Why Did This Happen? - When Belief Meets a Tsunami
Sermon by Steve Edington
March 6, 2005
I enjoyed our service last Sunday as we kicked off our annual pledge drive. In addition to its being a well done worship service, what made it especially enjoyable for me was that I could sit at the back of the sanctuary and take it all in. Among the announcements and promos that were flashed on the wall over here, above and behind the chalice, was one that listed many of the programs, events, services, areas of interest, and outreach efforts we as a congregation offer. Somewhere in all that a Jack Kerouac reference got slipped in, implying that part of what goes on here includes occasional references to this writer and his work. I had nothing to do with that getting up there. Folks other than I planned and put on that service. But, yes, I am the one who makes those occasional references to the writer's life and work. So I figured that for the sake of truth and integrity in advertising I'd lead into my sermon for today with a passage from one of his novels. You asked for it, after all. My little piece of scripture even relates to the topic I want to share some thoughts on this morning.
The novel is Dr. Sax. It is one of five books Kerouac wrote that recalls his growing up days in Lowell, Massachusetts. He published 18 novels during his lifetime altogether. The central event of Dr. Sax is the New England flood in the spring of 1936. That was the year the Merrimack River rose well above its banks, causing considerable damage in the New England towns through which it flows. Many of its tributaries, like the Nashua River that runs in front of our church here, also rose above flood level. Fortunately our church buildings are on high enough ground that the water did not reach them. This was all a bit before my time, but I think there are those here today who still remember all the flood of '36.
Jack Kerouac was 14 years old in 1936, and Dr. Sax is written from the perspective of his 14 year old self in the person of a teenager named Jackie Duluoz. At one point in the novel young Jackie stands on one of the bridges overlooking the swollen Merrimack River as it rushes by in torrents. This passage describes his thoughts: "Unbelievably now, I returned to see the flood still rising - after supper - the mighty roar beneath the bridge was still there, casting mist up into the sea air... I began to be afraid now of watching under the bridge... I tried to follow filthy brown wave crests for a hundred feet and got dizzy... I began to dislike the flood, began to see in as an evil monster bent on devouring everyone - for no special reason."
Focus on just that last line: "I began to dislike the flood, began to see it as an evil monster bend on devouring everyone - for no special reason." The broad theme of this novel has to do with childhood and adolescent fantasies; and having a fourteen year old see in the unthinking workings of a flooded river "an evil monster bent on devouring everyone" fits into that fantasy motif. But, I would suggest, just a couple of months ago, millions of persons, all around the world, became that boy on a Lowell bridge, as we witnessed by way of television, newspapers, and other forms of media the devastating effects - with respect to the loss of human life and the destruction of human property - of the tsunami wave that rose out of the Indiana Ocean in southeast Asia. The latest death toll figure I've seen is 175,000 human lives. However much our rational minds may tell us that this was just nature doing its nature thing - which it was - it was hard not to see, at some other level of our beings, an "evil monster bend on devouring everything."
But the real challenge to the human mind, soul, and spirit when it comes to this mind boggling event, is found in those four additional words Jack Kerouac puts in the mind of his young Jackie Duluoz: "For no special reason." In the face of a natural event of the magnitude that this adolescent is witnessing, he can't help but ask why. The fact that he can find "no reason" bespeaks a sense on his part that there's got to be a reason somewhere, or somehow for the ferocity of nature that he is watching roar by. Perhaps in writing that passage the adult Kerouac is recalling how the flood of 1936 wiped out his father's printing business in Lowell, thereby inflicting economic hardship on his family. He may have been remembering how the river that had, up to that time, been a friendly and nurturing presence in his childhood. He and his friends had played along its banks and even swam in it. Now it had undergone such a horrific transformation that he ascribed to it the human characteristic of "monstrous evil." Hold that scene, now, for a time.
The reaction to the horrific transformation of a placid ocean into a tsunami came, as I've observed it, in three stages. Each stage came rapidly, with one almost overtaking the other. The first was just shock and disbelief at the devastation itself-all those people dead and all those homes, villages, and entire towns wiped out. It took some doing just to comprehend all that. The second, hard-on-the-heels stage was, and is, "We've to do something." This second stage is still ongoing - in some very commendable and heartening ways. Relief efforts have been organized and carried forth. Survivors are being helped to rebuild their lives, and two former United States Presidents, and one-time political adversaries, have become "best buds." This second stage is far from over, and will have to continue over the next number of years. Those of us in a position to help in any way should not let it get lost or fade.
Then, even as this second stage was kicking in, yet a third one emerged, which I'm calling the "How could God let this happen?" stage. Like Jackie Duluoz, trying to fathom some reason for the flood he was watching, even as he could find none, many folk tried to find a role for God in the whole matter - on the assumption that such a role, and such a God, existed.
The Anglican Dean of Sydney, a Rev. Philip Jensen, Australia kicked off something of a row after saying that such disasters are part of God's warning that judgment is coming. The Chief Executive of the Federation of Islamic Councils, Imam Amjad Ali Mehboob, weighed in with "We need to seek forgiveness in the event that we have done something that we are not aware of even." The President of the Hindu Council of Australia demurred on that saying he didn't believe the disaster was a direct result of God's anger. And on it went. However differing such opinions as these may have been, there was a common, underlying assumption in all of them that there is a Supreme Being who somehow has something to do with this devastating event.
