Sermon Jan 9, 2005

"Ruling the Earth"

In the Old Testament Book of Job we read of a profound tragedy that Job suffers:

One day when his sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in the eldest brother’s house, a messenger came to Job and said, "The oxen were plowing and the donkeys were feeding beside them, and the Sabeans fell on them and carried them off, and killed the servants with the sword; I alone have escaped to tell you." While he was still speaking, another came and said, "The fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and servants, and consumed them; I alone have escaped to tell you." While he was still speaking, another came and said, "The Chaldeans formed three columns, made a raid on the camels and carried them off, and killed the servants with the edge of the sword; I alone have escaped to tell you." While he was still speaking, another came and said, "Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house, and suddenly a great wind came across the desert, struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people, and they are dead; I alone have escaped to tell you."

To be truthful, the story seems a little bizarre, this confluence of events that manages in one day to wipe out virtually all that Job has; his possessions and most of his family.

But such events are not as strange as we would like to think. Consider Rwanda a number of years ago. Some of the victims of that tragedy witnessed the slaughter of their families, the destruction of their homes, and then perished themselves, while hiding alone in the jungle, from hunger or thirst or dysentery.

Today we hear of Tsunami victims who have lost family, friends, home and livelihood: and who still face disease, thirst, hunger, infection, and even exploitation.

The story of Job continues. It recounts Job’s steadfast refusal to complain against God despite all he has suffered. That response is a topic for a whole other sermon, but I want to look at something else today.

Job is joined by three of his friends and the text continues:

"And when his friends saw him from afar, they did not recognize him; and they raised their voices and wept; and they tore their garments and sprinkled dust upon their heads. And they sat with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great."

I think we can learn something from Job’s friends about how to respond to tragedy. They join him in his mourning. They weep, they wail. They tear their clothing and throw dust upon their heads. All these were common elements in the ritual of mourning in that culture; designed to show their identification with his pain.

A few years ago I was at the funeral of a friend who committed suicide. His children’s friends didn’t know how to respond. They thought that somehow they were supposed to make the family feel better: but that wasn’t going to happen. They thought that somehow they had to give his children answers for why their father was dead: but there were no answers to give.

I explained to several of them that what the family needed right then was to simply know that they were there for them in their time of grief; that a simple, "I’m sorry" and a hug was enough.

Sometimes we think that suffering is a problem to be solved or is something we should make disappear. And seeing others suffer makes us uncomfortable, we would like it to go away as fast as possible.

We would like to think that the pain people feel will quickly subside, that they will soon be able to move on with their lives, that in a little while their joy will be restored. But grief and suffering endure; indeed they can sometimes last a lifetime.

As I tried to explain to the kids, suffering is not something that can be magically erased. No, suffering is something we need to join. We need to stand side by side with the sufferer, to enter into their pain, to feel it with them, so that those who suffer can know that they are not alone in their season of grief.

We can excused these teenagers for not knowing how to respond to their friends pain, It is, unfortunately, a skill learned over time.

But in some ways we can be guilty of the same sort of response when we seek simple answers to the problem of suffering; when we demand to know why things happen.

Part of the response of Job’s friends can be instructive here, as we seek to respond to the events of last week. The book says, "And no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great."

For seven days and seven nights Job’s friends sat quietly beside him, respecting his grief and sharing it. There was no rush to analyze why this tragedy had befallen Job, there was no hurry to come up with sympathetic platitudes or well-intentioned explanations.

Yes, eventually we want explanations for why things happen, but sometimes respectful silence in the presence of pain is more appropriate.

Sometimes our search for reasons is no more than a quest to reassure ourselves that the world really isn’t that dangerous a place. "They shouldn’t have built so close to the shore. They should have had a tsunami warning system. They should have known that when the ocean receded so dramatically, that it would come rushing back with a thousand times the force." Sometimes respectful silence is to be preferred, a silence that stands mute before overwhelming horror.

I’m so thankful that, to my knowledge, the major spokespersons for evangelical Christianity, Jerry Farwell and Pat Robertson, haven’t yet shared their customary analysis of "Why God let this tragedy happen." You may recall their pronouncement that God allowed September Eleventh to happen because of gays, abortion, and the ACLU. You always knew you had to watch those people who try to protect our freedom, didn’t you. Talk about the need for some respectful silence in the face of human grief.

Of course if you have read the book of Job then you know that Job’s friends didn’t stay silent long enough. They spent the next thirty chapters trying to convince Job that he was suffering as punishment for sin. Job spent the same thirty chapters telling them that they were wrong.

In the end God appears and announces that Job is right, that his suffering wasn’t punishment for sin. Then God rebuke’s Job’s friends for their heartlessness. I guess our evangelical brethren never bothered to finish reading the book.

The tsunami wasn’t a judgment form God. It wasn’t a warning from God. It wasn’t an act of God. It was a freak event of nature.

In the end the Book of Job doesn’t seem to answer the problem of human suffering. And today, while people are still dying, while bodies are still being buried, while the grief still flows so fresh and deep, today is not the time for us to theorize about why these things happen; today is a time to be respectfully silent on the question of why.

And maybe today, instead of trying to answer the question of why these things happen, we should focus instead on the question of what we should do about human suffering; of how we are to respond to it.

