BEGIN WITH “TITANIC” CLIP
“God himself could not sink this ship.”  Wow!  Just hearing someone say something like that makes me nervous.  I think it would be referred to as “tempting fate.”  At the least, surely you would want to knock on wood, wouldn’t you?
   And, of course, contained within that comment is the idea that God would have some desire to reach out and push the Titanic underwater, drowning everyone on board.  Why would God desire to do something like that?  Would that be a form of punishment for all those on board?  And if that is so does that mean that those on board that ship were just worse people than the people of that time who weren’t on that ship?  Or was God just going to lurk in the shadows of life, waiting for His chance to get those others as well in some kind of catastrophe?
     One of the most troubling questions of life can be spelled with three letters – why?  I was talking the other day with a woman who is a breast cancer survivor and she told me that one of the first things that occurred to her about her diagnosis was “why me?”  Perfectly natural to do that of course.  Any of us would do the same eventually at such news.  Why me?  Why not this person over here instead?  Why not this person over here who is pretty careless with the gift of life and sometimes seems to be wasting life?

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And when catastrophes occur in our world, such as the recent earthquake in Haiti, we often ask, “why?”  Why do things like this happen?  Why does God allow such things to happen?  If he is so all-powerful why doesn’t he stop these things?  Doesn’t He care about the suffering that is caused by things like earthquakes and tornadoes and floods, to say nothing of poverty, war and hunger?  Why do these things happen in God’s world?  How can we understand this?  Or, even, can we understand this – really?
     Fortunately we have in our midst people who have the answers to these questions.  These people speak out with the answer to these puzzlements and so help the rest of us to understand.  For example, in the case of Haiti, we have received an answer to the  “why” question from none other than Rev. Pat Robertson, who has had the answers to similar questions in the past, if you recall.  Three days after the January 12 earthquake, Rev. Robertson said on his Christian Broadcasting Network program that he knows why this earthquake occurred and caused so much terrible suffering to the people in that nation.  The answer, according to Rev. Robertson, is that the people of Haiti have “made a pact with the devil”.  Expanding on this idea, Rev. Robertson said”
“SOMETHING HAPPENED A LONG TIME AGO IN HAITI AND PEOPLE MIGHT NOT WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT.  THEY WERE UNDER THE HEEL OF THE FRENCH AND THEY GOT TOGETHER AND SWORE A PACT TO THE DEVIL.  THEY SAID, ‘WE WILL SERVE YOU IF YOU’LL GET US FREE FROM THE FRENCH.’  AND THE DEVIL SAID, ‘IT’S A DEAL’.  AND THEY HAVE BEEN CURSED EVER SINCE BY ONE THING AFTER ANOTHER.”

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What makes this statement so comforting to those who ask “why?”, at least for me, is that brother Robertson not only understands why God punishes people with things like earthquakes, he also knows about conversations that the devil has and what the devil is thinking.  What rubbish!  What arrogance!  How self-righteous can one person be?
     Rev. Robertson is probably, at least partially, thinking of the history of the people of Haiti, which  is a record of suffering and oppression.  It is true that a group of slaves and even some slaveholders fought against the French and won independence for Haiti in 1804.  Since then, Haiti has been plagued by natural disasters, particularly earthquakes, evil dictators, and corrupt governments.  Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.  The large majority of its people have to scratch for the basics of life, while a handful of wealthy families just get more and more affluent.  In response to Rev. Robertson’s hateful words about the people of Haiti and the horrible circumstances that now face them, a correspondent for Fox News said, “The people of Haiti have been used and abused by their government over the years.  Hundreds of thousands of desperate human beings need our help, our money, our support, and our love.  But they don’t need (words like those of Rev. Robertson).
    Pat Robertson is speaking out of an Old Testament way of thinking.  The ancient Israelite people believed that life would go on in a joyous and productive way as long as everyone in  the community did the will of God, every day, all the time.  The idea that everyone is a sinner and all living people sin daily and often had yet to sink in – that

