"When There Is No Miracle"

Today the church enters the season that is sometimes known as Ordinary Time, that long stretch of weeks from Pentecost until December and the beginning of Advent. No major celebrations or feasts occur during this time, no special periods of repentance or preparation.

Just the ordinary, daily routines of life in the Church.

Ironically, Ordinary Time begins this year with two extraordinary stories of raising the dead to life.

First we hear the story of Israel’s greatest prophet, Elijah, who goes to the town of Zarephath, where there is a severe drought. There he encounters a poor widow, who despite her poverty, gives Elijah water and the last bread she and her son have.

In reward for her hospitality and generosity, her jar of meal and oil do not run out until the famine is over.

But that miracle seems paltry to the widow when her beloved son becomes ill and dies. In her grief, she blames Elijah for her son’s death.

The prophet responds by taking the boy’s body to his own bed and crying out, “O Lord my God, let this child’s life come into him again.”

And scripture tells us that God listens to Elijah, and the child is brought back to life.

Today’s gospel reading bears many similarities to the Elijah story. As Jesus enters the town of Nain he comes upon a funeral procession. Another widow is grieving the death of her only son.

When Jesus sees her, he has compassion, and tells her not to weep. Then he comes forward and touches the funeral bier and says, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” And the dead man sits up and begins to speak.

These are miraculous stories of God’s amazing power, stories of great compassion and great joy.

And yet I find myself disturbed by them – because I find myself thinking of all the grieving parents whose children have not been raised from the dead, particularly two mothers I know.

Where was God’s power in those cases? Where was Christ’s compassion for them? Where was their miracle?

I know that raising these questions from the pulpit would brand me as a heretic in some religious circles. That certainly would have been true at a funeral I attended several years ago.

That graveside service was for a young man named Nathan, the only child of my cousin Terry. Nathan was killed in a car wreck, almost two years to the day after his father died in a boating accident.

One family, two tragic accidents. Why has my cousin been subjected to so much grief and suffering? There is no answer to that question.

Or at least there is not to me. But the preacher who presided at Nathan’s funeral had one. It was all God’s will.

We might not understand why God plans these things, he said. But we should take comfort in knowing that Nathan’s death, like his father’s two years earlier, was part of God’s divine plan.

An image immediately popped into my mind of God waking up that August morning, wondering what was on tap for the day, then looking at the divine calendar and saying, “Oh yes, now I remember.

“This is the day I planned for Nathan to get into a truck driven by a friend who has had too much to drink. And I need to remember to make sure he doesn’t fasten his seatbelt so that he is killed when the truck slams into a tree, although no one else is injured.”

I think that this preacher truly believed he was offering comfort to my cousin and all who were grieving that day. And maybe there were those who were comforted.

But I wasn’t.

I agree more with another young woman I know who spent the last month in the hospital, keeping vigil by the bed of her 18-year-old son, who suffered severe head trauma and brain injury from a combined assault and drug overdose.

Katie has written a widely-published blog about her son Henry’s struggles.

At the end of one poignant essay she writes, “I am praying a lot more than I used to – bargaining with God and basically begging. Because if this is the plan God has for my kid, it’s a Very Bad Plan. I am opposed. Anti. There has to be a better plan.”

Despite Katie’s prayers and beseechings, God did not grant her a miracle. Henry died last Monday evening and was buried yesterday in Knoxville.

I did not get to attend the funeral, but I pray that the priest who presided over it had the good sense not to say that Henry’s death was part of God’s plan.

Surely God does not act that way. I would want no part of a God who does – who cruelly and intentionally causes suffering and tragedy. Why would such a God be deserving of worship and praise?

I have no satisfactory explanation for why some people are hit with such unspeakable tragedies. There is no satisfactory explanation for why sometimes healing occurs and sometimes it doesn’t; why sometimes prayers seem to be answered and sometimes they are not.

But I refuse to believe that tragedy, illness, and suffering are willed by God.

The only answer that I find even remotely acceptable to such questions comes from William Sloan Coffin, a minister, activist, and theologian who died several years ago. Coffin was chaplain at Yale during the tumultuous years of the Vietnam War, then later became minister at the prestigious Riverside Church in New York.

Coffin’s son, Alex, was killed in a traffic accident when his car skidded on wet pavement, then plunged into Boston Harbor.

In his first time back in the pulpit after his son’s death, Coffin dismissed any suggestion that the accident was part of God’s will.

He would never understand why such senseless tragedies occur, he said.

But then he added, “I am convinced that when the water washed over Alex’s sinking car, God’s heart was the first to break.”

We may wish for a God who always raises children from the dead, who heals every illness, who prevents every accident.

That is not the God we have.

But I can take comfort from and believe in a God whose heart is the first to break, who suffers and grieves with us, and who will never leave us alone.

This comfort is not all that we might desire or need from our faith.

Our questions will remain, our hearts will continue to break, our faith will be tried.

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Readings

1 Kings 17:8-24

Galatians 1:11-24

I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it. I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors. But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus. Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days; but I did not see any other apostle except James the Lord’s brother. In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie! Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, and I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea that are in Christ; they only heard it said, “The one who formerly was persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy.” And they glorified God because of me.

Luke 7:11-17

Soon after healing the centurion’s slave, Jesus went to a city called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, “Do not weep.” Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has risen among us!” and “God has looked favorably on his people!” This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.

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