4th Sunday of Easter, Mother’s Day, May 11, 2014, St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Dallas, Texas.

Lessons for the Day: Acts 2:42-47, Psalm 23, 1 Peter 2:19-25, John 10:1-10

Introduction

Rabbi Kushner

In 1966 a young Jewish rabbi, named Harold Kushner, learned the devastating news that his three-year-old son, who had stopped growing and lost all of his hair, suffered from a rare genetic disorder known as progeria, or rapid aging. His son would rapidly age and then die in his teenage years.

Good People

Now this shattered the worldview of Rabbi Kushner. While he was a fairly inexperienced rabbi, he was still the one who comforted the people of his congregation when they went through hard times. To him, God was like a good parent who disciplined you when you did something wrong, but who ultimately had your best interest in mind, so that if you did wrong, bad things would probably happen to you, but if you did good, then God would bless you.

For this tragedy to strike his own family, to him, someone who was good, or upright, blameless, who followed the commandments, fasted and observed the right holy days, made no sense in his understanding of who God was. He couldn’t understand why bad things would happen to good people.

And so he set out to answer the question as he lived the fourteen years of his son’s life with him. He said he knew that he would one day write a book on God and suffering, but that it would be a very personal book looking at just this question. In 1981, he published the book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, dealing with just these issues.

Job

He popularized the question of why do bad things happen to good people, but the question is as old as time. In fact, one of the oldest books of the Bible, Job, deals with this same question. In the book of Job, Job is afflicted with the sudden deaths of all his children, the loss of all his wealth, and he has boils all over his body and is in immense pain. The book deals with the suffering of a righteous man and his questioning of God. In Job, the prevailing theology of the time is that if you are suffering, then you must have done something to deserve it.

Why Do Bad Things Happen?

Own Sin

But the whole of the Bible gives us three broad categories for why bad things happen. First, is our own sin or desires. If I were to smoke for forty years and come down with lung cancer, no one would be surprised. Of course it would be sad and people would empathize and seek to support me, but they wouldn’t be surprised. Or if I were texting and driving and got into an accident, and suffered as a result, again, I would have taken my life into my own hands as I drove while not paying attention.

Others’ Sin

The second category is for other people’s sins. If a husband were to betray his wife, the wife would suffer as a result of what he had done. Or if a drunk driver were to get in the car and kill two college girls, their friends and families would suffer as a result of that man’s poor decision.

Fallenness of Creation

The third category, and this is the one that most people really wrestle with, and often blame God for, is the fallenness and brokenness of creation. When God created the world, it was good. Humanity enjoyed perfect fellowship with God in the garden. But once the serpent tempted Adam and Eve and they ate of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, sin and brokenness entered this world. It was not God’s design for this world and he is not the author of evil. Romans tells us that through Adam’s eating of the fruit, we all suffer and die (Rom 5:18). We have a broken relationship with God, with each other, and with creation as a result of the fall.

Because of this broken relationship with creation, we experience a lot of suffering. Think of the tornado that tore through Moore, OK last year and killed the innocent school children, or of cancers that grow in our bodies and cause suffering and death. These are not punishments sent by God, but are a result of the brokenness of creation. And they can cause much suffering in our lives.

1 Peter 2

If you turn to our passage today in 1 Peter 2, it deals just with this issue of why do bad things happen to good people. Starting in verse 19, it says “for it is to your credit if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly.” We will suffer for injustices, and the brokenness of creation. (Verse 20) But if we endure for something we did wrong, what credit it that? Everyone expects you’ll suffer for your own sins, “but if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval”—it is commendable to you or finds favor in God’s eyes.