One of the more honest and soulful expressions I found in the whole "Where is God in all this?" question was in the Christian Century magazine, a journal that generally reflects the theological, social, cultural, and political perspectives of liberal, mainline Protestant Christianity. This is a journal for which I have a great deal of respect and appreciation, even when I don't completely buy into all of its stances and expressed opinions. I'd like to read for you the opening paragraph of its opening editorial from this past January 25th:
"It is hard to speak theologically about the Indian Ocean tsunami without being banal or obscene. To say that the event reminds us of our finitude or of our inability to control nature is to mumble platitudes. To say God willed such devastation for some greater reason is to administer a theological slap in the face to the tear-stained faces of all who mourn, especially the parents who mourn their drowned children. To say God was powerless to do anything to stop this disaster may make the divine seem less monstrous, but it leaves us with a God not worthy of the name."
The author of this editorial is not identified, which is not important. He or she wrote it out of a sense of compassion and pain, and out of what clearly appears to be a struggle of the soul over what this disaster meant. Of the four sentences in this paragraph I'm in full agreement the first three. It's the last one that trips me up: "To say God was powerless to do anything to stop the disaster may make the divine seem less monstrous, but leaves us with no God worthy of the name."
To my liberal theistic friends, with whom I have a great deal in common when it comes to assessing the state of our society and world and how persons of faith should respond to it; and with whom I share a great deal in common in wanting to aid the victims of the tsunami - to them I offer the following thought. Those few words capture perfectly, for me, the bind one puts oneself into, and the knots you can twist yourself into, by insisting that the only God "worthy of the name" is a willful and all-powerful Deity who rules over all of Creation - including the world of nature and natural events. To throw in a personal note here, I moved over to the Unitarian Universalist ministry, from the liberal theistic camp, when I found I could no longer, in good faith and conscience, accept the idea of such a Deity. My break with fundamentalism had already taken place many years prior to that. Does this mean I have completely abandoned the idea of, and the search for, a God "worthy of the name." Not quite. That search goes on for me - as we move on in this sermon as well.
To let go of the idea of a willful and all-powerful God is, as I've found for myself anyway, not all that scary. It means, first of all, accepting the idea that the natural world and universe in which we live is one that regards us, in Albert Camus well known words, with "benign indifference." Setting the actions and doings of human beings aside for a moment, our natural world - in all its machinations - does not wish us harm or evil. Things like "harm" and "evil" are human ideas or constructs. And as human beings we have to take them very seriously, and deal with them as such, because human beings do inflict harm and evil upon other human beings, and upon the earth as well. But a tidal wave or a tsunami or a tornado or an earthquake or any other natural phenomenon you can name, and to which we have affixed the term "disaster," knows nothing of harm or evil itself.
Neither is there a Deity behind such phenomena who knows of such things either. Whether it is a mindless wave claiming the lives of tens of thousands of people, or a mindless multiplication of cancer cells claiming the life of a single individual, there is no willful intent - evil, good, or otherwise - in either case. Because we are human beings we are rightfully, and we are understandably, devastated by such happenings. We, rightfully and understandably, try to design measures to prevent or at least mitigate them. To not be devastated by such happenings, and to not wish to reach out to those affected by such happenings, would in fact be a denial our very humanity (Ayn Rand's disciples notwithstanding). But such happenings are not about God.
What then, if anything, is about God? This is the last piece of the puzzle I'll try to work in today, knowing that there will always be further Sundays for further considerations of further puzzles. I'll go with this for today: We may live in a universe that is indifferent to us but we do not have to be indifferent to it or to one another. We human beings have been given a capacity, a sense, an intuitive kind of consciousness that lets us know that we have a relationship to and with the rest of Creation - even as we are a part of it. We do not fully understand, and may never fully understand, what this relationship is all about. We know that we are sometimes blessed in this relationship - that this earth on which we live, and the larger universe of which it is a part, nurtures us and sustains us and accords us meaning, and gives us a place to play - just as children play along a riverbank. For some of us the earth itself is our primary spiritual wellspring; that's what earth-centered spirituality is about. But in this very same relationship we can be hurt - terribly and horribly hurt at times - just as easily as we can be blessed. We entered into this relationship with all of life when we drew our first breath and we will each remain in it until we each draw our last.
We had no choice, really, about being in this relationship. Our parents took care of that, and their parents before them, and on and on back as far as you wish to take it. But we are each given, I believe, something I call the power of the human spirit, or the power of the Spirit of Life itself, that allows us to meaningfully live within this relationship through all the turns it takes. This is not a Spirit that is confined to our individual selves, but one that finds it greatest expression as lives are shared and touched, and reached out to - both in times of joy and in time of crisis or loss.
For those who choose to call such a Spirit "God" I consider that to be a God indeed "worthy of the name." This is not a God who has power over the natural world, but One instead who gives us the power and the means to live in relationship with that world-through all the twists and turns such a relationship can take. And this is enough. This is all we need. Indeed, it is all we have. We live, "here on the paths of everyday", encountering what every day give us, and giving to, and making what we can of, every day as well. And in so doing, we also, in the words of the poet Edwin Markham, "Build eternity in time." Let's sing that together.
Stephen D. Edington
March 6, 2005
Copyright © 2005 by the Unitarian-Universalist Church of Nashua NH. All rights reserved.
