Where Was God?

This is the sermon I gave on July 17, 2016, after the terrorist attack in Nice, France.

Where Was God?

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

July 17, 2016

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

July 14 is Bastille Day in France. It is that nation’s big national holiday. It is to the French what the Fourth of July is to us Americans. Nice is a resort city on France’s Mediterranean coast not far from France’s border with Italy. Three days ago, on July 14, thousands of French people together with many people from other countries gathered in Nice on the Promenade des Anglais, a broad paved area next to the Mediterranean beach, to watch fireworks over the sea. It must have been a joyous occasion. Families were there with their children. I imagine young lovers out enjoying being together as they celebrated their nation and watched a spectacular show. Probably there were older people there for whom the Bastille Day fireworks over the water had been an annual tradition for many years. It all seems so wonderful. Thousands of people out for a celebration in a beautiful place.

Who would not love to have been there? Who could imagine doing anything to ruin such a joyous occasion for so many people? I can’t imagine why anyone would ruin it, but three days ago someone did. A man who lived in Nice had gone out and rented a refrigerated truck. Perhaps not as big as the rigs that clog the freeways throughout Europe, but a good sized truck nonetheless. He drove to the Promenade. He turned off the lights. He waited until the fireworks show was over. Then he drove that truck straight into the crowd of people on the Promenade. He zig zagged as he plowed people down, trying to hit as many of them as possible. At last count he killed 84 people, all kinds of people, men, women, and children. He severely injured scores more. It turned a scene of joy and celebration into a scene of unimaginable horror. The police shot and killed him, but not before he had killed and maimed all those innocent people. I don’t think those of us who weren’t there can even imagine what it must have been like. It was horror way beyond our experience. Horror that will live in the memory of the survivors and of the French nation forever.

Now, I don’t know about you; but I know that when terrible things like this happen many people instinctively ask questions about God. Some ask Why would God do this? Others ask How could God let this happen? I have a question too, but it’s a slightly different question. When terrible things happen, whether caused by human sin or by natural phenomena like earthquakes and tsunamis, I ask: Where was God? Had God abandoned the places where tragedies occur or the people who become the victims of them? I never think God causes tragedies. God doesn’t. God is a God of love and care Who wants a whole life for every one of God’s creatures. I could never love or seek to serve a God who caused things like the horror in Nice or so many other places. I know God through Jesus Christ, and Jesus just simply would never cause people to suffer and die. Jesus would never run over children with a truck. So let’s start by letting go of the notion that human tragedies are somehow God’s doing. They aren’t.

So if God isn’t in these horrible events as cause, where is God when they happen? Frankly, I don’t quite understand why so many Christians have so much trouble answering that question or why so many of us answer the question by blaming God for what has happened. I don’t understand those things, you see, precisely because we Christians know God in and through Jesus Christ. The answer to where was God when that truck mowed down all those people in Nice the other night lies precisely in the story of Jesus Christ that is the foundation of our faith. So let’s look at that story and see what answer it gives us to the question of where was God.

We start with two essential facts. First, there was an actual person named Jesus of Nazareth. Second, that person was God Incarnate. He was the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son, become human, as human as we are. When we see Jesus we aren’t seeing just another person. Yes, he was a human person, but he was also so much more than that. He was Immanuel, God With Us. As God Incarnate he lived a human life. He taught us about God through his words, but perhaps even more importantly he taught us about God through his life. And he taught us about God through his death.

A great tragedy happened in Nice the other night. Another great tragedy happened on a hill outside Jerusalem so many years ago. That tragedy was the crucifixion of Jesus. As a human being Jesus was unfairly arrested, unfairly tried, unfairly tortured, and unfairly nailed to a cross to die a slow and miserable death. All of those things happened to Jesus as a man, but they also happened to Jesus as the Son of God Incarnate. All of those things happened to Jesus, and in Jesus they happened to God. The Romans thought they were executing just another human troublemaker. We know they were executing a lot more than that. They were executing the Son of God.

A terrible tragedy happened to Jesus, and God didn’t stop it. God didn’t cause it either, but God didn’t stop it. Why not? Here’s the only answer to that question that makes sense to me. God didn’t stop it because in and through Jesus Christ God wanted to show us definitively how God relates to human life. To show us how God relates to all of human life, the good and the bad, the joyous and the tragic, the times of peace and love and the times of unspeakable horror. In Jesus God shows us how God relates to everything that happens to us and everything that happens to anyone anywhere in God’s beloved creation. In Jesus Christ God shows us precisely that God does not intervene in the life of the world to stop tragedies from happening. Why God doesn’t do that is a difficult question that I don’t think anyone has answered satisfactorily. I think it has to do with the nature of creation as creation, but that’s a topic for another day. What matters now is that our inability to understand doesn’t  change the reality that God does not intervene in the life of the world to stop bad things from happening. How do we know that? Because a very, very bad thing happened to God’s Incarnate Son, and God didn’t stop it. If God’s not going to stop tragedy for Jesus, God’s not going to stop tragedy for anyone else either.

No, God didn’t stop the brutal execution of Jesus, but God was anything but remote from Jesus’ suffering and dying. God was Incarnate in Jesus, so as Jesus suffered and died God was fully present with Jesus in his suffering and dying. That’s how God relates to human suffering and death. Not by preventing them. Not by judging them. By being present with God’s children, all of them, when they suffer and die. By being present with us as we suffer and die. In Jesus Christ we know that God is not remote from us when things get bad. Rather, God is unshakably present with us, in solidarity with us, in all of the bad things that happen to us. In suffering and death God is present, suffering and dying with us. In suffering and death God is present with us, holding us up, helping us bear what we must bear, and giving us hope for better things on the other side of our suffering and death. Sustaining presence. Unshakable solidarity. That’s how God relates to human suffering and death. Thanks be to God!

More than ten years ago I gave a sermon along these lines after a terrible earthquake in Indonesia caused an enormous tsunami that killed a couple of hundred thousand people in places that border the Indian Ocean. In that sermon I asked Where was God? And I answered on the beaches, in the water, with the victims. That’s where God was, not stopping the tragedy but being present with God’s people in it. Today I give the same answer to the question Where was God on that promenade along the Mediterranean when a madman plowed into the people with a rented truck. Where was God? On the promenade. With the victims. Suffering with the victims, then welcoming the victims home after their deaths. God is in the hospitals suffering with the injured, holding them, hoping they recover but ready to welcome them home too if they do not. With the victims. That’s where God always is. That’s where God wants us to be too.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God Incarnate, was the ultimate victim of human hatred and injustice. God was in him, showing us how God relates to human tragedy. God is with the victims of terror. God is with the victims of natural disaster too. God is with us, each and every one of us, when we need God the most, when we suffer, and when we die. Folks, that is the best news there ever was or ever could be. We know that suffering and death are inescapable parts of human life. They were inescapable parts of Jesus’ life, and they are inescapable parts of our lives. And God is there. With us. Holding us. Getting us through, and finally welcoming us to our eternal home with God. Where was God in Nice that horrible night? With the victims. God is always with the victims, and God is always with us. We aren’t victims like the people on that promenade in Nice were, and I don’t mean to suggest that we are; but we are God’s beloved children, and God will never abandon us. God will be with us always, come what may. We see that great good news in Jesus Christ. Hold onto it. Live into it. It will get you through. It will get you home. Thanks be to God! Amen.