Taking his own medicine
MINISTER’S LETTER - 23 December 2024
Image courtesy Wikipedia
Friends in Christ, Christmas Eve is the 50th anniversary of Cyclone Tracy, which hit Darwin at about 10pm, December 24, 1974. Tracy killed 66 people and destroyed 80 percent of Darwin's houses. It left more than 25,000 out of the 47,000 inhabitants of the city homeless and required the evacuation of over 30,000 people, in the aftermath. Many never returned, although 50 years later we experienced it as a thriving small city at the Deans' Conference in July this year.
Boxing Day is the 20th anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami, which hit on 26 December, 2004, following an earthquake of magnitude of 9 on the Richter scale, with an epicentre off the west coast of Aceh in northern Sumatra, Indonesia. Waves up to 30m high devastated communities along the surrounding coasts of the Indian Ocean, killing about 228,000 people in 14 countries, most notably Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India (Tamil Nadu), and Thailand. It is the deadliest natural disaster of the 21st century so far.
Yet neither they, nor man-made disasters of war and terrorist attacks and murder and sexual abuse have not stopped... Last week an earthquake in Vanuatu and the car attack in a German Christmas market.
I only have the vaguest memories about news reports of Tracy as I was in primary school at the time. But I have vivid memories of the Boxing Day tsunami, not least because organising a memorial service in Wollongong was one of my first duties after starting as an inexperienced Senior Canon at the Cathedral there.
Of course, no current school students were alive then. But I remember it as one of the most significant public events of my lifetime.
At the time, I reflected that none of us has the answers for such inexplicable and terrible events. But I did assert that a loving God does sometimes let suffering happen. C. S. Lewis said God whispers to us in our pleasures. But he shouts to us in our pains. Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a world deaf to its sin. People ignore God in good times. But he allows pain to shatter the illusion that all is well.
But we still wonder: Why them and not others? And when disaster strikes us: Why me?
Of course, people forget that if God doesn’t exist, they have no right to be upset about suffering. Blind chance has no sense of justice. So why are you offended by the existence of suffering? Without God, there’s no logical reason to say it’s unfair. The retiring atheist biologist, Richard Dawkins once wrote:
“In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. […] there is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” (River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life, pp154-55)
By contrast, the fact we feel so strongly that such suffering is unfair may be evidence that deep down we know God is there. As C. S. Lewis asked, where else does this sense of justice come from? If you make claims of injustice, you are assuming some standard, dare we say a super-natural standard, by which to make the judgment!
After the tsunami, like many others, I reflected on Luke 13:1-13. I still find it one of the most helpful passages at such times.
In vv1-5, when confronted by speculation that people impacted by such disasters had done something extra bad to deserve their fates, Jesus denied it!
It's a fallen world, but God was not trying to send a specific message to particular people in those disasters. The Hindu view of karma says that you if you are suffering now in this reincarnation, God must be punishing you for sins in a past life. Sadly it can sometimes encourage a blame-the-victim mentality. Jesus rejects such speculations.
Rather Jesus says when disaster strikes, it’s not a time to blame the victims as worse than others.
Mostly we’re never told why we’re suffering. In the example I raised last week, Job was never told, not even when he was restored. Instead Jesus says that disaster is a chance to look at yourself, not just to think you’re better than others. Rather, as Jesus went on to say twice, in v3 and v5,
“Unless you repent, you too will all perish.”
So when you see or remember the suffering in this world, Jesus wants you to ask yourself this question: “Am I right with God? Or have I been ignoring him?”
Suffering tells us something's wrong with this world.
Sin, our human sin, has mucked it up. We need to admit this and turn back to God for forgiveness, each one of us, personally.
And when I go to Luke 13 for this topic, I also like to include vv10-13! While others argue the religious toss over whether to heal on the Sabbath, Jesus used his divine power and healed the woman.
Now we can’t perform miracles on demand. But the example of Jesus the healer should still inspire Christians to innumerable ministries of mercy. And thank God for those working in hospitals and ambulances over the public holidays.
Way back in late 2004, I concluded with words that are still relevant as we celebrate another Christmas...
Dorothy L. Sayers
Many religions have gods. But only one has a God who cared enough to become a man and die.
As English author Dorothy Sayers put it,
“For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is - limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death - He has the honesty to take His own medicine. He has himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death... He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile.”
Reflectively in Christ,
Sandy Grant
Dean of Sydney
P.S. The newsletter might not come out every week for the summer holidays after Christmas, and when it does, it may just have some links to some recommended summer reading, rather than a fresh letter from me.