Christ as Example

(Verse 21) “For to this you have been called”—to suffering, we are called to suffering, as Christians—“because Christ also suffered for [us], leaving [us] an example, so that [we] should follow in his steps.” Christ came to enter into suffering as God in order to redeem it. Christ was the ultimate “good” person—“he committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth” (verse 22)—and he entered into suffering—the just for the unjust. He came, was betrayed, beaten, humiliated, crucified for us, so that we could have life. Rather than standing outside of suffering as God and looking down on us in our misery, he came to defeat it in a radical way, by enduring it himself and ultimately being victorious over death through his resurrection. God showed his power over suffering and death by his resurrection. And so this passage tells us that Christ came first of all as an example for us when we endure suffering. We can bear up under it, knowing that Christ too has endured suffering and defeated it—by his wounds we are healed (verse 24). Matthew tells us to take up our cross and follow Christ (Mt 16:24).

Rabbi Kushner

Unfortunately for Rabbi Kushner though, he couldn’t make this step of belief. He said, “I don’t know what it means for God to suffer. I don’t believe that God is a person like me, with real eyes and real tear ducts to cry, and real nerve endings to feel pain” (Kushner, 85). And so Rabbi Kushner missed out on seeing the transformative power of Christ to enter into and redeem suffering.

Christ as Shepherd

As the 1 Peter passage ends, it says “[we] were going astray like sheep, but now [we] have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.” Christ is also our Shepherd in the midst of our suffering.

Our gospel reading speaks of Christ as our shepherd. In the next verse of this passage, not in today’s reading, Christ says, “I am the Good Shepherd. The good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep” (Jn 10:11). That is just what Christ has done, laid down his life so that we could have life.

Our Psalm today, Psalm 23, which has brought great comfort to so many throughout the ages speaks of God as our shepherd. With Christ as shepherd, we shall not want, he makes us lie down in green pastures and leads us beside still waters (verses 1-2). Pasture and water were life to sheep and this he gives to us. He restores our souls in the midst of suffering (verse 2).

The psalmist knows we will suffer. Instead of saying, “if” we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, it says “even though” we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we will fear no evil, for he is with us (verse 4). We will go through suffering. All of us will experience the brokenness of this world. But we have Christ as our shepherd, one who has endured suffering himself, with us, to guide us and comfort us in the midst of it.

My Sister-in-law’s Example

My 35-year-old sister-in-law was struggling with infertility wondering if she would be able to have more children, when last summer she found a lump in her breast and was diagnosed with breast cancer. She has already undergone a double mastectomy and chemotherapy and is now on drugs that are shutting down her ovaries for the next two years.

She started a blog, calling her suffering, like the death of Lazarus, “an occasion to glorify God.” She wrote this prayer on her blog, saying to God “…Your will be done. Remind me that you are in control. Whatever the outcome (wow! that’s hard to say). I’m grieving the possibility that I may never be able to bear another child. I’m grieving that this cancer is going to follow me the rest of my life. Give me comfort. You know how my situation will best bring glory to your name. You know how it will…make [me] look more like Jesus… and all those close to me…Heaven come down. Jesus be near. Spirit we beg you for comfort! I can’t go through this without you…as much as I try to do this all on my own. Please go ahead of us…”

My sister-in-law knows Jesus as her comforter and shepherd in the midst of her suffering and she begs him to come near as he promises to do and be.

Christ as Power Within Us

Finally, Christ is not just our example and shepherd, but he is also the power within us. First Corinthians 15 says that Christ became life-giving spirit for us (1 Cor 15:45). Christ gave us the Holy Spirit—Our Great Comforter—to go before us and to rest with us in the midst of our suffering. Christ gives us the strength to endure suffering and the brokenness of this world.

And we can experience his presence in many ways, but especially as we do today, in gathering together for public worship, in hearing the reading and preaching of God’s word, in breaking bread together at his table (just as the first disciples did in Acts after Christ’s resurrection).

Conclusion

As we conclude, let’s come back to our question: Why do bad things happen to good people? Bad things happen because we live in a fallen world. But, in Jesus Christ, we have the ultimate “good” person, taking on the ultimate evil to conquer it and redeem it, so that we can have life. In our own suffering, Christ is our example, our shepherd, and the power that brings us through it.

–Find more Sermons by Keeley