The Man of Sorrows Comforting in Disaster

Reflections at a hospital chapel on 15 November, 2013 in a Service of Prayer for the Philippines Following the Haiyan (Yolanda) Typhoon.

The Rev. Lindsay Johnstone, Chaplain of Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney.

 

Jesus wept.

Jesus wept when a friend died.

Jesus wept, though he had seemed to be preoccupied when he first heard of the illness of his friend.

Jesus wept when he had been known to be a miraculous healer, but had let his friend die.

Jesus wept outside the cave where his friend dead for four days was now buried.[i]

Jesus wept,  but Jesus was not powerless.

Jesus wept in the Garden of Gethsemane, the night before civil and religious abusers nailed him to the Cross where he cried out, "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?"[ii]

Dear sisters and brothers, of ourselves alone, we do not know, we cannot tell why thousands died in an horrendous typhoon from which no one could run. We do not know why countless thousands more lost their partners, parents, children, grandchildren and friends. We cannot tell why they suddenly lost their homes and material possessions, their jobs, their roles in life, their dreams, their safety, their health or any certainty of medical help; or even any apparent reason to find any meaning in Christ and God the Father whom many of them worship and have worshipped for years.

We cannot, of ourselves, tell why it was they who suffered so horrendously, nor why it is not we instead. Why them and not us? Why anyone?

We can say only what Almighty God has said. And we can say with any objective confidence of truth only what is in the Scriptures or reflects the Bible's revelation.

We sang that though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for the Good Shepherd is leading me to his eternal banquet.

Jesus wept.

God did not push anyone into the valley of death. It happened partly because we live in an incredibly unfair and dangerous world, which increasingly shows the decay fostered by the universal stain of human sin. It happened partly also because Satan and his demonic forces still roam around the world seeking someone to devour.

It is unfair and inexplicable to the five senses alone-like the flames of a bushfire that takes two houses and mysteriously misses the house between them.

Yet the evil of this present world did not miss out on violating and taking the life of the very and eternal Son of God, the Man Jesus whose human birth we celebrate at Christmas- and whose mangled, bleeding and abused body dangled for three hours on a cross at Calvary.

Brothers and sisters, he was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, one from whom men and women hide their faces. But in the plan of God he was not powerless to establish a coming new order- even at the point of his deepest rejection. "Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. He was bruised for our sins, and by his stripes we were healed", as the Prophet Isaiah wrote in Isaiah 53.[iii]

Because as our substitute he carried our sins and illnesses, all our losses and our tragedies, he will within the new order where eternity defies and heals the ravages of time - he will eternally wipe away all tears from our eyes - where there is no more sickness, sorrow, death or tragedy.

In the meantime, in the present, because he was resurrected from the dead he is the Good Shepherd, and he is leading us through the valley of the shadow of death. Without any naive or callous understatement or undervaluing the plight of precious suffering folk- many of whom are your own - we may within heart-tearing pain, numbness, anger and confusion call upon Christ to heal, restore and rebuild.

The ability to trust him, the faith to believe is a supernatural gift from God that defies all the senses. Because the Holy Spirit is the Comforter, he is speaking to your heart and will. Let him in. Let him pour into your heart the empowering love of God and impart within you and all of us a new hope and the rekindling energy that this will bring.

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[i] John 11:1-44

[ii] Mark 14: 33;15:34

[iii] Isaiah 53: 3-5