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Second Sunday after Epiphany

Psalm 36
5Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens,
your faithfulness to the clouds.
6Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains,
your judgements are like the great deep;
you save humans and animals alike, O Lord.
7How precious is your steadfast love, O God!
All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.
8They feast on the abundance of your house,
and you give them drink from the river of your delights.
9For with you is the fountain of life;
in your light we see light.
10O continue your steadfast love to those who know you,
and your salvation to the upright of heart!


Some people collect hockey cards, I like to collect the foolish things said by TV evangelists.

In electronic form, these comments don’t take up much space. But that doesn’t mean they are few in number—just the opposite—for every time something dominates the headlines, you can count on some conservative TV Christian to say something foolish.

First out of the gate this week was Pat Robertson, the same Pat Robertson who famously suggested that the terrorist attacks on 9-11 were caused by American pagans, abortionists and feminists. True to form, Robertson gave voice this week to what many conservative Christians were thinking: that the people of Haiti brought this on themselves. He reminded his audience that Haiti began with a slave revolt, and repeated the oft-told story that the leaders had made a deal with the devil. Google “Pat Robertson quotes” or “stupid Pat Robertson quotes” for the full text.

Now, it’s easy enough to mock TV evangelists and conservative commentators and anything said on Fox News, or anything that comes out of the mouth of Sarah Palin, but the sad truth is that people are watching and listening and taking note. People seem to find some strange form of comfort in the quick analysis, and will readily accept what these seemingly learned people say.

And at its heart, the desire to understand transcends left and right. There is a primal need among humans to put events into perspective, to comprehend the incomprehensible, because to simply leave the reason aside seems to compound the pain.

So we ponder. We ponder and we theorize and we listen to the various voices that fill the airways and we decide. We decide who gives the most credible “why” and we follow. There seems to be an equally strong impulse to adopt a point-of-view, to leave the marketplace of opinions with one we can own, something that we can repeat when the subject comes up.

So for Pat Robertson, who imagines the devil lurking behind every tree and inside every non-evangelical Christian (who doesn’t hold his exact point-of-view), it’s not surprising that he would find the devil amid the destruction in Haiti. His search for why—the same impulse we all share—always seems to come up with the same answer. And while most people apply some sort of filter before they say completely inappropriate things on TV, Pat Robertson does not.

The wisdom books of the Bible, Psalms, Proverbs, the Book of Job, each wrestle with the “why” question. Sometimes it comes in the form of a question, or a series of questions, but most often it comes as declaration, the abiding belief that the good will prosper and the wicked will suffer. This is the heart of the wisdom tradition, sometimes called “classical wisdom thinking” and found throughout scripture.

We read together part of Psalm 36, and the tradition is there: “O continue your steadfast love to those who know you, and your salvation to the upright of heart!” The reward for righteousness is prosperity, and wickedness, destruction. You can read this in dialogue form for most of the Book of Job, as his comforters encourage Job to think harder about his misdeeds, because he undoubtedly caused his own suffering.

The problem comes when we mix hope with heavenly legislation. I think it would be accurate to say that most would want some reward for following the rules. Being upright should come with some sort of compensation, even if it is limited to the admiration of others. It seems very intuitive, just as the opposite does too. We hope that those who commit evil deeds will come to an ignoble end, because to have it otherwise seems completely unfair.

The disciples live with the same set of assumptions, best displayed in John 9, when they ask Jesus saying “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus says neither, but it is never really clear whether the disciples are convinced. They, like we, seem hard-wired to find fault, to assess blame, and assume that misfortune is usually self-imposed.

They want to know that the universe is ordered based on wisdom principles, that they will be rewarded or punished based on an existing set of rules, and that chaos is banished from the picture. And this is where they are wrong. Chaos is still very much in the picture, and the universe God made unfolds quite apart from the divine hand. In other words, God did not cause the earthquake, or the hurricanes, or the poverty. The first two were “acts of nature,” and the last the work of some very human people.

Through Latin America and the Caribbean, the patterns set in colonial times continue. A small elite, often with the blessing of the church or other outside forces, rules the country with little regard for the plight of ordinary people. Examples abound, with Haiti the most glaring. One percent of the population controls 50 percent of the wealth, with the rest sharing the lowest standard of living in the hemisphere.

There is little incentive among the one percent to make change, with corruption and mismanagement making the whole situation worse. Something as simple as a building code that does not require metal to reinforce concrete accounts for the vast majority of deaths in Haiti. Ensuring that buildings are constructed properly requires a measure of cooperation and greater equality. We live in hope that both may come to Haiti in the face of this disaster.

For those keeping track, I couldn’t resist coming up with my own “why” to the question of suffering in Haiti. There is no devil in this analysis, one I learned at that radical place called York, and one I saw while visiting those who experience inequality in places like Nicaragua and Mexico and Chicago. Like everyone else, I find comfort in fixing a little blame, finding the root, and trusting the situation can change.

The Psalms, scholars remind us, began as prayers written to God. Over time, as the religious life of Israel unfolded, believers became aware that they were divinely inspired words, that they represented a fond hope of heaven and a glimpse of God. We became convinced that if it were possible to express God’s desire for us, it would sound entirely like Psalms.

Psalms also represents the same “working out” of heaven that deep thinkers have struggled with from the beginning of time. Psalm 36 begins by describing the scandal of sinful people, what they are like, how they function, and moves on to contrast this with the ways of God. Lament becomes praise, because we cling to the hope that the world’s ways are not God’s ways, that there is no inequality in the divine economy, and that God’s primary desire is to save.

5Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens,
your faithfulness to the clouds.
6Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains,
your judgements are like the great deep;
you save humans and animals alike, O Lord.
7How precious is your steadfast love, O God!
All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

This is the hope of heaven, that the broken and the broken-hearted may take shelter in the shadow of God’s wings, that the homeless may find a home in God alone, and that God is suffering with the people of Haiti, not the cause, never the cause.

Christ-like figures abound in Haiti, those who set aside their lives for the sake of others, and those who risked life and limb in a dangerous city long before the danger was from an earthquake. Countless victims left the comfort and security of the developed world to bring medicine or security or know-how to the people of Haiti, making small sacrifices and then making the ultimate sacrifice. And just when it became obvious that danger only grows, more flock to this broken place, adding more sacrifice, armed only with a desire to help and the sense that God blesses their work.

We pray this morning for the dead and dying in Haiti, those who suffer and will continue to do so. We pray for the many who left comfort to bring aid, and give thanks for them. We pray for the families of the missing and the dead, and we ask God to comfort them. And we give thanks for God’s steadfast love for those who suffer, knowing that this love extends to the heavens, and faithfulness to the clouds, now and always, amen.

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 1:28 PM