From the Pastor

Why? - Nov. 2006

The prophet Daniel saw it (Daniel 7:9-10). Isaiah hoped for it. “O that thou wouldst rend the heavens and come down.” (Isaiah 64:1) The Ancient of Days, God Almighty, was coming to judge the world. I find it interesting that God is described in Daniel as an old, white-haired man. Also the fact that Daniel is a book that points us to the second coming of Christ. The Ancient of Days, the one who has been around forever, is wise and he is coming and that is good news for us.

Do you wish for God to come down? To save us from this world? To deliver us from evil? That’s what you pray isn’t it? Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done?. . . .Give us this day our daily bread and deliver us from evil. . . in the Lord’s Prayer. To free us from the bonds of sin and death and decay? Don’t you wish God would come down and answer some of your questions and set the record straight? Anybody who has ever believed in God has wished for Him to come and make things better. And anybody who has ever wanted God to come down from heaven has also wondered why He hasn’t yet. Why has He stayed hidden for so long?

The prophet Isaiah was troubled by this. He had some questions to ask of God who he thought had gone into seclusion. He called God a hidden God. And to some extent that is what He is for most people. Hidden. And so God’s people have always wondered why God does what He does? Or doesn’t do what He doesn’t do? For the OT Church the questions were: Why had the people, who were God's chosen people, turned away from God? Why did Israel reject the word of God? If faith is God's gift, and if God preserves us in faith, then unbelief and the hardening of our hearts must be God's doing too, right? Or as the writer of the Book of Hebrews reminds us, Jesus is the Author and Perfector of our faith. Then way do so many fall away?

Why are some saved and not others? Why do some cling to their God given right as baptized children and others reject it? Why do some who have been taught the faith cling to the Word and sacraments in which they have been taught while others turn away from him in unbelief? Why does God allow other things to become more important than Him? Calvinism is able to supply a ‘logical’ answer. It's God's doing. Faith and unbelief, salvation and damnation are all God's doing because He is sovereign and the buck stops with Him. Sometimes we think the same way, "Why, O Lord, do you make us wander from your ways?" (as if sin were God's fault). "This is your fault, God. You are the potter, we're the mud, and if the bowl comes out misshapen and lumpy, blame the potter, not the mud!"

We have many why questions to ask God ourselves when He does return. "Why do bad things happen to good people?" is a popular one asked by those who have bad things happen to them. The moralistic answer supplied by the famous Rabbi Kushner was that God was all loving, but He wasn't all powerful. God would love to do something but He just doesn't have the power to prevent every little bad thing from happening. He just doesn't have his finger on every button.

The moralistic answer has provided a certain measure of comfort to some people, as long as you don't think about it too long. Think about it: God is love, and His love is protected. God doesn't want planes to crash and babies to die but He can't stop those things from happening. While it may be nice to know that God is love, if He doesn't have the power to act on that love, He isn't much of a God and there surely isn't much comfort in a loving but powerless God, is there?

When you moralize with God that's what you get: A powerless God of love or a loveless God of power. But if God is both powerful and loving, then He is "immoral" for not exercising that power, and the most "immoral" thing He ever did was hang an innocent Jew on a cross as a sacrifice for the sins of the world.

Why does God permit the famines in Africa and the political corruptions that keep people from getting their food in due season? Why does God permit suicide bombers and terrorists and Talibans? Why does God permit cancers and coronaries, disease, destruction, and death? Why does God put up with injustice, violence, and evil in the world? Why does He permit six million Jews to be systematically killed in Nazi Germany or millions and millions of unborn babies to be systematically killed in the world every year? Why doesn't He just come down right now and clean up the mess up?

Little children like to play the "why" game with their parents. "Don't play in the street." "Why?" Because you might get hit by a car." "Why?" "Because a driver may not see you?" "Why?" "Because you're short." "Why?" "Because you're a child." "Why?" "Because I'm your parent and I say so and if you ask one more "why" question, you're not going out to play at all." "OK."

We have why questions aplenty for God. And when people ask them of us, we become tongue-tied and defensive. If God doesn’t give us the answers to the why questions, then why do you get so bothered when you can’t answer them? God doesn’t need defending? Could it be, oh arrogant human, that there are just some things that you just can’t know right now. Oh.

We need to learn that many of the "why questions" are out of bounds and unanswerable. We must put our finger to our lips and be silent where God has not given us anything to say. It is not the place of the clay to question the Potter. It is not the place of the creature to judge the Creator. It is not the place of the redeemed to question the judgment of their Redeemer.

To ask "why" of God is to call God's inscrutable judgments into judgment and so to bring judgment upon ourselves. It is to make God answerable and accountable to us, to make ourselves lords and judges over God, to be gods over God. It is to hold God responsible for our evil and sin and unbelief. Someone has to be at fault right, let it be God! Ooooo that sounds so familiar. “Adam did you eat from the tree that I told you not to eat from?” “The woman YOU put here with me, she gave me some fruit.” “And woman, what have you done?” “The serpent deceived me.” Someone is at fault, but it’s not me. If we can’t blame others then we blame God. Sometimes when we ask for explanations, we are accusing God of making a mistake, of bad judgment, of powerlessness, lovelessness, failure. Sometimes the why question lays a moral judgment on God. We think God is not behaving morally, and we want to know why.

