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Epiphany 2005
SERMON - 10.15am, Emmanuel Church, Pokfulam, Hong Kong
Sunday 9th January 2005
Revd. Matthew Vernon
It's not been easy wishing people a happy new year.
The tsunami disaster has touched all of us deeply.
The scale of the disaster is incomprehensible:
• the forces of nature that create such devastation;
• the many countries affected and the distance between them;
• the number of people killed;
• the number of people whose lives have been devastated.
It raises deep and disturbing questions for us about life and about faith.
The global response to the disaster is remarkable;
• and shows how people around the world have been moved by the tragedy.
I had a few days holiday in Guilin this week.
The guide book describes an earthquake at the beginning of the last century that killed 300,000 people.
Then most people in the world didn't even hear about it.
For all that is bleak in our world,
• one sign of hope is our response to this disaster;
• that our communications allow us to respond so quickly.
What strange beings we are.
Its amazing that relief can now be delivered so quickly,
• yet we still say it's not been quick enough.
And watching countries pledging millions of dollars in relief –
• it has started to look like a competition to give the most:
• wonderful and weird.
Wonderful, weird and terrible are words that describe life.
As are incomprehensible, strange and mysterious.
The tsunami,
• like so much in life,
• leaves us with deep and disturbing questions.
Why did this happen?
How can so many people suffer so much?
Where is God in all of this?
Religion and science provide some answers,
• but they only take us so far.
Let's start with science.
What caused the earthquake?
Tectonic plates of the earth's crust moving against each other.
What caused the tsunami?
A huge movement of water as the seabed shifted sending an energy wave hurtling across the ocean.
Science even gives us early warning systems –
• though it can't tell us why, tragically, one wasn't in place.
And science can't begin to give any meaning to what has happened,
• the answer to the philosophical why,
• rather than the physical why.
Religion tries to explain too.
A friend this week wondered whether its part of the end times –
• terrible signs and wonders the Bible seems to promise will mark the end of the world.
It's certainly the end the world for many, many people whose lives have been devastated.
And that surely is enough.
The horror is enough without adding our religious mumbo jumbo.
People have been wearing placards proclaiming the end ever since the world began;
• and we're still here and the disasters continue.
Other Christians speak of God punishing the world.
It's understandable that the victims might think they are being punished.
The scale of the devastation makes them wonder –
• like one Indonesian reported in the paper.
But it's outrageous when Christians speculate from afar.
One pastor here in Hong Kong has said its God's punishment on sinners and unbelievers.
That is not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Do people really believe that God shakes the earth releasing a massive wave of destruction that kills believer and unbeliever?
Jesus would have had none of that.
Remember the story of Jesus being confronted with a man born blind.
• His disciples ask, "Who sinned, this man or his parents?"
• Jesus replies, "That's not the point."
• The question is "what is God going to do now?"
• And he promptly heals the man and gives him sight.
It is incredible that people believe God would destroy so many
• just because they don't share our faith.
Religious answers, like scientific answers, leave a lot unanswered.
Many people have wounds now, some that will never heal.
Fortunately many people have bandages too.
These images reminded me of something Dennis Potter, the British playwright, said.
In a famous interview about his life and work, he said
• "Religion is the wound and never the bandage".
It's a powerful statement.
And it challenges the way we often use religion.
Religion, faith, questions about life, the longing to know God, wonder and mystery are part of being human.
They are often painful.
Hence they are an open wound that we bear.
Often we think religion is a bandage that covers over the pain of life and the difficult questions.
Dennis Potter was saying that religion is the wound itself.
Religious experience is the mystery,
• the questioning about God,
• the space that can never be filled.
Religious experience is not having easy or glib answers to those questions and gaps.
"Religion is the wound and never the bandage".
The wound of grief;
• the wound of suffering;
• the wound of failure;
• the wound of a restless heart.
It's why so many people turned to pray and faith following the tsunami.
People saw in the New Year by lighting candles and keeping silence,
• rather than the normal celebrations.
People didn't sit and say "oh its o.k.; God has done this for a good reason." –
• its awful to even suggest that.
Questions and mystery were part of the wise men's experience;
• their journey.
They can't have known what they would find in Bethlehem.
And I imagine what they did find,
• an ordinary baby and its mother and father,
• rather than a prince in a palace,
• left them with more questions than answers.
The wise men are now wrapped in myth.
Myth that helps us on our own journey as we live with mystery and questions;
• as we journey towards meeting God.
I've mentioned a poem by W. H. Auden before.
"For the Time Being" has the wise men describing their journey:
• their physical journey and their spiritual journey.
In the poem the wise men are academics.
They've had careers in their own fields of study,
• but after years of thinking realise that they cannot answer all the questions life throws at them.
The first wise man is a natural scientist.
He has investigated nature with rigorous scientific method:
• experiments; testing.
He has searched for the truth,
• but knows science alone can't deliver that.
Like us today as we seek explanations and meaning in disasters like the tsunami.
This first wise man doesn't abandon his science,
• or claim to have found all the answers elsewhere.
He says "to discover how to be truthful now is the reason I follow this star."
The second wise man is a physicist.
He has explored the nature of Time.
And for sure physics tells us much about the nature of time and the universe.
He reflects on how difficult it is to live in the present
• since we are always distracted by remembering the past or anticipating the future.
Like us today as we struggle to find peace and be content in each moment;
• especially when we are hit with devastating acts of nature.
The second wise man, like the first, doesn't claim to have found answers,
• but describes the journey, saying,
• "to discover how to be living now is the reason I follow this star".
The third wise man reflects on morality.
• Why we should do and behave in certain ways.
How should relief resources be directed?
Should we choose the disaster hit countries as our holiday destinations?
For the third wise man,
• "To discover how to be loving now is the reason I follow this star."
And so they end saying together
• "this journey is much too long, that we want our dinners, and miss our wives, our books, our dogs, but have only the vaguest idea why we are who we are.
• "To discover how to be human now is the reason we follow this star."
The wise men travel with questions and longings.
They make their journey to discover.
They are like us on our journey of discovery,
• carrying our wound of faith.
And like us they look to Christ for meaning and answers.
They hope that God will satisfy their restless hearts.
That's not the same as finding all the answers;
• it can't be since God is ultimately unknowable and a mystery to us mortals,
• but it's a hope of peace
• and a journey towards love.
The star of Bethlehem continues to shine in our souls.
A light in the darkness;
• a promise of peace despite our questions and wounds;
• a hope that God is with us.
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