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Today is the final Sunday of a three week sermon series I’m sharing called Mythbusters. Each
week I’ve been looking at the myths that prevent us from having a deeper relationship with God
and a deeper relationship with the church.

What is unique about this series is our congregation was able to choose the myths that I preached
on. At our Grand Opening service three weeks ago I shared eight possible myths for the service.
You voted, and I’ve preached on the top three vote getters. Not many churches let the people
vote on the topics of a sermon series.

The first week I looked at the myth, “I believe in God, but don’t need a church.”
Last week I looked at the myth, “Church people are hypocritical and judgmental.”
Today I’m closing the series by looking at the myth, “if God is so good, why is there so much
pain in the world.”

I have shared two resources that will help you get more out of today’s sermon. One is the
sermon notes section in your bulletin. I encourage you to take notes. I hope that during the
sermon you’ll hear something that you want to remember—maybe a piece of information or a
story that will help you in your faith. I encourage you to put this sermon notes section in a
prominent place and refer back to it during the week.

Second I want to encourage you to use the devotion that is in the bulletin. In this devotion you’ll
have the opportunity to look at more Scriptures that relate to this theme. I encourage you to use
it during the week. This devotion is something that can bind us together as a congregation.
When we see people from Chain of Lakes during the week we could talk about the devotion.

I want to encourage you to find ten minutes a day to use the devotion this week. Can you take
ten minutes for the purpose of growing in faith? My heart soars when you tell me that you use
the devotion. This week I was out visiting Val. We had a lovely visit on Thursday night. At the
end of our visit she told me that she was using the devotion. My heart just soared.

One final note—next week I’m starting a Lenten sermon series called “Discovering Jesus again.”
In this sermon series I’m going to look at how Luke—the writer of the third gospel—looked at
Jesus. Each week we’ll look at a theme in Luke.

During Lent in the devotion we’ll read through Luke. We will have the opportunity to read
through Luke as a congregation. It’s about four chapters a week. We’ll have our own Bible
Study through the devotion.

In the bulletin we’ve put a flyer about this sermon series. I want to encourage all to invite one
person to worship next week by sharing this flyer.

If you misplace the devotion, you can find it on our web site. We post it on Mondays.
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During this series I’ve started out by trying to understand how people develop each myth.

We want to be a place for the unchurched. As you and I continue to invite the unchurched to our

congregation, it’s important for us to understand the obstacles that prevent people from a

relationship with God and a relationship with the church. I would guess that a lot of unchurched

folks and possibly many of us hold today’s myth.

Today’s myth is “if God is so good, why is there so much pain in the world?” The issue

is pain and suffering. We could ask the question in a variety of different ways. Why do people

suffer; why doesn’t God do more to prevent suffering; why do bad things happen to good people;

why do good things happen to bad people? It’s a big question. There isn’t a famous theologian

in our history who hasn’t shared a thought on this issue.

What matters ultimately is not what a theologian in the past thinks about pain and

suffering. What matters are the conclusions that you and your friends develop. Our beliefs

about suffering will go a long way in determining the type of faith we have.

I want to approach this question in a very caring way. We’re not approaching the

question by shooting out intellectual ideas. We could. We could sit at a bar and talk about this

question all through the night. This is a question that gets discussed late into the night in college

and seminary dorm rooms.

Today we are not approaching this in a cavalier way because all of us have suffered.

Some of us have suffered this week. We carry this suffering with us. One event in the world can

trigger our own emotions. I don’t want this sermon to trigger more suffering. I want to approach

it in a very caring way.

I’ve been with many families at their greatest time of suffering. As a pastor I’ve

officiated at least a hundred funerals. I’ve seen suffering in my friends. About a year ago one of

my closest childhood friends died. His name was Jeff Gravon. I knew Jeff ever since the 2nd
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grade. We grew up on the playgrounds ball fields of Worthington, Minnesota. He was a part of

my life. He stood up for me when we were married. Jeff was the Boys basketball coach at New

Prague High School. He was one of the most committed fathers that I’ve ever met. He had four

children—two step children and two of us own. Even after his divorce he cared for his step

children as if they were his own. Jeff had Hodgkin’s disease in his 20’s and about two years ago

it came back. It came back with a vengeance. He had to have one of his arms amputated. Some

of you might remember his story as KARE 11 ran a number of stories on him. The community

of New Prague did a fundraiser for him—Tubby Smith the men’s basketball coach at the ‘U

spoke at it.

I accompanied Jeff on many of his chemo trips in Rochester. I vividly remember sitting

with him in a room as he waited to hear from the doctor the results of his cancer treatment. I’ll

never forget the tension in that room. I can hardly imagine anything more terrifying than to sit in

a room and wait for a doctor to tell you if you are going to live or die. That time Jeff received a

good report. But his cancer got worse. On a cold night in January of 2009 I got a call in the

middle of the night that Jeff had died at Methodist Hospital in Rochester. I went to the hospital

to console his family. I officiated both of his funeral services and graveside.

