Spiritual First Aid Christchurch

From Wellington Cathedral of St Paul

Spiritual First Aid Post Christchurch And a little bit more.

6 March 2011 The Revd Dr Raymond Pelly

• Psalm 84;
• Sirach 48:1-19;
• Matthew 17:9-23

http://wellingtoncathedral.org.nz/index.php/Sermons

Their hearts were shaken and their hands trembled, They were in anguish, like a woman in travail. Sirach 48:19

Truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; nothing will be impossible for you. Matthew 17:20

The best spiritual First Aid after the Christchurch quake came from Dean Peter Beck: ‘This is not an act of God: this is the Earth, doing what it does. The act of God is how we love each other, how we reach out to one another.’

Perhaps that’s all that needs to be said. Yet for any reflective person it raises questions. Do Peter’s words mean that God has disowned the physical creation? Has the earth moved overnight from being ‘mother earth’ to an impersonal force, blind, cruel, destructive? In Samoa, similarly, the sea, once thought of as sacred, as source of life, suddenly turned into a Tsunami invading life with terrifying force. Tupua, Samoan Head of State, wrote of, ‘the roaring sound of the wave, screeching towards [villagers] with driving rage, as if belching from the bowels of hell, whistling eerily, taunting death and destruction’. When the earth and the sea move from giving life to causing mass destruction, it’s as though the normal coordinates by which we steer our way through life are suddenly thrown into confusion.

So is there anything we can say about all of this?

I. Fundamental is the fact that God creates in freedom. This means that just as humans are free to choose good and evil, so the universe is free to be itself, to obey its own laws. This has corollaries.

• Of the universe we’d have to say that it’s for real. How else could life as we know it come into being? The processes that go to make up the universe have their own autonomy whether this be the Big Bang at its origin, the birth and death of stars, the fiery core of our planet, its tectonic plates, oceans, or the emergence of life in all its complexity and beauty. This is the universe that Christians call the Creation. Thus when an atheist like Christopher Hitchens says, ‘How can you believe in a God who allows earthquakes?’, we might reply, ‘How can you believe in a God who does not allow earthquakes?’

• In this way the God who creates in freedom allows real autonomy not only to people but also to the physical processes that make up the universe. This means that God forgoes the power to interfere directly in what is evolving. What then is God’s relationship to what we see happening? We could say that God cares and that this shows itself in a willingness to enter the creation, to suffer its horrors as well as share its joys. God thus seeks to transforms life from within. He is its beating, caring heart. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus is where, for all the darkness, this light becomes fully visible.

• So we have to get hold of the fact that life is for real. We live on a planet – part of a larger universe – where there are earthquakes and tsunamis, where some people are afflicted with disease or misfortunes. If, by our piety, we think we can avoid this, we are kidding ourselves. Our particular freedom, then, is to care and to reach out as God cares and is involved; to pray with an aching heart, to get close to the action (like the relief workers in Christchurch), to make a difference, to rescue, to comfort, to rebuild.

II.

This still leaves questions.

1. What has God to do with the victims, the dead? 2. What has God to do with the living, the survivors?

In relation to the dead, we need to make clear that the God who creates in freedom is the one who takes full responsibility for life, its horrors included. Grounding this in the sufferings of Jesus, we might see how, in the cross, God discovered with fullest intensity and in a way that God alone can know, what it means to be a victim. Not only that, God’s impulse to share suffering is only exceeded by God’s desire to give healing and life. Christians would therefore want to affirm that the dead are in the care of this God, the one who shares suffering, death included, and gives life - endlessly. Do we need to say more?

In relation to the living: that in the global world we now inhabit nobody need die alone or suffer alone. Paul writes: We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. (Romans 14:7) The upshot, then, of all I’ve said so far is that the universe is set in the mode (or key) of care – witness Christ’s God-driven desire to share suffering and multiply life. This is the beating heart of the great experiment in freedom of which we are a part.

We only have to look around to see that this is real: rescue teams arriving from all over the world in Christchurch; people there & throughout our country doing their utmost to help, spontaneously & often heroically; our two nations, Australia & New Zealand, drawn together in mutual caring by the Queensland floods, and now the Christchurch earthquake. We are called, in other words, to care for each other with all the passion with which God cares for us. This freedom to love, surely, is the very freedom that God intended for the creation all along.

III.

To grasp the full implications of what I’m saying about God, we might draw a distinction between a God who is omnipotent and God who is pre-eminent in love. If the agency of the former involves power alone, that of the latter acts with the power of love, a power, however, that respects human freedom. Thus, while an omnipotence of power can always by-pass human actions (and the laws of nature) to achieve its ends, a divine way of acting that is pre-eminent in love is (by its nature) fully respectful of human freedom (as of the laws of nature). It works, that is, through the hearts and minds of people. Now people are drawn into working with God; the living God who takes the initiative in sharing suffering or empowering liberation – all in the name of the very abyss of love that God is.

We might compare this understanding of God to a wise and loving person who, because deeply respected, profoundly influences all those who come in contact with him or her, but who always leaves them free – for good or ill – to make their own decisions. This person cares passionately about people and comes to them with an infectious vision and personal practice of the fullness of life. This person, further, is outstanding (or pre-eminent) in love in the sense of never exercising ‘power over’ others, but rather by being endlessly generative – no doubt on the basis of the track record of their own life – of a ‘power to’ love, to hope, to care (or whatever) in others.

People are thus profoundly affected, but always through inspiration, influence, example, love, accumulated wisdom, and sometimes through a guidance and persuasion that always stops short of dictating. In this way we arrive at a picture of the way our loving God acts that can be seen as free, full of life, proactive yet restrained, powerful yet never domineering.

To finish, then, three affirmations.

First, the God who cares passionately is the very antithesis of the God who is indifferent to our suffering. ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you’ (Jeremiah 31:3).

Second, if God works with us (and we with God), we can begin to grasp what is meant by the ‘miraculous’ or the ‘supernatural’. When people are seized by the energies of God, they surpass (or transcend) themselves in acts of love which, in their extra-ordinary character as spontaneous and heroic, not only reveal some of the true glory of God, but also exhibit the greatness of which flawed human beings are capable. We can thus glimpse the depth of St.Teresa of Avila’s words, ‘Christ has no body now but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours’; or St. Irenaeus, ‘the glory of God is a human being fully alive’ and therefore fully alive to the needs of others. He adds, ‘The life of humanity consists in the vision of God’.

Thirdly, come back to Peter Beck: ‘The act of God and the miracles has been the extraordinary way people have pulled together, reached out to one other. The act of God has been in the tears of people, in the weeping, in the lament. The act of God is in the compassion people are showing to one another. The act of God is in the courage people are showing.’