Providence

CATHEDRAL NEWSLETTER - 18 July 2024

Friends in Christ, today I have a few words about providence that may be difficult.

The Macquarie Dictionary defines providence, quite helpfully in my view, as "the foreseeing care and guardianship of God over His creatures", or a little more generally and neutrally "as a manifestation of the divine care or direction".

And the hand of providence has been discussed much and not infrequently claimed in the awful events of the assassination attempt in the United States.

If it is discussed in a careless way, as often happens in media, politics, and even among Christians, one can understand those who ask: What providence was there for the fire captain who lost his life, though he was not the intended victim of the shooting?

Writing in The Australian, Timothy J. Lynch, Professor of American politics at the University of Melbourne, reminds us that after Hitler remarkably survived the the Stauffenberg plot explosion at very close range, he gasped: "That was the hand of providence." Few people think we should assume that was divine endorsement of his continued wickedness in futhering WWII and the Holocaust. 

Lynch suggests that from a human point of view, dramatic world-changing individual events may often just have more to do with luck, and skill or its lack, than any big structural or theoretical explanations. He identifies in our culture a "misplaced sense of mastery", that we can control the weather, or just change gender. And he concludes:

I’d wager your greatest love and profoundest tragedy will have more to do with chance and fate (the goddess worshipped by Romans as Fortuna) than to any systemic, structural or social force.

Christians who believe in the almighty, all-wise and all-loving God of the Bible cannot accept this conclusion, even though we may recognise that a lot of what happens appears random. So Isaiah 45:7 presents God speaking this way...

I form the light and create darkness,
    I bring prosperity and create disaster;
    I, the Lord, do all these things.

Photo courtesy: Alex Iby via Freely Photos

And Jesus famously said, in Matthew 10:29...

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care.

And the prophets apply this to mighty pagan leaders of foreign nations. Jeremiah 27:5-7 states...

With my great power and outstretched arm I made the earth and its people and the animals that are on it, and I give it to anyone I please. Now I will give all your countries into the hands of my servant Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; I will make even the wild animals subject to him. All nations will serve him and his son and his grandson until the time for his land comes; then many nations and great kings will subjugate him.

And though they critique Israel's pesistent sin, the prophets still wrestled with why God handed them over to such destructive, idol-worshipping Babylonian kings for judgment. On the other hand, Isaiah also predicts God will raise up a pagan king to allow Israel to return from exile in Babylon, with a policy of polytheistic tolerance or what today we might call limited religious liberty. Isaiah 44:28 records:

[The LORD] says of Cyrus, ‘He is my shepherd
    and will accomplish all that I please;
he will say of Jerusalem, “Let it be rebuilt,”
    and of the temple, “Let its foundations be laid.”’

In my quiet time, I have recently read I Kings 14-15. There Abijah became ill. He was a son of the deeply wicked King Jeroboam, of the northern tribes of Israel, who had split from Judah. Jeroboam got his wife to inquire from a prophet as to whether or not his boy would recover. The prophet instead commences a scorching denunciation of Jeroboam for his gross sins, and predicts every last male his family will die in terrifying circumstances. But of young Abijah, the prophet says he will die, and

"All Israel will mourn for him and bury him. He is the only one belonging to Jeroboam who will be buried, because he is the only one in the house of Jeroboam in whom the Lord, the God of Israel, has found anything good." 1 Kings 14:13

The boy, in some unspecified way, had got some things right. And so he got to die in his bed, presumably with loving care, with his mum present at the end. It seems like an awful tragedy, a life cut all too short.

...Until you read in 1 Kings 15 that every single other one of Jeroboam's family were hunted down and ruthlessly killed by the rebel who stole the throne from Jeroboam's successor.

Providence is indeed real – but hard to read.

Yet by his early death at home, that young boy was spared a most violent and terrifying extermination by death squad.

Friends, the brute fact of an event - even dramatic as someone's death or someone's survival - says nothing definitive from God's point of view about why it happened or what is intended as a result. That is, not unless God has especially revealed the meaning. 

Instead we must always turn to Scripture for guidance. That's where God decisively and perfectly reveals his will, culminating in the gospel, where Jesus fulfiles the law, teaches the truth, dies for our sins, and rises again to new life, defeating death and evil, before evntually returning for final judgment and to established his perfect reign in the new creation.

In the mean time, any inferences or moral interpretations drawn from events under God's priovidence must always be tested against the bar of Scripture, and shaped by Jesus. And of course, anyone who survives dramatic events, always has the chance to repent and turn towards God. 

And in today's media and politics, what stands out to me, personally, again and again, is that the same Jesus who also denounces injustice and hypocrisy and all sin, also teaches his followers in Luke 6:27-28.

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 

Here's a prayer, lightly adapted from an updated American Book of Common Prayer, that we might prayer for the United States and for our own nation...

Almighty God, who has given us a good land to live in: We humbly beseech you that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of your favour and glad to do your will. Bless our land with honorable industry, sound learning, and pure conduct. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion; from pride and arrogance, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought here out of many kindreds and tongues. Endue with a spirit of wisdom those to whom, in your Name, we entrust the authority of government, that there may be justice and peace at home, and that, through obedience to your law, believers may show forth your praise among the nations of the earth. In the time of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, permit not our trust in you to fail; all of which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Warmly in Christ,

Sandy Grant
Dean of Sydney