This evening, I want to address a paradox I encountered while writing my sermon on “Who Art in Heaven” two weeks ago, the second part of my series on the Lord’s Prayer. You see, when we take “Our Father” and link it together with “who art in heaven,” it’s hard not to see that the two assertions seem to contradict each other. After all, we begin the prayer by expressing our reliance on a God who seems so close, so intimate, and so personal to us that we address this God as “our Father.” But then, when we get to the SECOND part of the prayer, we find that instead of being WITH us, just when we need God MOST, God is someplace ELSE- that God is residing far off in the heavenlies somewhere, light years away from our own situation. It makes us want to cry out, “God, what are you doing in HEAVEN when you should be here ON EARTH--RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW–to help me when I really need you!” 

It was a paradox our Lord had to struggle with from his cross when at the outset, Jesus exclaims, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” only to howl a few hours later, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He confronted his cross confident that his Heavenly Father would be there throughout his ordeal only to watch his faith and confidence collapse into a cry of uncertainty, “Father, where are you when you promised you would never leave me? Where are you when I need you MOST! What good is being in HEAVEN when I need your help HERE and NOW!”

But the question “Where is God?” is not just reserved for Jesus or even for Christians, for that matter- it is a UNIVERSAL cry seeking to make sense of all the tragedy and injustice one experiences or sees in the world. The question was undoubtedly asked on January 26th, 2001 when an earthquake in Gujarat, India killed more than 20,000 people, left 50,000 injured, and destroyed a million homes. It was asked on December 26th, 2004—the day after Christmas, no less--when a tidal wave claimed the lives of 230,000 people across Southeast Asia. And it was asked on January 12th, 2010, when an earthquake struck Port-au-Prince, Haiti leaving over 200,000 men, women and children dead within the first few minutes. It’s a question being asked TODAY by Christians and Jews and Muslims all throughout the Middle East who continue to endure first-hand the horrors of war and terrorist attacks in their homeland. It is no less one that mothers and fathers, husbands and wives are asking all over our country when they learn the tragic news that their loved one has just died from an opiate overdoes. “How can a good God allow such evil to flourish? Why does God seem to be ‘missing-in-action’ just when we need God most?” These are the kinds of questions people are asking and not getting satisfactory answers to. 

Several years ago, PBS aired a special two-hour documentary on Frontline entitled “Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero.” It explored how the religious belief–and unbelief–of Americans have been challenged since the events of September 11. Through interviews with priests, rabbis, and Islamic scholars; victims’ families and World Trade Center survivors; writers and thinkers, atheists and agnostics, it tried to answer or at least frame the question “Where was God?” Almost immediately, some people began questioning the idea of God. Recalled Dr. Michael Brescia, a physician, “I saw the pictures of the people at the windows knowing what was happening–that there was no ladder long enough to reach anyone, no helicopter on the roof that was going to come. I wonder how many of them thought if there was a God. And if there was a God, why me? Why this? And where am I going to go?” 

Some people, even those who lost loved ones in the attacks, say the tragedy only affirmed their belief in a higher power. Said Bernie Heeran, a retired firefighter whose son Charlie was killed on that day: “At this stage, I have not questioned God. God had nothing to do with this. There were a lot more people who could have been killed. God was fighting evil that day like God does every day.” Others were neither so certain nor forgiving, like Marian Fontana, whose husband David was one of the 343 firefighters killed that day: “I can’t bring myself to speak to God anymore because I feel so abandoned. I guess deep down inside I know that God stills exists, and that I have to forgive and move on. But I’m not ready to do that yet.”

Still others, including religious leaders, report that while they continue to believe in God, their IMAGE of God has been altered in the wake of the tragedy.” The Rev. Joseph Griesedieck, an Episcopal priest who volunteered at Ground Zero, had THIS to say: “After September 11, the face of God was a blank slate for me. God couldn’t be counted on in the way that I thought God COULD be counted on. God seemed absent. I was left with nothing but that thing we call faith. But faith in what? I wasn’t so sure. The face of God after September 11 is much more of a mystery than it ever was. A face that often eludes us, and frustrates us.”

On September 11th, many Americans found themselves shoved into a place of spiritual crisis. We found ourselves asking such questions as “What kind of God is this? Is this the God I believe in? Can I still believe in this God?” Perhaps the most important question to be asked, at least for those of us who believe in God, is “Does God suffer TOO? Can God feel our pain?” for the answer to that question will also tell us whether or not our God can LOVE. Curiously, the early Church Fathers and theologians did not think so. They believed that God COULDN’T suffer, that God stood outside the realm of human pain and sorrow. They denied God any emotions because they might interrupt God’s tranquility and the unity of God’s nature. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D. went so far as to declare the idea that the divine nature could suffer as “vain babblings” and it condemned all those who believe it. Even John Calvin denied God any feelings. The Westminster Confession of Faith, a founding Presbyterian document, explicitly asserted that God is “without body, parts, or passions, immutable” (“immutable” meaning that God cannot change).

