"When Something Terrible Goes Wrong"

by Revd Bruce Waldron - 7th June 2007

1 Kings 17:17-24
Luke 7:11-17

I want to look at this story in two parts.
The first is the way we react when things go wrong
We think it has something to do with something we've done and no matter how illogical, we instinctively link the wrongness with something else that has happened, sometimes other people and sometimes ourselves, sometimes with God,

The second part is to do with how we deal with a story like this where someone is brought back to life. How do we normal mortal people who have to face death head -on, deal with that. Why doesn't God save the people we love, or would he if we only had the faith. And why did God let the boy get sick in the first place?

Whenever something terrible goes wrong, our first instinct is to blame something.
It doesn't have to be logical, or reasonable, or real. Our mind want to find a reason for the unreasonable, and so it manufactures a link if there isn't one there.

Undoubtedly, sometimes our actions do contribute to what happens to us, and how we deal with that is another matter and I'll touch on that in a few minutes. But see the illogical linking played out here with the widow and with Elijah.

It doesn't matter that Elijah has come into her household and saved her and her son from starvation in the drought. When the son stops breathing she links this with the other significant change that's happened in her life, the arrival of Elijah
"What have you against me O man of God?"
It's got to be his fault because he has connections with God. Forget the blessings he's brought. He is the other significant event, he must be the cause.

And then she blames herself:
"You come to bring my sins to remembrance and to cause the death of my son!"
What a daft thought, but then when our world falls apart we don't think rationally.
We all have sins that can come to our remembrance. If we don't then we aren't facing ourselves very honestly.
All of us have things God can bring against us, things we shouldn't have done, things we should have done, people we've hurt, times when we've acted as less than we know we should be.

The faith Jesus taught us about says this is covered by grace, by God's love, by forgiveness, by compassion. God doesn't punish us by making terrible things happen. We're quite good enough at doing that ourselves.
And God doesn't cause the death of people's children, or anyone else. If life worked like that all the bad people would be dead and all the good ones alive and healthy. The ones in between would just be a bit sick, or a lot sick. You could work out how sinful a person was by how healthy they were.

It is a ludicrous idea and it makes no sense. Not only that, Jesus made clear God doesn't do that sort of thing. "He makes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust." Jesus said.
From the perspective of how the mind works, what we are trying to do is to find a reason, to make sense of the pain. If we can find a cause that makes sense of it.

But often, pain is not sensible. It is just painful and without reason, and the response of Jesus to pain was never judgement or blame, he never played into that game, it was always compassion, and it didn't matter who was hurting.
Do you remember the story of the man born blind, and the people were asking whose sin caused it, and Jesus response was no one's sin. But in the face of this tragedy, God's glory was to be shown - and that was through his act of compassion and healing in the moment.

Even the great prophet Elijah's not immune from blaming. "O God, have you brought calamity even upon this widow by killing her son."
Elijah is blaming God in his distress. God what are you doing? He's a very normal human being.

People do look to God as the cause of natural tragedy but it's a very dodgy thing to do. The moment we get into the idea of saying that droughts and floods and disasters are God's doing, we put ourselves into the state where we have to blame God for every disaster and thank God for every good fortune - and plough through the interminable complexity of trying to work out whose sins or virtues are responsible for which bit of good or ill fortune, who is to blame. Very un-Jesus-like. Then we find ourselves in the interminable state of trying to guess what is going to please or displease God.

The people of the Old Testament found themselves in just this quandary. Jesus taught us that God doesn't work this way, and he set us free from this kind of constant looking over our shoulder to see if God is going to punish or reward us.

We will encounter tragedy and we will encounter amazing moments of good fortune. The question is not why God did it, but in the midst of it, who are we, and how can we bring the compassion and love of God to this aspect of being human, being mortal, and living in a world full of complexity, risk, adventure and delight. They are all a part of being human. How we live is the question that God asks of us.

How do we deal with a story like this? If God saves this lad, and the one in the story of Jesus and the widow of Nairn, why does he allow someone else to die. If He saves one, why not save them all. Or is it random? Is God so capricious, so arbitrary in His actions. If so, then God can't be relied on for anything. He might suddenly decide to take someone's life, just on a whim that has no logic, and save another, on the same basis.
I don't believe in that kind of God.

Elijah was simply there when this lad suddenly became sick. Elijah didn't sit down and say "God will I save this boy or let him die?" What he did was an emotive, passionate and heart wrenching response of compassion driven intuitive action.
Is there some kind of formula here? I've heard of people in some circles who think that they can find some kind of prayer formula that will fix people.

Miraculous healings happen, but there are not because of any formula. There are moments when the inexplicable happens. They cannot be manufactured. They come out of compassion and deeply felt human response that taps into our unity with God at the deepest level. And they are unrepeatable, spontaneous and astounding. But we humans like to have things in our control. So some people say miracles can't happen because they can't formularise it. Some people tell you there's a formula and if it doesn't work then someone hasn't done something right.
God can't be formularised like that.
All we can do is be people of compassion and intuitive closeness to God, and let God do what God will do with us.

One day Jesus went to Nazareth, his home town. He'd just come from Capernaum where he'd done a whole string of miracles. And the people of Nazareth were saying "You do the same things here that you did in Capernaum. And Jesus said, "In the land of Israel there were many widows, but only one had her son saved by Elijah. There were many lepers in the time of Elisha but only Namaan, the captain of the Syrian army, was healed."

What's he saying? These things aren't a formulaic system, any more than falling in love or that moment when suddenly the sky changes and you know that there's been a shift in your whole life, or you have that special moment of closeness that is unrepeatable with someone you love. They are something that happens when you click with a moment, and with God and the normal course of events suddenly changes.

The only thing that is constant in any of these miraculous moments is the closeness to God, the intuitive connection, the nearness imbued with compassion that allows sometimes, for the miraculous to happen.

There is one commonality between the two stories, of Luke's gospel and the story with Elijah and the widow of Zarephath.
In both cases, when the boy is brought back to life, Elijah, and Jesus, give the boy back to the mother. When Jesus touches the dead parts of our lives and gives them life again, it isn't just for us.

If ever you've experienced a moment of grace, forgiveness, renewal, restoration, and said "Thank you God for giving me this part of my life back again, I thought it was dead and gone." it isn't just given back for your sake. It is given back for the people we love and who love us, for the people who depend on us, whose lives are tied up with ours and whose lives will be affected by who we are and what we do.

And if ever you feel, "God, I don't deserve to be forgiven, I don't deserve to be set free from what I did, or didn't, how can I accept your forgiveness and restoration" - It isn't just for you. God gives us life back, for the sake of those who need us to be all we can be, because God loves them too.