Exodus 2.1-10; 2 Corinthians 1.3-7; Luke 2.33-35

One question that always perplexes people, Christian and those without a faith, is why does God allow such suffering to happen in the world. It’s a question that has been around for all time - certainly we see it coming up in the Old Testament time and time again. We only have to look around our world to see why this is a question that so many of us ask.

We see poverty and devastation. We see young men murdering each other with guns, leaving behind families and friends in a state of utter grief. We see men and women involved in conflict and oppressing others. We see fear in the lives of people who have been burgled or raped or attacked and we wonder how on earth God allows people to destroy each other so easily.

In fact, those situations are easier to give an answer to. God has made us not as robots but as people with a choice to follow the ways of love or to go against them. Our love for God can only be real if it is something we have chosen. A robot cannot love properly. A

nd how different that power of God’s is from the power of many human leaders who feel threatened by the thought that others might not do as they say! I suspect their motivation is power and not love for their people.

But we have a God who loves us so much and who wants real love in return that built into creation was the option that those people who were made might not then follow the ways of love that God so desires and lives by.

It’s an explanation that can offer a solution to some of the suffering in the world. God allows humans to beat each other up and cause each other pain because we have not been created as puppets who can only do the right thing. We have been given choice and responsibility, and sadly, some fail to live up to this.

But, what about the earthquakes, the tsunamis, the natural disasters and the accidents? What about disease and innocent children left without parents, and so on?

These questions are so much harder to answer. I don’t like being confronted by the questions of people who see them as a reason for not worshipping God. How can you worship a God that allows these things to happen, they ask. A recognition is implicit in that question that God is all-powerful and that God could do things differently.

I don’t like being faced with those questions because I feel any answer I give is inadequate and not what they are looking for. We live in a world that is fallen, that is not the perfect world of God’s creation. Sin has caused destruction and devastation through the world, and creation has become a broken and distorted thing.

There is little else we can say in response to these questions other than that our world has become distorted and decayed through the power of sin.

We, as Christians, have hope - a hope that when Christ comes again, God’s creation will be restored to its former glory. We think of those passages in Revelation that speak of a new heaven and new earth where there will be no mourning and crying and pain and where death will be no more. And we live in this world because we place those promises alongside the destruction and chaos that we see.

In a sermon following the tsunami the Archbishop of Canterbury quoted a former Archbishop of Wales speaking at the time of the Aberfan disaster. This Welsh archbishop said these words: “I can only dare to speak about this because I once lost a child. I have nothing to say that will make sense of this horror today. All I know is that the words in my Bible about God’s promise to be alongside us have never lost their meaning for me. And now we have to work in God’s name for the future.”

Perhaps there really is nothing we can say that will make sense of such tragedy. Our faith is about far more than just being a crutch in times of difficulty. A faith that has all the answers is a faith that is unwilling to grow and develop and change.

These questions of suffering will not go away, but sometimes we may have to accept that in this world we have no answer to them.

Rowan Williams, in that same sermon, said this: “The extraordinary fact that belief has survived such tests again and again - not because it comforts or explains, but because believers cannot deny what has been shown or given to them.

“They have learned to see the world and life in the world as a freely given gift; they have learned to be open to a calling or invitation from outside their own resources, a calling to accept God’s mercy for themselves and make it real for others; they have learned that there is some reality to which they can only relate in amazement and silence.

“These convictions are terribly assaulted by all those other facts of human experience that seem to point to a completely arbitrary world, but people still feel bound to them, not for comfort or ease, but because they have imposed on themselves the shape and life and the habits of the heart.”

What we can know is that God will be with us in the suffering. I’ve said before how much I am humbled by watching Christians who live in poverty radiate joy because they know that God is with them in their troubles. Simeon recognised when he saw the child Jesus that God would not leave us to suffer alone but would be in the midst of that suffering.

That recognition as he talks to Mary that she will watch the suffering of her son reminds us that God knows what it is to suffer. Christ suffered and can identify with us in our sufferings. That is one of the enormous differences between the God of Christianity and the God of other faiths - we have a God who suffers for the sake of his people.

In today’s epistle reading Paul is reflecting too on suffering. If you read the rest of this letter from Paul to the Corinthians, you will become aware of the sufferings that Paul had faced for the sake of the Gospel: he speaks of being afflicted in every way, perplexed, persecuted, struck down, beaten, stoned, shipwrecked, in danger from rivers, bandits, hungry and thirsty, sleepless nights and under daily pressure because of his worry for the churches.

But in the midst of his sufferings, he has recognised that God is there providing comfort and consolation. It is often through our hard times that God shapes us and develops us. For when times are good, it is much easier to forget about God. Hard times teach us and shape our character. It’s a bit like the entrepreneurial attitude that there is no such thing as failure - only learning opportunities.

And Paul gives another reason why our sufferings may not be such a bad things after all, for we can use them in service of others. As Christ’s sufferings brought us life, so too will his consolations. And our sufferings can bring consolation to others. God consoles us so that we can bring consolation to others.

Those who help others who are suffering most are those who know what it is to have suffered. So, though we may not be able to answer the why of suffering, we may be able to use suffering in a positive way.

In a New Year’s Day message in The Times on January 1st 2005, Jonathan Sacks, the chief rabbi, wrote this: “The simplest explanation is that of the 12th-century sage, Moses Maimonides. Natural disasters, he said, have no explanation other than that God, by placing us in a physical world, set life within the parameters of the physical.

“Planets are formed, tectonic plates shift, earthquakes occur, and sometimes innocent people die. To wish it were otherwise is in essence to wish that we were not physical beings at all. Then we would not know pleasure, desire, achievement, freedom, virtue, creativity, vulnerability and love. We would be angels — God’s computers, programmed to sing His praise.

“The religious question is, therefore, not: ‘Why did this happen?’ but ‘What then shall we do?’ The religious response is not to seek to understand, thereby to accept. We are not God. Instead we are the people He has called on us to be his ‘partners in the work of creation’.

“The only adequate religious response is to say: ‘God, I do not know why this terrifying disaster has happened, but I do know what you want of us: to help the afflicted, comfort the bereaved, send healing to the injured, and aid those who have lost their livelihoods and homes.’

“We cannot understand God, but we can strive to imitate His love and care.”

In those words, I hear also echoes of the words of Jesus to love God and to love one’s neighbour as oneself, and the words of Paul “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of all mercies and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God.”