Because of his death his two younger children had to leave their home community of

New Prague to live with their mom in Colorado.

Jeff’s death is not fair at all. That a man in his prime who loved his children and loved

his family and community would die. A man who took care of his body his entire life and fought

his cancer until the very end. It’s natural to wonder, God if you’re so good why did this man

have to die.

It’s the unfairness of suffering keeps people from God. I think of one of the main

characters in the book the Shack. We’re going to do a four week book discussion on the Shack.
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Mack had four children. One weekend while his wife was visiting some friends Mack took his

four children camping. At the end of the camping trip one of Mack’s children fell out of a canoe.

Mack swam into the water to rescue him. While Mack was doing this, a predator kidnapped

Mack and his wife’s youngest daughter. Eventually she was killed. Her body was never found.

The tragedy affected Mack’s relationship with God.

The tragedy had also increased the rift in Mack’s own relationship with God, but he ignored this
growing sense of separation. Instead, he tried to embrace a stoic, unfeeling faith, and even
though Mack found some comfort and peace in that it didn’t stop the nightmares where his feet
were stuck in the mud and his soundless scrams could not save his precious Missy.”

Mack’s re-discovery of God and his ultimate healing make up the Shack. If you’re intrigued I

encourage you to come to the book discussion on Thursdays in March.

I want to gently try to dislodge this myth by looking at two ideas that lead us to question

God’s goodness. You might want to write these down in your notes. Two ideas that lead us to

question God’s goodness. The first one is:

1) We see suffering as punishment by God for our own sins.

We see this idea shared all the time. Remember what Pat Robertson said after the horrible

earthquake in Haiti. Did some of you hear it? He said the Haitians are cursed because of an

alleged pact the Haitians made with the devil in 1791 while seeking to overthrow the French.

Basically he’s saying the Haitians sinned and God is punishing them.

Now every ounce of my body wants to rise up and shout from the mountain tops—this is

wrong. I would guess that most of us disagree with Pat Robertson. But I also know that on a

different level it is easy for each of us to think this way. How many of us when something bad

happens we wonder—did I do something wrong? Or a friend might say, “God must have

something out for you.”

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The disciples thought that God punished people for their sins. Jesus knew this. In

today’s reading he was told about a terrible tragedy that happened. Let me set this up. During

the Passover all the men in Judah were supposed to go to the Passover for a festival. It was a

pilgrimage. As part of the pilgrimage the men would go to the Temple and sacrifice a lamb.

They would offer the blood as a sacrifice to God. During the Passover, Pilate—the same Pilate

who ordered Jesus to be killed had some Galilean men killed. He then mixed the blood of these

Galileans with the blood of the animals that were sacrificed. Isn’t that gruesome?

When Jesus was told about this, he asked a question. Do you think that these Galileans

who were killed were worse sinners than all the other sinners? Can you hear echoes of the belief

that God punishes people for their sins?

Jesus went on to tell of a modern day event. A tower fell and killed 18 people. Jesus

asked the question—do you think the 18 who died were worse offenders than everyone else

living in Jerusalem.

Jesus answered the question. The answer is simple. The answer is “No.” The Galileans

weren’t punished by God; the 18 who died in the accident weren’t worse sinners than the rest of

the people in Jerusalem. If Jesus was alive today he would say the Haitans weren’t punished by

God in the earthquake. Jesus was saying that God doesn’t indiscriminately punish people with

suffering for their sins.

A second idea that feeds this myth is that faith is an insurance policy against suffering.

The idea that if we practice our faith well then we shouldn’t suffer.

I never realized that this idea was part of my belief system—until I experienced suffering.

I haven’t experienced a lot of pain in my life—though I’ve ministered to people who have

experienced pain. I do have a story—it’s a silly story. It involves a girl. I’ve shared some of the
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story before. I made the mistake of falling for a girl—two semesters before I was going to

graduate and probably leave New York City. Love is not always rational, right?

We started a relationship. We dated for two semesters. Then it came time for me to

decide what I was going to do after I graduated from seminary. I asked the girl if she could

make some sort of commitment to me. She said no. That should have been my first red flag.

She wasn’t willing to break up—she just wasn’t sure about the future. I made a strategic

decision. I decided to stay in the New York City area and try to find a church job there—in

hopes that if I was around we could stay together and who knows.

There was another piece to this relationship—my own prayer life. I had a prayer life for

a year or so. I was praying about this relationship. I was keeping a journal of my prayers. I was

practicing my faith.

Fast forward—surprise—things weren’t going well—at the end of the summer after I

graduated from seminary I went to my home in Worthington for three weeks. When I came back

the worst thing that I could imagine had happened. Not only did this woman decide to leave our

relationship—without telling me—she started another relationship behind my back. And she

brought this new person to the seminary and paraded the relationship in front of all of my

friends.

