ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
September 6, 2022
In Sunday’s sermon, I got personal. It is not a type of sermon everyone will like, and I’m pretty sure my preaching professor would have scored it poorly as I based it too much on myself. That aside, I shared something in the sermon that probably went by too quickly for some folks. I said:
I do not believe God is the source or cause of my disease or anyone else’s. If God is love, then God is not the initiator of our pain or suffering, but the one who shows up, using the power of Christ — often found in the body of Christ, the church — to inspire and reveal an abundance around us.
The challenge with such a statement is the Bible. There are passages that could be used to support it and others to counter it. I think about Exodus 15 where the writer had God saying (paraphrasing), “Do what is right and I won’t bring the diseases upon you that I brought on the Egyptians.” Not only does the passage suggest God is the source of illness and disease, but it seems to say that God imposes such things on those who do wrong.
As a follower of Jesus, I read those words through the lens of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. And if Jesus is the fullest expression of God in human form, and Jesus did not impose pain upon others at any point in his ministry, but chose faithfulness to the point of death, then Exodus 15 makes no sense.
I tend to think the Exodus story was written at a time when the prevailing thought throughout the culture tied illness and disease to people’s behavior, but I find much of the Jesus story offers an alternative understanding of why evil and suffering are in the world. If God gave me MS. because of something bad I did (and I have a few not-so-good moments in my past), I guess it is what it is. At the same time, I am going to struggle to have a relationship based in love with that God. Not simply because of my MS, but for all the really wonderful people I know who have experienced extraordinary pain and suffering. If that’s God, I don’t like that God.
Continue to challenge me and journey with me as I seek to better understand the fullness of life, including the heavier stuff of pain, suffering and disease. I can’t imagine you being the source of such things, Loving God. I don’t see you as the cause, but the one who comes alongside those who cry out from the depths of their sorrow. For that, I love you. Amen.
