Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

This is no time to jump on one preacher for making inane commentary on human disasters. We can line these people up and hear their crass declarations one disaster after another.

Do you remember on September 11 when one preacher declared the massacre of over 3000 international citizens meant that God no longer was protecting America.

We, as Americans, have forgotten that to whom much is given, much is required . . . . We, as a people, have not been faithful to God, and it is time for repentance. The hedge (of divine protection) that God put around America is not there anymore. That’s what this is all about. (Houston Chronicle, September 15, p. 39A)

After Hurricane Katrina, the television evangelists were announcing that God sent the hurricane to punish the sinful city of New Orleans. One could compare these statements with the video of hundreds of thousands of people, mostly poor, pleading for help as millions of gallons of water from the Gulf of Mexico flooded the lower wards of the city. The next hurricane, I guess, was to punish the city of Port Arthur, hardly known for its excessive sin. Then Hurricane Ike hit us! What are we to think?

Well, this sermon could turn into a rant against media pastors who say such hysterical things, but that would be only to evade such thoughts as they exist in our hearts.

We allow ourselves to fall victim to the pronouncements of people like Pat Robertson because the same question haunts our hearts as we deal with the vicissitudes and disasters of life whether natural or man-made. Who does not spend much of our time in anxiety about our efforts to earn a good life, to keep ourselves safe and stave off calamity?

I have been with many people who find themselves in trouble. A business fails, a job is lost. Immediately we ask what we did to deserve this. After all our neighbor still has her job. In fact, she is a devout church-goer and she said that she was very fortunate that God was with her and that she had not experienced the crisis of a job loss. Does that mean that God is not with me?

I have spent many a night at the Shock-Trauma unit at Hermann-Memorial where a crash victim is suspended between life and death. The family asks how could this happen to us? Later during days and weeks of rehabilitation the patient asks, “What did I do to deserve this?”

We human beings spend large amounts of time trying to justify our lives in such a way that we feel we have protection from harm and danger. But we see this protection as a result of our own efforts. In some way we may acknowledge God, but only in a distant way. The truth is that this god is the creation of our fantasies. We create this god in order that this god may turn around and supply us with the rules that we most like. If we keep the rules, then we can accomplish our own protection and salvation.

We like this situation because the world becomes so predictable to us. If we know the rules and keep them, then we imagine that we will be rewarded. If we break the rules, then it is an easy matter to work back from the situation to the cause.

But all of this is an idolatry of insidious nature. If we put our trust in such a schema, we are doomed to self-condemnation or to a life of condemning others. This is exactly what we are taught in the short story of Job and his friends. Job is a fictional character. Job’s story is narrated by the survivors of the disaster of the Babylonian invasion and the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. Was it because of their sin that they now are in exile. Many of the people in exile had been loyal to God and kept their trust in God.

Job is an innocent man upon whom calamity falls. He loses his children, his land, his livestock, his standing in the community and his health. As Job laments his situation, he refuses to curse God for the terrible circumstances. Three of Job’s so-called friends arrive and come to help Job understand his situation and to help him get out of it. They tell Job that God is just and that human misery is a result of human sin. The answer is simply to confess one’s sin and to ask God’s mercy. God will then set things right.

Job refuses to play the game and avers forthrightly that he had done nothing to deserve the suffering that befell him. The friends drive harder. They try to get Job to understand that suffering always means that someone has committed a prior sin. Job protests all the louder saying that he has not sinned. In fact, Job questions whether God has made a mistake or perhaps God is not just. Then the friends make Job’s misery greater by accusing him of arrogance and pride since all humans sin. Job is tenacious in holding to his innocence. The friends become vicious in their accusations.

In the end of the story God appears in the whirlwind and rebukes the friends for their false faith in their religion. They performed as the judges and, therefore, put themselves in the place of God. Job too is rebuked for having questioned God’s justice. God restores then the fortunes of Job. Thus ends a marvelous and instructive short story.

One can almost hear the strains of Isaiah who also addresses the exiles. He brings to them a word of hope in his gospel, speaking the Word of the Lord.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9)

Dear congregation, it is in the tradition of Isaiah and Job that we understand Jesus best. We know Jesus best in these words, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways.”

The life of Jesus is one in which Jesus continually breaks the rules in order to reveal the true nature of God in this brutal world of suffering. He refuses to play our games. The victims of Pilate’s brutality and the unsuspecting victims of a collapsed building were not victims of their own sin. But these disasters should motivate us to turn to God in trust. After all, the things in which we normally put our trust fail to deliver. That can be for Jesus the only meaning of these disastrous events.

Jesus Christ comes with warning and promise. Disaster can and will befall us, but God is right there where catastrophe occurs. That does not mean that God causes it. Not only should Pat Robertson remember that, but you too should know it. Jesus proclaims the word of the Lord that the kingdom of God has drawn near.

That kingdom is established through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. For hope resides in the Christian claim that God is right there in the cross of Christ. That is where we find God. The resurrection is God’s final validation of this word and it is the vindication of Jesus as the one whom God glorifies. For the Spirit that drove Jesus into the wilderness of this world is the same Spirit that drives us to Christ renewing this weary and anxious world and restoring our lives to God’s presence.

Seek the LORD while he may be found,
call upon him while he is near;
let the wicked forsake their way,
and the unrighteous their thoughts;
let them return to the LORD,
that he may have mercy on them,
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. (Isaiah 55:6-7)

Amen.