Preacher's Post: Divinity, Disaster and Blessing

The Word

John 2

Water into wine? Abundance in the face of scarcity.

Headline Words

Haiti 

Quotable Words:

“I believe Christian discipleship for 21st century North American Christians means ‘cruciform living,’ an alternative notion of the abundant life…For us privileged Christians a “cross-shaped” life will not be primarily what Christ does for us, but what we can do for others. We do not need so much to accept Christ’s sacrifice for our sins as we need to repent of a major sin—our silent complicity in the impoverishment of others and the degradation of the planet.”`` Sallie McFague

Preachable Words:

A few thoughts heading toward Sunday, on how the Headline Words and the Word might come together:

We've all seen by now the images of devastation and destruction, as well as the efforts to respond with both mercy (relief) and justice (the questioning of economic policies and practices that make Haiti so vulnerable to natural disaster.)

And of course, we've all heard the outrageous words of the Voice of the Christian Right, Pat Robertson, sited elsewhere on Beatitudes Blog and throughout the media. I hear from so many of my Progressive Christian colleagues that "we should just ignore him" and "oh gee, is still still around?"  I'd love to ignore him, as well as the theology he represents, but the media doesn't, so once again, Christianity is identified as the theology espoused by Robertson and the Christian Right. If we ignore his words about "a pact with the devil" and Haiti being "cursed" we allow only one Christian voice to be heard, the voice that has been dominant in the popular culture. Yes, I no we don't want to be "negative" and get all riled up in "countering the Christian Right, " but silence is not an option.

This weekend, our places of worship will be filled with people grieving the tragedy of Haiti, and many will be asking "why does God let these things happen?" And many more, who have wondered about "such a God" won't be in the pews, as they have long since given up on the church's ability to speak to the hard questions of life.This is the moment, it seems to me, that we speak about blessing and curse, and the location of God in the world.

"Blessed are the poor," Jesus said, with that manifesto that declared God could be located in the place of abject poverfty, humiliation, suffering and persecution. In shorthand, "Blessed are" = "God cares about." Blessings are not rewards for good behavior, or the opposite of curses. The good news of the Christian story is not about reward and punishment. The good news is that God meets us in the place of suffering, in all the places that crosses have ever been erected, from that hill outside Jerusalem to the streets of Haiti.

The miracle of water into wine calls us to look at the meaning of abundance as we gaze at the images of Port-au-Prince, and call for the "cruciform living" that Sallie McFague names.