The eCrozier

Some thoughts on tragedy as we pray for the people of Haiti

I commend to you all the excellent video that Fr. Frank Logue did at King of Peace. Frank set the tragedy in an orthodox Biblical context that is grounded in the central truth of God’s grace and mercy.

You can see it here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOPvc0HvsAY

Unfortunately, we also are hearing from others, particularly Pat Robertson, who has such a distorted Biblical theology that he ends up blaming the earthquake on some historic pact with the Devil that the Haitian people allegedly made sometime before their independence. I also commend to you a sermon preached by Fr. Liam Collins last Sunday. Contact him and ask him to send you a copy. It was excellent.

The question of where God is in the midst of tragedy is clear from our faith. God is in the midst of humankind, hanging on the cross, dying for the world. As Dorothy Sayers wrote: “God did not abolish the fact of evil. He transformed it. He did not stop the crucifixion. He rose from the dead.” Asking where God is in a tragedy is like asking where God was when Jesus hung on the cross. God was right there. And this God we worship and glorify, bids you and me to take up that cross and follow Jesus.

A sonnet written by the late Vassar Miller, from her collection Onions and Roses, published in 1968, speaks powerfully to me when I reflect on tragedy. It is called The Wisdom of Insecurity.

There’s no abiding city, no, not one.
The towers of stone and steel are fairy stories.
God will not play our games nor join our fun,
Does not give tit for tat, parade His glories.
And chance is chance, not providence dressed neat,
Credentials hidden in its wooden leg.
When the earth opens underneath our feet,
It is a waste of brain and breath to beg.
No angel intervenes but shouts that matter
Has been forever mostly full of holes.
So Simon Peter always walked on water,
Not merely when the lake waves licked his soles.
And when at last he saw he would not drown,
The shining knowledge turned him upside-down.

Please urge your people to give as they are able to the Episcopal Relief and Development fund for Haiti. Please ask your delegates to come to the Diocesan Convention with their checkbooks because the offering on Thursday night will be for Haiti.

+Scott