Is God Really Mad At Us?
The Rev. Canon George M. Maxwell, Jr.
The Cathedral of St. Philip
Atlanta, Georgia
22 January 2006
Third Sunday after Epiphany – Year B
“Surely, God is mad at America.”
With these words last week, Ray Nagin, the Mayor of New Orleans, joined a growing number of public figures who think that God created hurricane Katrina in order to punish somebody.
Their reasoning is simple and straightforward. God has a plan for the world. Sin interferes with his plan. Periodically, God has to intervene and send a tragic disaster to punish the sinners. It is God’s way of making things right.
They call the intervention God’s judgment.
The hurricanes that struck New Orleans and the Mississippi gulf coast have been called God’s judgment on the sins of gambling, prostitution, the war in Iraq and several other perceived moral failings. The tsunami that devastated Southeast Asia has been called God’s judgment on the persecution of Christian missionaries in the region. The earthquakes that shook California have been called God’ judgment on the pornographic film industry that is apparently located there.
Sometimes, these claims of God’s judgment look like they have been made to serve a political end. The connection between the disaster and the sin being punished is too tenuous to make sense. The real claim seems to be that God is on the speaker’s side and punishing the speaker’s enemies. God, in other words, is calling his people to follow the speaker.
At other times, these claims feel like they have been made to serve psychological ends. Hurricanes, tsunamis and earthquakes cause an almost unbearable amount of human suffering. We want and need to make sense of it all. We want an explanation for what happened. So, we translate it into a part of the drama of the apocalypse and give it a redemptive character. We make it part of God’s plan.
But, stripped of these political and psychological motivations, is there really any evidence that God is mad at America?
I don’t think so. Natural disasters have natural causes. God may have put these physical laws in place, but he didn’t suspend them just because he got mad at somebody. And God didn’t kill innocent people just to prove a point.
But, I do think that there is evidence of God’s judgment in the aftermath of the hurricane. In other words, although I don’t think that we find God in the wind or the water or the earthquakes, I do think that we often find God in the still small voice that comes after the wind and the water and the earthquakes.
Think again of the biblical stories that tie God’s judgment to natural disasters -- Noah and the flood, and Abraham and Sodom, for example. If you look closely at these stories, I think you will find that they are not as much about what God does to us as they are about what God does for us. The dramatic action is usually around God’s attempts to warn his people of the disaster that is about to happen or his efforts to heal his people from the damage caused by the disaster that has already happened.
God’s judgment, in other words, is not as much about punishment, as it is about revelation.
Sometimes his revelation supports us and gives us the strength to keep doing what we are doing. It helps us overcome obstacles like our sense of guilt and alienation. We call this kind of revelation “grace,” and we usually welcome it because it points to the presence of the good.
Sometimes, however, his revelation exposes us and forces us to face the real reasons for and consequences of what we are doing. It asserts a claim over us that demands we come to a new understanding of both our world and ourselves. We call this kind of revelation “judgment,” and we usually resist it because it unveils the existence of the evil.
Remember the images of the aftermath of Katrina.
We can see God’s grace in the countless acts of selfless heroism that marked the efforts to help those affected by the storm.
And, we can see God’s judgment in the revelation of social injustice that caused the poor to bear the brunt of the storm and the environmental abuse that caused the damage from the storm to be worse than it would otherwise have been.
Seen in this light, God’s judgment feels like an expression of care. God judges us because he cares about us, not because he is mad at us. God is not mad at us because he doesn’t need anything from us.
His judgment may feel like wrath, but it is important to understand whose problem that is. We often have to face the consequences of our actions. God is simply letting us know that we don’t have to do it alone. In judging us, God is acting for our benefit, not for his own.
This distinction is important, I think, because how we see God affects how we answer his call.
If we think God is mad at somebody, then we are likely to answer God’s call the way Jonah did. You remember the story.
God calls Jonah to go the Nineveh, the great Assyrian city that has invaded Israel on more than one occasion. Jonah runs away from God once and winds up in the belly of a large fish. Jonah goes to Nineveh the second time, but he isn’t happy about it.
God calls Jonah to reveal that God cares for the city, but Jonah – who is mad at the city for what it has done – can only bring himself to proclaim a pending punishment.
God spares the city after it repents, and Jonah runs away again, this time disappointed in God’s compassion.
I believe that God is also calling us to go to the strange and frightening places that lie on the other side of the protective boundaries that mark our lives – to walk to the neighborhoods where those other people live, to talk to those people who have been our enemies, and to worship with those people whose response to God we don’t immediately understand.
It takes courage to step over those lines. It involves risk and a loss of control. But, God is calling us there because he wants to reveal something to us.
If we think that God is mad at those people, then we will see only the reasons that they deserve to be punished. We will only see how they are different from us.
But, if we understand that God cares for those people – just as God cares for us – then we will see something else. We will see what Jonah missed.
God did not go to Nineveh because it repented. God was already there!
When we take the risk that God is calling us to take – when we go to those dangerous places where God is calling us -- we will find that God is already there too.
And those people who we thought God should be mad at will look at lot like us.
Comments? Contact George Maxwell at: GMaxwell@stphilipscathedral.org