To ask "why questions" of God is to deal with the hidden God, or as Luther called him, the "naked God." Or as theologians like to call the deus absconditus – the hidden will of God. That is the God whose presence causes the mountains to quake, the God who comes as a fire put to dry kindling, a fire that sets water boiling. The hidden God.

Like the prophets, we would call down the hidden God from heaven to deal with the situations in this world. "O that thou wouldst rend the heavens and come down" and clean up our streets and our communities, rid the world of evil and vice, straighten out our sicknesses and wipe out everything that threatens our lives and offends our sense of justice and morality.

But what would become of us if that God would come out of hiding? Would we be able to stand in the presence of this hidden God? And with what would we stand in His presence? With what righteous works would you greet this hidden God who causes even the mountains to shake in their boots? With your righteousness? With your use of God's name? With Your devotion to His Word? With your honor, love, and obedience of parents, pastors, governments, teachers, and bosses, and all whom God has placed over you? Could you say, “I worship you 365 days a year. I’m always reading your Bible. It’s my favorite book to read. And I’m always listening to the top 100 favourite Gospel music. That’s all I listen to!”

With your care and concern for your neighbor's needs, his property, his name and reputation? Do you really love your neighbour the way the Almighty would expect? Would you do anything for your neighbour? Please.

If God tore open the heavens and came down to wipe out sin and evil from the world, what would prevent him from wiping out us?

Isaiah rightly confessed, “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our so-called "righteous deeds" are like soiled and stained rags.” Isaiah literally calls our "righteous works" "menstrual cloths" in God's eyes. In the presence of the hidden God we are like leaves in the fall. We dry up and wither and His breath blows us away. And so we best be careful when we lay the "why questions" on God, lest we be blown away like a dry leaf on a windy day in November.

There are no answers to the why questions. Job didn't get an answer when he questioned why his life was stricken with so many misfortunes. We, the readers of Job, know why. It's because Job was righteous in God's eyes through faith in God's promise to save. That's why he suffered. But you wouldn't have known that from the way God treated Job. Jesus didn't get an answer to His why question when He cried out on the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" We know why. It was because He was made sin for us, though He was sinless, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. The Father abandoned His Son so that He would not abandon us. That's why Jesus suffered.

When we or any body else cries out to God “O that thou wouldst rend the heavens and come down," we can know that He did come down. He tore open the heavens and came down to us, but not quite in the manner we would have expected or had in mind. "He came down from heaven and was conceived by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man." He came down much lower than we expected. God came down, not as the hidden God of power, but as the God of the manger and the cross. He came down to be with us, to be one of us and one with us, to be joined with us in our humanity. He came down as the God who breaths and bleeds and sweats and dies. God came down to us in the Child of Bethlehem, the obedient son of Mary, the poor carpenter of Nazareth, the walking preacher of Galilee, the humble King riding on a borrowed donkey, the crucified Saviour of Calvary.

Today is a time to ponder and prepare for the next coming of God—the visible coming of Jesus in His glory. Then once again the heavens will be torn open, and the One whom we do not now see will be seen in glory. When? That's like the question why? Don't ask. You don't need to know. "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." And if even the Son in His humility did not know the day of His Second Advent, how can we ever presume to know?

We don't know when the heavens will be torn open for the final time. It could happen in the evening, at midnight , at dawn, in the morning. But we do know who it is that will be coming down. He is The One who came down, The One who comes down to us here and now in His Word that will never pass away, Jesus, is the One coming. He will come down to bring us up, to raise up all the dead and to give eternal life to all who trust in Him.

Until that Day, whenever that day may come, we wait, we work and we watch, leaving the ‘why’ and the ‘when’ questions to our gracious Father in heaven. We wait in prayerful anticipation. We work at the tasks we have been given by God to do as parents, workers, parishioners, citizens. And we watch for Jesus' coming. We wait, we work and we watch with confidence, knowing that He who will rend the heavens and come down is He who rent the heavens and came down to die for us.

Now the ‘why’ question is probably the hardest question that I as a pastor have had to deal with. So I know how often it is asked and how often you, God’s beloved children, struggle with it. And so as your pastor, I want leave with this poem that I hope will help us put our trust in the goodness and graciousness of our God.

WHY?

By Jack Hyles

I have heard the white-tipped tapping cane,

Which leads a blinded eye.

And then a darkened, lonely voice

Cries, “Preacher, show me why.”

I have caught a fiancée’s burning tears,

And heard her lonely cry.

She held an unused wedding gown,

And shouted, “Pastor, why?”

I have heard the cancer patient say,

“’Tis gain for me to die;”

Then look into his daughter’s face,

And mutely whisper, “Why?”

I’ve heard an orphan faintly say,

Who gazed into the sky,

“Tho' Mom and Dad have gone away,

My preacher will know why.”

I have sat beside a tiny crib,

And watched a baby die,

As parents slowly turned toward me,

To ask, “Oh, Pastor, why?”

I tiptoed to my Father’s throne,

So timid and so shy,

To say, “Dear God, some of Your own

Are wanting to know why.”

I heard Him say so tenderly,

“Their eyes I’ll gladly dry,

Tho' they must look through faith today,

Tomorrow they’ll know why.”

And so I’ve found it pleases Him

When I can testify,

“I’ll trust my God to do what’s best,

And wait to find out why.”

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