that perfect place Adam and Eve were tempted in their ego’s to have
something only God could have, the right to decide life and death and full
knowledge of all that God knows.
Now the truth is we never get to see outside the garden until it is too
late. So we will never know if that place outside the garden was full of
evilness, disease and hate. But we do know is that in the garden those things
did not exist. So Adam and Eve are tempted and they fall to that temptation.
How often do we give up something great for something we think is better only
to find out it is less than what we had? Adam and Eve take the fruit from the
one tree that was forbidden to them against the will of God. What are the
consequences of that sin? Eternal struggle. Sin came into the world not through
the grace of God but through the eternal struggle of Free Will. Once that sin
was unleashed it could not be contained any more than toothpaste can go back in
the tube once it is squirted out. That is a great children’s sermon by the way,
what comes out that is hurtful cannot be put back in and taken away, it must be
dealt with and there are consequences. So Adam and Eve are banished from
Paradise. They are banished from the place where they had everything they
needed and could ever want. But the story doesn’t end there, it begins there.
Do you know what the first hurtful thing in the Bible is? Believe it or not
it is childbirth. The first place we see pain experienced is in the birthing of
a child. I wonder what God intended before that? We will never know. But first
comes the pain of childbirth and then comes the story of death. Cain kills Abel.
Not over something significant. Not over something Abel did hurtful to Cain. No
the very first death in the Bible comes because of jealousy and envy. Evil
personified in the world leads to death through jealousy and envy. That one
personification of evil continues to this day over and over again. People kill
each other for the shoes on their feet or the clothes on their back or the
belief they have something better that someone else wants so they take it by
force. You want to know the simple answer why bad things happen. Flip Wilson, a
comedian from some years back had it right when he created a mantra that the
devil made me do it. Evil personified in the world because we human beings are
not content to let someone else have more without hateful and evil
consequences.
Now maybe, just maybe I am over exaggerating a little. But let us flow this
story out further and see where it goes. In the time of Noah people had
forgotten God. The age of humans at the time of Noah and shortly thereafter was
in the hundreds of years. But shortly after God started over with Noah, the age
of human beings decreased significantly so that human beings today live an
average of 75-80 years. Some longer and many a lot shorter, but that is the average
age. Now why is that? Isn’t that the question today? Why do the innocents
suffer?
During war time the powers that wage war has even created a name for the
innocent lives who are lost in order to prevail over one another. They call it
collateral damage. Collateral Damage! I suggest that in fact bad things happen
to all people in part because of the collateral damage that has happened to the
world because of free will. Now I am not suggesting mind you, that you and I
have created illness, cancer, or great tragedies because of our own design. But
I am suggesting that much of the tragedy of the world is created by those who
would perpetuate hate, bigotry, racism and war in order that they could somehow
receive something greater in their mind than what they currently have.
We live in a world made up of people who are more concerned with what they
can achieve than who gets hurt in their desire to achieve it. I believe with
all my heart that those responsible for the violence in places like Charlottesville
Virginia come about because of people who desire to bring their sense of right
and wrong into the faces of the innocent people trying to live their lives. The consequences of such actions almost always
result in the destruction of property and the loss of lives. Property can be
rebuilt. Lives lost can never be reclaimed no matter how much money,
legislation or social change occurs. Tell that to the mother of the daughter
lost to senseless, do you hear me, senseless violence perpetuated because
someone believes something so strongly that they lose their sense of decency
and right and wrong. Sounds a lot like the Cain and Abel story doesn’t it?
Illness happens! Weather happens! Earthquakes happen! All of these things
happen because sin came into the world. God doesn’t have a plan to kill people
just because. No, God lets the world act. Nature acts! It always has since the
banishment from the garden and it always will until God recreates it anew.
Illness is a curse to the world. Illness happens to innocent people just
because. Sometimes cancer, diabetes, dementia and other illnesses come into our
lives just because we happen to have the wrong genes and the wrong timing. We
did not do anything to create that illness in our bodies but it happens.
Sometimes illness happens because of our own choices which is part of free
will. When we take illicit drugs, pursue alcoholism and other life altering
styles of living then illness is a consequence of that living. I believe that
certain kinds of cancer, particularly skin cancers happen because of our
pollution of our world. The bubonic plague happened because we did not take of
our food stores and our hygiene and childhood diseases are again on the rise
because of choices not to vaccinate.
Tragedy is a different story though. Tragedy whether it is an accident
brought about by a drunk driver, an inattentive texting person or someone who
perpetuates evil to lift their own agenda is in fact a human story. War is a
human tragedy that is brought not by some greater good for one side or the
other but by powers who have at its core evil concerns of greed, hate, envy and
jealousy. Again, sounds like Cain and Abel all over again.
My friends! As we gather in this place today I want to talk about healing.
We cannot know what may happen today or tomorrow. We cannot know the effects of
the world changing outside or a hurricane bringing havoc on neighbors whose
only action in the matter was being born in or moving into the path of that
destruction. We cannot foresee zealots bent on promoting their hate and
ideology on others through violence and destruction and those who inadvertently
find themselves in that path. Bad things will happen to others and maybe even
us. Bad things happen! Forest Gump is fictionally credited with coming up with
that famous bumper sticker about “it happens.” So when things don’t go as they
should, let us not reach out in anger, hate or divide but rather find within
that dark place the one light that is meant to shine for all of us.
Jesus came into the world to share with us that death is not the final
answer. Jesus came into this world to show us that even though Adam had chosen
wrongly, we can choose differently. Jesus came into the world, was tempted by
the same Satan that tempted Adam and prevailed. How? By trusting in God and believing
that no matter how tired, how hungry, how sore, or how down you are, God’s love
is always permeating the space around and in us. Illness and tragedy are going
to happen, every day, everywhere. How we deal with it has more to do with faith
than the bad thing we face. Most importantly, even death is not the end, rather
through a risen Christ it becomes a new beginning.
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