Several years ago, when leaving Armory Square, I was walking alone to my car when a young man, maybe fifteen or so, came up to me, and to put it delicately, offered certain services in exchange for twenty dollars. Naturally, I declined his offer. Then he asked me if I could give him a dollar. I pulled ten dollars form my wallet. I gave it to him, and begged him to go home and not do what he was doing. I warned him of how dangerous it was.

He took the ten dollars. As I drove away, I saw him walking back home. He waved and smiled as I passed.

Now I’m under no illusions. He probably walked straight to his drug dealer and bought what he needed for the night. And he was probably back on the street the next day, approaching someone else. But at least for one night he didn’t have to demean himself. At least once, someone treated him like he was worth something.

I also remember how I felt as I drove home. I was angry. I prayed and asked God, "Who cleans up that mess? Who helps that kid?"

Of course the answer is pretty simple. We do … or we don’t.

The truth is, we are in charge of much of what happens or doesn’t happen on this earth. In the first chapter of Genesis, God says to humanity, "Fill the earth and rule over it."

Now this passage has been taken by some as an excuse to strip-mine our national forests; but I suspect they would do that anyway, even without the verse to justify their behavior. Exploiting the earth is not what this verse is about.

What this early Hebrew myth is really talking about is our responsibility to rule this planet, to manage its affairs with justice and with compassion and with love.

There is a kind of spiritual scape-goating that takes place in much of religion. We have a tendency to pass the buck, and to pass it all the way up to God. For example, I was looking through some prayers the other day.

One of them thanks God for clothing the naked. To be truthful, I’ve never seen God give anyone so much as a pair of socks; although I do suspect that there is some spiritual force behind the disappearance of many of mine. But God doesn’t clothe the naked. We do …or we don’t.

Another prayer thanks God for our health. In Ghana, Africa, they have just begun a program to provide health care to every family. The cost, 66 cents a week per family. We could provide healthcare to the poor of the world. We will…or we won’t.

Another prayer gives thanks to God for feeding the hungry. But God doesn’t feed the hungry. We do…or we don’t. There is enough food in the world to feed every person alive. If people are hungry, the problem isn’t that the world is poorly designed. The problem is human greed, human incompetence, and human apathy. We could feed the hungry if we wanted to.

Still another prayer thanks God for lifting up the oppressed. But God doesn’t vote or pass propositions or battle for civil rights. We do…or we don’t.

There is a reason why Marx called religion the opiate of the masses. It’s in part because religion has the tendency to keep us looking upward instead of inward to our own responsibility or outward to our responsibility to hold our leaders accountable for the shape the world is in.

Today we could ask God to help the victims of the Tsunami disaster. We could pray that our government leaders don’t forget the victims as soon as the media moves on to a new story. But God won’t send bottles of drinkable water to the thirsty and God won’t hold our leaders responsible to finish what they begin. We will…or we won’t.

We are responsible for almost everything that happens on this planet. We are responsible for ninety percent of the good that is supposed to happen, just as we are responsible for the ninety percent of the suffering that occurs.

It’s our job to see that the naked are clothed, that the hungry are fed, that the oppressed go free, that war ceases. The fact that most of the human race has called in sick, doesn’t mean we weren’t supposed to report for work. The fact that we’ve done a pretty poor job at fulfilling our responsibility doesn’t mean we should consider a career change. Our history of failure doesn't free us from our obligation to rule this planet with justice and with love.

Much of what religion calls upon God to do actually falls within the sphere of human responsibility. Maybe we need to stop seeing God’s command to "rule the earth" as a mandate to exploit the planet and recognize it as a call to responsibility, as a vocation that belongs to us alone.

I will be the first to admit that ‘ruling the earth’ seems like an overwhelming task. In fact part of my frustration with the sad situation of that young man in Armory Square was that I was already putting in hours every day mentoring young people, and I just couldn’t help him. I had no more time or energy to give.

But here the ‘we’ in the phrase "we do…or we don’t’ is the operative term. No one can fight every battle, and no one can meet every need. The demand is simply overwhelming.

Several months ago I quoted the Buddha. "Your first job is to find out what your job is supposed to be, then to give yourself to it with your whole heart." I was speaking then of how to avoid being overwhelmed by the demands of life; but the same principle holds true when it comes to fulfilling our part of the human responsibility to rule the world with justice and fairness and love.

I believe that for each of us there is a need that we are supposed to fill. I believe that we can each discover that need, and pour our energy into it.

Will that be enough to change the world? Probably not. But imagine a world where each person does their bit to make it better; where each person takes a little time to reach out to someone in need, to make one life a little better. Imagine a world where every person spends a little time, a little money, a little energy lifting someone up. And imagine a world where everyone went out and made a difference in one other person’s life.

Imagine a world where every person of conscience speaks and then speaks again; where leaders are not inundated with the selfish demands of special interest groups, but with the voiced concerns of caring people. Imagine a world where the cry for justice isn’t a voice in the wilderness, but a constant drumbeat in the ears of our leaders.

The letter from the UU Service Committee that we handed out last week contained this quote from the Talmud that seems appropriate today:

"Do not be daunted by the world’s grief. Do justice now. Love mercy now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it."

Perhaps the best response we can make to the tragedy in South Asia is to resolve to take seriously our share in the human vocation to rule the earth with justice and love.

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