However, a theology that embraces the idea that God cannot suffer has to come to terms with the question, “then can God LOVE?” The great Jewish thinker Abraham Heschel has said that God takes the people of his covenantal love so seriously that he suffers for their actions. God “indwells” the Israelites so that God even goes with them into Babylonian exile and feels their sorrowful plight. This capacity to feel for the other in vulnerable love is part of what it means to be God.

The Bible eloquently affirms that God CAN be wounded. In Hosea, for instance, God cries out about wayward Israel:

How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel?...My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath (11:8-9).

If love implies vulnerability, the traditional notion that God is unmovable would then make it IMPOSSIBLE for us to affirm that “God is love.” An almighty God who cannot suffer is poverty stricken because he cannot love and be involved with his creation. If friendship means allowing oneself to be affected by another, then this unmoved, unfeeling deity could have no friends or be our friend.

Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Prize winning author and survivor of the Holocaust, frequently states that the opposite of love is never hatred, but apathy or indifference. If God were indifferent, God could not love. This is made plain in his story about the hanging of two Jewish men and a youth in a Nazi concentration camp. All the prisoners, Wiesel included, were paraded before the gallows to witness this horrifying spectacle. He writes:

The men died quickly, but the death throes of the youth lasted for half an hour. “Where is God? Where is he?” someone asked me. As the youth still hung in torment in the noose after a long time, I heard the man call again, “Where is God?” and I heard a voice in myself answer: “Where is he? He is here. He is hanging there on the gallows.”

Of course, carried to its logical end, if God cannot suffer and feel for creation, then there can be no real INCARNATION of God in Jesus Christ. If God is denied suffering, then the Crib at Bethlehem and the Cross at Golgotha can no longer serve as the ultimate symbols of God’s complete identification with humankind. Jesus can no longer be “Emanuel,” or “God with us” as the Angel had pronounced at his birth, nor can his death on the cross represent God’s atonement for our sins.

On the contrary, our Lord’s birth was the story of God taking upon himself the form and substance of his own creation, the “Creator” becoming ONE with the “creature.” At that moment in history, God came among us in the person of his Son. Through Jesus’ life and death, God bore forsakenness, anguish, hunger and thirst in all its ultimacy so that when our Lord drank from that cup and its bitter mixture of guilt and suffering and death, GOD tasted of its contents as well.

Of course, many refuse to accept that as an answer, that God experiences the fullness of human sorrow and suffering and that God even knows the fear and pain associated with death- the proof of it being Jesus Christ. They will tell you that they need greater proof than some kind of theological assertion or church creed- they want to see some TANGIBLE EVIDENCE that God understands such things before they believe. Well, we just may be able to provide them the proof they’re looking for! I am convinced that the GREATEST evidence there is as to the presence of God in the midst of human pain and suffering is the CHURCH HERSELF- God’s representatives in the world. Instead of the question “Where was God on September 11?” perhaps we REALLY need to ask “Where was the CHURCH on September 11?” If the church was doing its job–binding up wounds, comforting the grieving, offering food to the hungry, I don’t think people will wonder so much where God was when the rest of America was hurting. They’ll KNOW where God was- in the presence of his people on earth!

Where there was extraordinary love and courage demonstrated, THERE God was present- in the trapped workers who took time to comfort and assist each other when each other was all they had; in the policemen and firefighters who charged up those stairwells even as they were collapsing down upon them. God was among the workers and caregivers at Ground Zero who so carefully and devotedly combed the debris for body parts, transforming southern Manhattan into a sacred space. God was expressed in the generosity of the many thousands who donated time and money to the victims’ families; He was present in those persons and services which dispensed meals and refreshments, and through the chaplains who were so quick to comfort grieving loved ones.

But let’s not stop THERE. By extension, this means that when WE respond in love to the hurts and needs of others around us, WE no less become a witness to God in our midst. Whenever WE offer a meal to stranger, or take a neighbor to the doctor, or do volunteer work in the community; whenever WE patiently listen to another person’s problems or offer a kind word of encouragement to someone in despair, OUR actions ALSO testify to a loving, caring God in whose name we serve. Our deeds don’t need to be great or extraordinary for God is never MORE evident than in those simple acts of kindness and generosity that come when we least expect it. The fact remains that WE become the greatest proof as to the reality of a “Father God,” of One who rejoices when WE rejoice and grieves when WE grieve. God does NOT reside far off in the heavenlies, light years from our personal situation. Rather, God IS present to us all the time. Because of OUR caring, we CAN know–believer and unbeliever–precisely where God is when it hurts- God is with US and that is where God will ALWAYS be! Let us pray...

Gracious God, thank you for not just taking a passing interest in us your creation but for willing to become actively involved in all our affairs. You see our needs and understand our fears and feel our pain because you are love and love demands such involvement. Just as Jesus, your Son, becomes the proof of that for US, may WE, your Church, become that same proof to the rest of the world. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.