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would come with Jesus.  So the ancients believed that it was possible for a person to lead a sinless life and, therefore, escape any of life’s problems by living by God’s law.  But if anyone in the community committed a sin, the entire community would be punished until the sinner was discovered and dealt with.  An excellent example of this occurs in Joshua, chapter 6, during the time that the Israelites were fighting and defeating various Canaanite tribes for possession of the Promised Land.  God’s chosen people had been doing very well in these various battles until they were soundly defeated and many of their soldiers were killed while engaged in fighting with a city-state known as Ai.  This defeat was, for Joshua and the people, proof that they had a sinner in their midst and they believed that God had had an active part in their defeat because of the presence of this sinner in their community.  So they set about to find this person and eventually they found one man named Achan who had violated God’s law by taking some of the spoils of war, gold and silver from the defeated towns, for himself.  All the spoils were supposed to go into the common treasury to be distributed as needed.  Achan had actually buried these treasures underneath his tent where they were easily found by Joshua and the soldiers.  When these things were found Joshua said to Achan:
“WHY HAVE YOU BROUGHT THIS TROUBLE ON US?  THE LORD WILL BRING TROUBLE ON YOU TODAY.”  (JOSHUA 7:25)
Justice in these cases was swift and complete:
THEN ALL ISRAEL STONED (ACHAN) AND AFTER THEY HAD STONED (HIS FAMILY) THEY BURNED THEM   (JOSHUA 7:26)

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And so sin was eradicated from the community.  Sinners were dealt with by God though people in this case and, so Brother Robertson would say, by God through the natural laws of nature; in this case, an earthquake.
    This is what the disciples were thinking when they were with Jesus and saw a man who was known to have been born blind.  The disciples asked Jesus:
“RABBI, WHO SINNED, THIS MAN OR HIS PARENTS, THAT HE WAS BORN BLIND?  (JOHN 9:1-2
You see here again the idea that suffering and disease comes as a result of sinfulness.  Since this man was blind when he was born, was it still possible that he was suffering for his sinfulness or was it the fault of his parents and their mistakes?  Jesus answered:
NEITHER THIS MAN NOR HIS PARENTS SINNED, BUT THIS HAPPENED SO THAT THE WORK OF GOD MIGHT BE DISPLAYED IN HIS LIFE.  (JOHN 9:3)
The man’s blindness was not as a result of sin on the part of anyone – the man had simply been in this condition but now, with his meeting Jesus, the opportunity would be his to be healed. 
    The 13th chapter of Luke begins with another story associated with this theme:
NOW THERE WERE SOME PRESENT AT THAT TIME WHO TOLD JESUS ABOUT THE GALILEANS WHOSE BLOOD PILATE HAD MIXED WITH THEIR SACRIFICES.  (LUKE 13:1)

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What this meant was that the Romans had defiled the temple by killing people who were there to make sacrifices for the repentance of sins.  Jesus appeared to be reading their minds when he said,
“DO YOU THINK THAT THESE GALILEANS WERE WORSE SINNERS THAN ALL THE OTHER GALILEANS BECAUSE THEY SUFFERED THIS WAY?  I TELL YOU, NO!  BUT UNLESS YOU REPENT, YOU TOO WILL ALL PERISH.  OR THOSE EIGHTEEN WHO DIED WHENTHE TOWER IN SILOAM FELL ON THEM – DO YOU THINK THEY WERE MORE GUILTY THAN ALL THE OTHERS LIVING IN JERUSALEM?  I TELL YOU, NO!  BUT UNLESS YOU REPENT, YOU TOO WILL ALL PERISH.”  (LUKE 13:2-5)
Jesus used this as a teachable moment on sin.  He knew that many people who were around him that day, including his own disciples, were still locked in their Old Testament way of thinking – surely those who were killed by Pilate’s soldiers or those who were standing at the foot of that tower must have been the worst sinners in the world at the time – in fact, maybe even the only sinners.  Jesus reminded them that they were all sinners – all those who died, all those who didn’t die, all those who were currently surrounding him.  All sinners.  All people in need of repentance for their sins.  All people in need of the saving power of God’s grace.  Who are the worst sinners?  All of us.  Who are the ones who deserve to be punished for sin?  All of us.  Who are the ones who will be saved from sin by the blood of Jesus?  All of us.  Who are the ones who need to repent?  All of us.

