My plane to Texas left on schedule at 6 St. Mark’s Episcopal Church 6:20 Christmas morning and reached our final destination safely and on time. In the hour before take-off, as I walked through the halls of San Jose airport, I found myself thinking of the stories we’ve all heard about travelers who decided at the very last moment not to take a specific plane and, as a result of their decision, were the sole survivors of a flight that ended in disaster. I looked around me, wondering if anyone on my plane was experiencing any doubt. I decided that line of thinking wasn’t very productive and shifted my attention to other things. A while later, the extremely perky woman behind the counter at Gate 15 announced that she had a real deal for several lucky people. She acknowledged what most of us had figured out—that the flight was oversold—and offered a $400 voucher and a confirmed seat on the flight four hours later to anyone who would give up their seat. I wasn’t tempted. I hadn’t slept between the late service on Christmas Eve and leaving for the airport, so the idea of waiting another four hours to get on the plane—any plane—had no appeal for me. Even so, there was a moment when I thought—Is this the sign? Were my earlier thoughts just warming me up for this moment of decision?—and I really wanted an angel to show up and tell me exactly what to do.
We want to be safe. We want those whom we love to be safe. So we search for knowledge to control evil and danger in our lives— we look for keys to keep it locked away from us—we look for knowledge that will protect us and the ones whom we love.
Many of us pray that knowledge will come to us as easily as it did to Joseph. The writer of Matthew’s gospel tells of three angelic visitations to Joseph and another unspecified warning in a dream. The first tells him to go on with plans to marry Mary despite her pregnancy. The second tells him to take his family away. The third tells him it’s safe to return to his home in Israel. A final dream warning sends him to Nazareth in Galilee. Joseph responds with courage to each of these messages. Can you imagine leaving in the night on the strength of words in a dream? Can you imagine the courage it took to go back to the land Joseph’s ancestors had struggled so hard to leave? He does as he’s directed. He provides safe haven for Mary and keeps her and the child Jesus safe from harm. Joseph acts as he’s directed by the angels, and the Christ child is safe. But what about the other children in Bethlehem whose parents loved them and tried to keep them safe? Where were their angels when Herod was planning their death? Were there warnings that these parents ignored? Did God not care about these children? Or were these deaths simply an occasion when evil prevailed?
When things go bad in our world, when bad things happen to good people, when seemingly senseless events destroy the lives of those we love or those whom we will never know, our most immediate, most human impulse is to cry to God for mercy. We want God to show up. We want God to act like the kind of God we want. We want a God we can count on to make things right.
We want God to fix this horror. We want God to make it good again. We want God to give us a promise that it won’t happen again.
But that doesn’t seem to be the way God works.
Both good and bad things happen to people in this world that God creates. The events of our lives seem to happen for two reasons. The first is that the world is working the way the world works. There is no intrinsic goodness or badness about the workings of the world. As far as I know, gravity works every time. This is neither bad nor good, only a fact of nature. We label the events of the world according to their impact on our lives. An apple falls into our hands—this is probably a good thing. A limb breaks, and we fall out of a tree while we’re picking apples—probably a bad thing. Cataclysmic events that occur when the world is doing what it’s supposed to do are what the insurance forms used to call an Act of God. This was the name given to natural disasters—those events of nature beyond the control of humans. Floods, hurricanes and tornados, earthquakes and tsunamis.
The second reason things happen is that we humans have the gift of free will. I imagine that there are days when God regrets that particular decision. We use our God-given free will every day of our lives. We make choices—large and small—about our lives, and not all of those choices lead to wholeness in our lives or for the lives of others. We make good choices, and we make poor choices. We are free. Free to turn toward God and do our best to discern God’s
deepest desire for our lives. We are also free to turn toward evil and walk the path that leads to our soul’s destruction.
God doesn’t change our minds for us. Neither does God turn back the tidal wave. God doesn’t change the mind of a person intent on doing evil, and God doesn’t change the way the world behaves in response to our request.
The question of why bad things happen to good people—why the innocent suffer—is never far away from us. I don’t know the answer to that question. What I do know is that God does not willingly bring affliction or grief to any of God’s children. Our lives are changed in moments by the seemingly random movement of microbes and weather patterns and even SUVs and by the unimaginably evil actions of people who use the gift of free will to destroy the lives of others.
The evil that affects our lives is merciless, but the God who came to share our suffering 2000 years ago and today and next week and on and on to the end of the age—this God always meets us with mercy.
During this Christmas season, as we celebrate the coming of God to live among us—as we approach Epiphany and the manifestation of God’s light in the world, the story of the massacre of the innocents in Bethlehem—and the headlines in our newspapers—keep us mindful that the darkness is never far from us. We live in a world where the choice for good or for evil is part of the birthright of every person. We don’t have perfect knowledge of the future and the ways our lives will unfold, but we do have a choice about the way we live. Today we have chosen to come to this place. We come to give thanks and praise. We come to be nourished at God’s table. We come to strengthen our connection to God who creates us and loves us. We come to touch hope through the resurrection given to us by Christ and to remember that the light still shines.
The light still shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
Thanks be to God.