The Real Acts of God ~ Lamentations 3:22-33 ~ July 1, 2012

On a hot and rainy summer evening, I joined some seminary classmates on a thirty-mile trip to join hundreds of other people in the parking lot of where a church had once stood.

Because that morning, lightning had struck the church and burned it to the ground.

For nearly an hour, we stood in silence before the charred debris...to grieve what had become the darkest day in their church’s history.

The writer of Lamentations was doing much the same for the city of Jerusalem—but the destruction of God’s Holy City was an exceedingly greater tragedy than the destruction of the church; because no lives were lost in the church fire.

Jerusalem was, at one time, (literally) the center of the universe; the greatest city in all the world.  Under King David, the nation of Israel was a world power; such that no army could defeat them.  During this time, God’s people enjoyed prosperity and peace and security.  But that time was long gone.

The armies of Babylon invaded the land, and Jerusalem was burned to the ground.  Thousands of God’s people were killed during the invasion; and those who remained were taken exile in Babylon. 

Yet to the poet and anyone who had survived the invasion, a loss of this magnitude amounted to a loss of God.  All signs pointed to God, having left his people behind for good.

And the reason why was crystal clear: Israel had forgotten God and worshipped other gods.  They forsook God’s law and neglected their God-given duty to care for the poorest and most vulnerable of their own kin.  So now they were suffering the consequences.  It all made perfect sense.

Which leaves us with some burning questions:

Does God punish us like God punished Israel?

Can we sin so severely that God would leave us, on our own against an avalanche of suffering?

To hear the words of today’s text, the answer to those questions would seem as a resounding “yes.”  To the poet, God was responsible for everything, be it good or bad.

But what kind of picture of God does this Scripture paint?  Should we leave here today in a state of fear and trembling at a God who is threatening to punish us in the very same way?

If we listen very carefully to the poet’s words, we won’t hear of a punishing God...

As the poet stood among the ruins of Jerusalem, he (or she) the poet encountered a redeeming God.  A healing God.  A compassionate God.  In this seemingly God-forsaken place, in the darkest day of their people’s history, God was there.

And the poet didn’t encounter God by pretending the tragedy didn’t happen—or by gladly accepting that which was totally unacceptable.  The poet came face-to-face with the tragedy; face-to-face with anguish.

This is what the Book of Lamentations has to teach us. 

If we conclude that our losses and hardships are punishments from God, God will becomes dead to us.  Yet how can we do this when we don’t know God’s mind?  We can’t understand God’s ways as to why bad things happen to us.  And trying to explain our hardships as punishments from God will only drive a wedge between ourselves and God.

Instead, we should follow the example of the poet by confronting that which is most unacceptable in our lives.  We name before God our disappointments; we bring to God our anger. We go to those dark places and we cry out to God, even if we have no words of praise or thanksgiving to offer.

We can do this because God is not so wrathful that God would reject us for being disappointed with him; even angry with him.

Our God is a redeeming God.  Ours is a God who heals; who strengthens; who binds up those who are broken.  Ours is a God who delivers us from evildoers and evil situations so as to bring us into everlasting life.

If God acted only to punish, we all would fall away.  We would all be dust and ashes—because all of us have sinned.  Yet God does not curse.  God redeems.

Try as we may, we may never know the reasons why bad things happen.  But God’s will for you in your suffering is to be your redeemer.  God will meet us in the darkness and shepherd us to the joy that awaits us in the morning. 

And sometimes it will seem that God’s help will never come.  And that is when we must cling to the promises of God’s Word.  That is when we must remember God’s faithful acts in the past.  That is when we must come to the table for the bread and wine that will strengthen our faith and our trust.  That is when we must reach out to our brothers and sisters, through whom God will show us compassion and care.  God will deliver us.  Of that we can be certain.

Back at the church, a TV news reporter had caused quite when he went on camera and suggested that the fire was “an act of God.”

Well, by evening, a crowd of four hundred people had gathered (and this church was about the size of ours).  And from that crowd, a woman in her eighties stood up and said “God didn’t burn our church down.  But God is going to raise it up greater and stronger than it ever was before.”

We’ll live forever in fear if we believe in a God who acts only to condemn and to punish.  And that’s not who our God is.  If you don’t believe that, look at the cross.  An angry and wrathful God would not die on a cross.  A merciful and compassionate God would—and did.  This God will be your redeemer through whatever darkness befalls you in life.

This God will raise you up from the ashes.  This God will deliver you through the dark of night to a new and brighter day.