John 1:10-18
As we gather in worship today I think it is only fitting that we remember before God the mounting numbers of dead, over 100,000 people in 12 nations, who were swept away by raging tidal waves in the Indian Ocean Basin. The scenes we have all witnessed on newscasts or read in the papers do not begin to describe the anguish being felt by survivors. The earthquake and resulting tidal waves are of such epic proportion that it is possible we, though far away, may know people who were there or had loved ones there. Many people throughout the world will be in sorrow; and it will be years, if ever, before some have their lives restored.
Lutheran Pastor Eardley Mendis of the Purna Jiwan Mission in Chicago lost his wife Tamara who was 55 in the terrible tsunami. She had been traveling with their daughter Eranthie Mendis, who is 25 by train along the Indian Ocean cost between the cities of Maratuwa and Hikkaduaw, Sri Lanka, when the tsunami struck.
According to a Dec. 28 e-mail to staff of the ELCA churchwide office in Chicago, family members in Sri Lanka told Eardley Mendis that a half-hour before his wife and daughter were to reach their destination "a 30-foot wave came from nowhere and crashed into the train, toppling it. Passengers were submerged for several minutes before the water subsided." Eranthie Mendis "tried pulling her mother to safety, but people screamed at her to go because another wave was coming. She walked about 10 miles to a family home in shock, her father said." Our prayers go out to the Mendis family, and all the families of those who are in grief today. There are many relief efforts underway and you can give to the Lutheran World Relief Effort this morning through St. Matthew’s if you wish to, by using an envelope in the pew and marking it RELIEF.
What are we to do when we are confronted by such disasters? What are we to say about God in the wake of these horrible things? I think the Christmas Gospel is a great comfort here. In Christ God always promises to be present with us. When God took flesh, it was to know our suffering, Christmas is about the fact that God does not stay in the heavens. The one thing we can be certain of, is that the God who gave us birth does not watch us from a distance, Bette Midler’s song was beautiful, but God is enfleshed in the world in Christ, and reaches out now through you and me in the Holy Spirit.
God never promises we will be protected from harm. Though many people think that is what God is all about. People who think that way remind me of a family I knew in my first parish in Orange County. They had a beautiful daughter. At an early age they recognized that she had enormous talent, a gifted mind. Her parents decided that they would raise her to reach to the heights of this world, to find the fullest potential of her life. They did that by sheltering her so that she was exposed only to what is positive and good in this life. She really knew almost nothing of the deceit, and the lying and cheating of human beings. She knew nothing of the news that you and I hear on the television, or read in the newspapers, of the evil in the world.
They raised a beautiful girl, extraordinarily bright, idealistic and optimistic and a buoyant spirit. She was ready to fly. Because she was so bright she entered college in her early teens. It was there that she had the first contact with the world as it really is. And it's true that she flew. It was like those fragile butterflies that are so beautiful, but they have only one ecstatic flight on a summer day, and then they expire. That is what happened to her. She went through several painful experiences, and then married and divorced in a short time. At the age of twenty-three she committed suicide. Five years after her daughter's death, her mother finally found the courage to read her meticulously written diaries. After which she concluded that her daughter was simply ill-equipped to handle the reality of this world, the real world. She had fallen from the heights of idealism, onto the hard rocks of reality.
Human life is structured in such a way that you are supposed to fly, but it is also structured so that you will come down, and therefore you need to have landing instructions. For those landing instructions we turn to the life of faith. That is God gives us, it is what the Bible gives us. The Bible gives us reality about life. The Bible warns us that life can be tough, and there will be pain and sorrow, there will be betrayal and infidelity, and violence and hatred, all the things you and I know so well, and there will be natural disasters. But it says, nevertheless, you were created to live in God’s peace. God created you that way, and God wants you to know the very best in your life. To soar with eagles, but it will not be that way all the time, and when the crash comes, then God is there to help you get back up.
The Bible is about people who have been knocked down, trampled upon, abused, forgotten, oppressed, crucified, abandoned, exiled. And in every single instance, without exception, they say God was there with me, giving me wings to fly again. Just like the Jews in Babylon, saying, "You shall mount up with wings as eagles." You shall have life restored to you. Every one of them can say the same thing without exception. "I did it. I got up by myself. It's been hard, but it's been my own effort. Yet I can look back now, and I have to say it was not I, but the grace of God working with me."
We believe God cares about all creation and seeks to redeem it. It is all precious to God. While we struggle to comprehend the thousands of dead, God mourns the loss of them all. So, our first response is appropriately one of sorrow and grief. We offer prayers for the bereaved families and ask God to take into God’s arms those who are dead. Help us, we pray, in the midst of things we cannot understand, to believe and trust in the God who will help us land safely, in this world, or the next – God will grant us peace. We can hold tight to these words from Jeremiah "I will turn their mourning into joy, I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow. Amen.