Our relationship went very, very sour.

I was angry. I was very angry with God. How could you, God, I shouted with the

intensity that rivaled anything that Job could have expressed. I didn’t deserve this. I had

sacrificed in my own life to give this relationship a chance. She didn’t have an obligation to be

with me, but to embarrass me in front of my friends. I shared with God that I had been good in

my faith. I had prayed; I had a deep prayer life. Whatever happened to ask and you shall
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receive; seek and you shall find; knock and the door shall be opened. I had done the right things

in my faith and still I was suffering.

Somehow I had come to the mistaken view that if I was good, then God would be good

back. And I was in seminary!

I should have known better. I had read the Scriptures before, but I had missed a

significant teaching of Scripture. No significant character who followed God seriously in the

Bible did not experience some sort of suffering. Think of all the significant people in the

Scriptures—Adam, Abraham, Sarah, Moses, Miriam, David, Ruth, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Esther, the

disciples, the apostle Paul, and of course Jesus. If you don’t know who these people are don’t

worry, I’ll teach you who they are. They all suffered. Suffering is part of the faith journey of

Christians.

The question of why people suffer is the hardest question. We can wrestle with this

question our entire life and never find an adequate answer; we can read the Scriptures from the

start of Genesis to the end of Revelation and not come up with an answer. We can claim all sorts

of theories and some of them make a lot of sense. But at the end of the day much of suffering is

a mystery.

Sure if I was a expert geologist I could come up with an explanation of what happened in

Haiti in last month’s earthquake; if I was a expert psychologist I could explain why we humans

hurt each other; if I was an expert sociologist I could explain why nations go to war; if I was an

oncologist I could come up with an explanation of why the cells in my friend Jeff’s body went

malignant. In this room we are disciples looking for a piece of spiritual understanding from God.

Today’s myth asks if the existence of suffering means that God really isn’t a good God.

The best response I have to share today is God can redeem any suffering. This displays God’s

goodness in a powerful way.

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Mack experienced in the Shack. If you join the book group you’ll discover the delight

that Mack eventually experienced. This is what I experienced in this relationship with this

woman. The two of us went to counseling and today she’s a friend of mine today. She came to

my wedding and I attended her wedding. I still keep in contact with her.

And this is what happened with Jesus.

Let me ask you a question. What was the worst event in the history of the world?

Murder of God. It was Jesus dying on the cross. Can you imagine anything worse than

the willfull, pre-meditated murder of Jesus—fully God, fully human.

Look at how we describe that day. We call it “____ Friday.” We call it good. How

many crosses are in the world. We have one. Billions? How many people go to worship on

Easter Sunday to celebratet he resurrection. Billions. It is the most attended worship service of

the year. On Easter Sunday we celebrate that the worst event in human history was transformed

to the extent that billions of people go to worship on Easter Sunday. No amount of suffering

cannot be redeemed.

If this isn’t goodness I can’t imagine what goodness is. Suffering can be transformed and

this shows us God’s goodness.

This is what Paul was saying in the second reading that Tiffany shared. Nothing can

separate us from the love of God. This is the second point—God’s love is the most powerful

force in the universe. Nothing can separate us. Listen to Paul’s words again. In his penultimate

phrase he said:

“I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things
to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to
separate us from the love of God in Christ our Lord.”

In his remarkable book “Where is God when it hurts?” Philip Yancey put the point like

this:
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…the Bible consistently changes the questions we bring to the problem of pain. It rarely, or
ambigusously, answers the backward-looking question “Why?” Instead, it raises the very
different, forward-looking question, “To what end?” We are not put on earth merely to satisfy
our desires, to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. We are here to be changed, to be made more
like God in order to prepare us for a lifetime with him. And that process may be served by the
mysterious pattern of all creation: pleasure sometimes emerges against a background of pain,
evil may be transformed into good, and suffering my produce something of value.”
(Page 95, Where is God when it hurts?”

What’s important for us as a church is how we love each other during times of suffering.

How deeply will we love each other? It’s such a privilege to start a new church. How many

people have this opportunity in their lifetime? You and I have an opportunity that few people

have. You & I can share God’s goodness to each other when we are hurting. The church is

operating at its best when it is loving and caring for the people in the congregation who are

hurting. This happens all the time. Val shared with me this week how meaningful it was when

a pastor came and sat with her and listened to her story when her husband suddenly died a few

years ago; I had this opportunity share God’s love this week with Nancy and her family when

they put her dad into hospice. As a faith community we share the goodness of God with each

other.

Let’s commit ourselves to being this type of community. Let’s be a place of deep and

relevant caring; let’s be a place where we support each other in your journeys—especially in

times of suffering; let’s be a place of joyful love where we are released to love each because

God’s love. When we question God’s goodness, let’s be the goodness of God to each other.