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    Pat Robertson is wrong.  There are a lot of other things I could say about how I feel when people make statements like his about Haiti but that’s for another time.  Natural calamities do not occur as a form of punishment on those terrible sinners.  Natural calamities occur because that is the way the world works, the way it was created.  People, including infants and young children, do not contract diseases like cancer because they are terribly sinful or because their parents are terribly sinful.  The imperfect world is full of things like viruses and diseases and infections and genetic material that is passed on through the generations.  The imperfect world is full of people who choose to put themselves in danger by doing things that are harmful to them – smoking, overeating, using dangerous drugs, using prescribed drugs in the wrong way.  The world is imperfect.  Until the kingdom of God comes in its fullness life will be this way.  But when tragedies like the falling of the tower of Siloam in Jesus’ time, we are reminded of two things that we must do in response even if we are not directly involved in the tragedy.
    First of all, we must help those who are suffering these tragedies firsthand.  Through the efforts of people of St. Andrews and people across the world, help has come to the Haitians.  Food, medical supplies, doctors and nurses, volunteers sifting through the rubble of buildings looking for any possible survivors, blankets, clothing, clean water, the list, gratefully, goes on and on.  People are reaching out to help sisters and brothers they have never met and will never meet.  Christian people are doing as Jesus told us to do when he said:

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AS SURELY AS YOU HAVE DONE IT TO THE LEAST OF THESE MY BRETHREN YOU HAVE DONE IT UNTO ME.  (MATTHEW 25:40)
    And the second thing that we must do in response to these tragedies is to take them into ourselves as reminders of how fleeting life is.  Those people who died or were seriously injured in the Haitian earthquake were just going about their daily lives, doing things they did every day, never thinking that this would be their last minute on earth.  That can happen in anyone’s life.  So, as Jesus told his disciples, we must take these kinds of opportunities to repent of our sins.  Because we are all sinners.  It is a waste of time to pick out certain people (who are usually not us) and declare that they suffer because they are more sinful than other people, especially us.  That is a waste of time and is completely counter to the teachings of Jesus.  What Jesus taught us is that since we are all sinners and since life is fragile we must be in a repentant mood a great deal of the time, asking God for forgiveness for things we say and things we do which are not a part of God’s will for us and our lives.  In the book that our small groups are using for study during Lent, Adam Hamilton’s “24 Hours That Changed the World”, he talks about the Last Supper that Jesus shared with his disciples and what a sad evening that must have been for Jesus, knowing, as he did, that Judas would betray him, that Peter would deny him, and that the other disciples would run away, leaving him to face his fate alone.  But according to the13th  chapter of the Gospel of John, he washed the feet of every one of them anyway.  As Adam Hamilton writes:

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JESUS LOOKED PAST THEIR BETRAYAL, THEIR SINS, AND THEIR FAILURES AND CALLED THEM HIS FRIENDS.  WE TAKE COMFORT IN THE KNOWLEDGE THAT HE WILL DO THAT FOR US AS WELL.  (PAGE 23)
When we repent we are forgiven through the grace and love of God as seen in our Savior, Jesus Christ.  But repentance is an ongoing thing, an everyday thing, perhaps even an every hour thing, because of the sinfulness that lies within each of us.  The season of Lent is a time for repentance for followers of Jesus.  Look at your life and see where that need is for you and address that with Jesus in prayer.  Ask for forgiveness – and you will receive  it.
    And pray for the people of Haiti and for all those who are helping in whatever way they can.  Reach out to God’s children in that sad, sad place in all the ways you can.
    Lily Coyle is a self-described “church lady” who was furious when she heard what Pat Robertson had said about the suffering people in Haiti.  As a response, she wrote a fictional letter from the devil to Robertson, thanking him for making God look like a bully who kicks people when they are down.  The letter continues:
THE WAY YOU PUT IT, MAKING A DEAL WITH ME LEAVES FOLKS DESPERATE AND IMPOVERISHED.  SURE, IN THE AFTERLIFE.  BUT WHEN I STRIKE BARGAINS WITH PEOPLE, THEY FIRST GET SOMETHING HERE ON EARTH – GLAMOUR, BEAUTY, TALENT, WEALTH, FAME, GLORY, ETC.  THOSE HAITIANS HAVE NOTHING, AND I MEAN NOTHING.  AND THAT WAS BEFORE THE EARTHQUAKE.  IF I HAD A DEAL WITH HAITI, THERE’D BE

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LOTS OF BANKS, SKYSCRAPERS, SUV’S, NIGHTCLUBS, BOTOX, ETC.  AN 80 PERCENT POVERTY RATE IS JUST NOT MY STYLE.  SO JUST KEEP ME OUT OF THIS AND KEEP ON BLAMING GOD.
    So the question is “why?”  I don’t have the answer.  Pat Robertson doesn’t have the answer.  Only God knows.  But He is a loving God and He is always with us and He will always forgive us when we repent.  I know that.  I hope Pat Robertson knows that.  And I hope you do as well.