The last several weeks have been
trying ones for everyone here in Santa Barbara. The Thomas fire—now the largest
in recorded California history—seemed to take over our lives for days without
end. Then last week’s rain came and caused much more death and devastation—not here
in Santa Barbara, but in Montecito, Carpinteria, and points south. The entire
community is suffering and on edge—either because of what people have lost
themselves, or on behalf of what others are going through. And it is
particularly weird that life in Santa Barbara proper seems so normal, while
there is extensive destruction only a few miles away.
As with personal tragedies, so with
social ones: all of us are at a loss for exactly the right thing to say. Like
Job’s pious friends in the Bible, we are often tempted to make some kind of
religious sense out of suffering and loss. “It’s all part of God’s plan” is a
phrase that never brought comfort or healing to anyone. And it’s not even
religiously orthodox. The God we meet in the Bible does not deal in pious
nostrums. The God we meet in the Bible is right in there with those who are up
against it. The fires, floods, and mudslides are not part of some divine
strategy. They are disasters, and the real faithful response starts when we
say, with Jesus, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” As my late friend Bill Coffin said when his
son died, with all this death and destruction, the first heart to break was God’s.
To say that God refuses neat simpy
slogans that explain away pain and that God suffers and laments with us is not
to say that we are without hope. But Christian hope, like resurrection faith,
does not stand in a vacuum. Christian hope, like resurrection faith, comes out
of real suffering and tragedy and loss. If we are open to life and experience,
we will find God in the midst of all this mess. But we must start looking for
God as and where we are. And right now, where we are is in a mass of loss and
confusion and pain.
So if we are not going to call these
fires and floods God’s plan or God’s judgment, where are we going to find
meaning or comfort or hope? For me, it’s always best to start with the gospel,
and the one we have this morning is from John [John 1:43-51]. It is the account
of Jesus calling Philip and Nathanael. It may seem far afield, but let’s see if
this strange and slightly funny story might have something to tell us about how
to be and move on from where we are.
According to John’s account, early
in his ministry Jesus decided to travel from his hometown Nazareth to Galilee.
He has already called Peter and Andrew, and he next chooses Philip and says, “Follow
me.” Philip goes to his friend Nathanael and says, “We have found him about
whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from
Nazareth.” Now Galilee was evidently hipper than Nazareth, because Nathanael responds
with a real put-down: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nathanael, the
arch urban sophisticate, wants nothing to do with the country bumpkin, Jesus.
I have always loved the next part of
this story, because it so true to human experience. Jesus tells Nathanael that
he saw him under the fig tree. Not a big deal to us, but apparently convincing
to Nathanael, who suddenly drops his skepticism and just like that believes. And
then Jesus says this:
“Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the
fig tree? You will see greater things than these. . . . Very truly, I tell you,
you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon
the Son of Man.”
Jesus cuts through Nathanael’s
cynicism to make this astounding offer: if you follow me you will see more than
miracles. You will see “heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and
descending” where you are.
This image of heaven opened and
angels going up and down may sound like mere words to us, but it would have
been immediately recognizable to any first century Palestinian Jew like Philip,
Nathanael, Andrew, or Peter. This image comes from the biblical story of Jacob
[Genesis 25-28] whose life was always lived under tension and stress. At one particularly
nerve-wracking point in the story [Genesis 28: 10-22], Jacob dreams that he
sees a ladder stretching up to heaven. “And he dreamed that there was a ladder
set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God
were ascending and descending on it.”
And right after Jacob dreams of this ladder and the ascending and
descending angels, the voice of God speaks directly to him. God tells Jacob
that, as crazy and stressful and unpredictable as his life appears right now,
all will be well because he is the bearer of God’s promise. “Know that I am
with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this
land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” Jacob is so moved by this experience and the
resulting promise that he names the place “Bethel”. In Hebrew, “Bethel” literally
means “House of God”. More broadly, it suggests, “God is right here.”
The story of angels ascending and
descending Jacob’s ladder and God’s promise is one of Israel’s founding
narratives. God comes to Jacob not when everything is going smoothly (as
nothing ever does for Jacob). God comes to Jacob in the midst of Jacob’s greatest
distress, and God promises, “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever
you go. . . . I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”
Jesus points Nathanael to this story and its promise because he is making the
same point to him that God made to Jacob in this biblical story. I am with you.
I will keep you wherever you go. I will not leave you until I have done what I
have promised you.
As I think about our area and its
suffering, I do not have a quick or easy answer. The trauma is real, and
recovery will be hard. But today’s gospel points me as it points all of us to Jesus
and Nathanael, and through them to God and Jacob and the ladder and the angels.
And I hear two truths in these divine encounters that I believe God means us to
hear and attend to in the present moment.
The first truth I hear is the
obvious one that God makes in those words said to Jacob under the ladder of
ascending and descending angels. Even and perhaps especially in moments of pain
and suffering and loss and stress, God may appear nowhere to be seen. Nevertheless,
if we keep our eyes and our ears and our hearts open, we will discover that God
is in fact with us. God is not with us in some magical fairy tale way. God cannot
give us a life free of suffering and loss. But God can take life’s tragedies
and turn them around. And God keeps God’s promises. I am with you. I will keep
you wherever you go. I will not leave you until I have done what I have
promised you.
The first truth I hear is that we
will, together, find God in the midst of all this rubble and loss. We will find
God in each other, in the compassion and solidarity that emerge from this
tragedy, in the new community we can build together, in the new life that
emerges from real death and real loss. Resurrection life does not come cheap,
but it is real and precious and holy. It is the life of promises fulfilled in
spite of all appearances to the contrary.
And then there is this second truth.
Jacob named the place “Bethel”, “house of God”. He named it Bethel because it
was where he knew God to be present. In pointing Nathanael and us to the place
called Bethel, Jesus is reminding him and us that Jesus himself, and the
community that gathers around him, is the new Bethel, the new house of God, the
place where God actually dwells. Jews saw God in a place. Christians see God in
a person. We call Jesus “Emmanuel”—God with us. The one we seek does not float
above the clouds in some kind of gaseous fog. The one we seek is right here,
right now, alive and at work in and among us. God keeps God’s promises. God is
here.
“Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the
fig tree? You will see greater things than these. . . . Very truly, I tell you,
you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon
the Son of Man.”
Yes, the pain and the loss of the
present moment are real. And yes, God will take them and make of them something
so hopeful and joyous that we could never have imagined it if we tried. God
keeps God’s promises. God is here. The God who was faithful to Israel and Jesus
will be faithful to us. Together we can find God’s comfort and bring God’s
healing to those who mourn. These are not easy nostrums. They are hard won
truths. They are the basics of resurrection faith. And they’re what we have, together,
as we help our neighbors rebuild, and as we gather now around God’s table to
give thanks. Amen.
