A six year-old girl called Katie Lee from North London was quoted in a UK newspaper a while back giving her thoughts about God.  “There is one God”, she said, “and he’s the creator of heaven.  God is Jesus’ father.  God has glasses, I think.  I don’t think God has animals in the air.  I think God has animals on the ground and he comes down and feeds them.  I think God has not got a cooker in the air.  He comes down and has take-outs.  He tries lots of different sorts because there’s lots of people in the world.  God likes Indian and Japanese, but I think he likes McDonald’s best.  I think he has coffee to keep him warm.  He is normally fair, but sometimes not.  Daddy’s secretary was only 29 when she died in a car crash.  Why wasn’t God looking?”

Another event, another continent.  A few weeks ago a very distressed and suffering person (someone I’d never met and have never seen since) dropped by into the church one day and through her tears asked me the question, “Is God punishing me?” 

Why wasn’t God looking?  Is God punishing me?  Questions that people ask when faced with great suffering.  They asked the same questions in Jesus’ time too.  A few weeks ago when I was preaching on the wedding at Cana, a few days after the earthquake in Haiti, I mentioned today’s Gospel reading, and here it is again.  One day a tower in the village of Siloam fell down and killed eighteen people.  And people were saying ‘it’s God’s judgment - those eighteen people were guilty of some terrible sins and God is punishing them for it’.  And Jesus here tackles that question.  He says, “Those eighteen who died when the Tower of Siloam fell on them, do you think they were more guilty than anyone else living in Jerusalem?  And those people from Galilee that Herod murdered, do you think that they were worse sinners than other Galileans?”  And he gives the resounding answer, “No.”  When it comes to guilt, he says, think about your own not that of other people.”

So Jesus is clear.  God is not trying to catch someone sinning and then punishing them by making them suffer.  That is some twisted, superstitious deity, and it’s not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus.  Now that is not to deny the fact that sin has consequences.  When people behave in ways that are selfish, greedy, violent, spiteful, people do suffer, and often the person doing the sin suffers.  So, for example, if I lose my temper and in my rage I punch the wall and break my hand, then I’d be stupid to point the finger at God and ask ‘God, why did you let this happen?’  I had a choice, I chose to punch the wall, and the consequences were that I broke my hand.  I can’t blame God.  (By the way, I just want to reassure you that I’ve never punched a wall!)  So you get the point: a lot of our personal suffering, I believe, is a direct result of our own behaviour.  When we go against the teaching of Christ we can’t expect to experience joy and freedom from suffering.  It’s just not how the universe works.  But that is not the same as saying that God sends suffering to people as a punishment for doing wrong.  Often in his love he simply lets things run their course, he lets us have our freedom to choose and he lets the consequences happen.  And it is in his love.  Because that’s what loving someone means – it means not forcing your will on them, or abusing your power over them.  Love means giving people the dignity and respect to make their own choices.  Last week we read about Jesus weeping over Jerusalem because that city he loved so much used its freedom to turn against God.  And for sure he does the same now.  When he sees you and me making choices that will harm us or hurt others he still weeps, but he still allows us the freedom to make those decisions.  That is our loving God.

Katie’s question (why was God not watching) and the distressed woman’s question (is God punishing me) stem from the same belief.  It’s a belief that is part and parcel of Western thinking.  In fact, it is so common to the culture we live in that it is just taken as obviously true.  No one questions it.  Like the earth revolving around the sun, it’s just so much accepted as a part of life, and taken as a fact that no one ever mentions it.  And here it is: the belief that suffering is bad and should be avoided.  You might think, well of course suffering is bad and should be avoided.  We organize our lives so as to limit our chances of suffering.  We take medical precautions to avoid sickness, we insure our health and our property against the prospect of loss.  If it is possible to avoid suffering we should.  It’s just a fact of life.  And on those occasions when we have no choice and we must experience suffering then we must do all in our power to make it as brief and minor as possible.  That’s how we run our lives, isn’t it?  And if someone were to say something different then we’d wonder what planet they were from.  The idea that suffering is bad is so obviously correct. 

But what if it isn’t?  What if suffering were not necessarily bad?  What if pain, rather than being our tormentor, could be our teacher?  What if heartbreak, rather than being our persecutor, could be our friend?  What if suffering were the best way to change us, purify us, humble us, inspire us, fulfill us and complete us?  What if grief could be the road to joy?  What if mourning were the way to be comforted?  This is Beatitude thinking – taking something so obviously ‘true’ that everyone believes it, turning it on its head, and showing that it’s false.  But isn’t that just what Jesus did?  Suffering and death brought life.

The journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, whom I’m very fond of quoting, approached the end of his long and distinguished life and said this, “Contrary to what might be expected, I look back on experiences that at the time seemed especially desolating and painful with particular satisfaction. Indeed, I can say with complete truthfulness that everything I have learned in my 75 years in this world, everything that has truly enhanced and enlightened my experience, has been through affliction and not through happiness.”

A man was moving some logs and dead leaves in his yard one spring and found, attached to a dead stick a cocoon of the emperor moth.  He carefully picked up the twig, took it inside, and placed it in a jar.  A week later a small opening appeared, and for several hours the moth struggled with all its might to get free from its prison, but could not seem able to force all of its body through the hole.  The man thought something was wrong, and not wanting the moth to perish in its failed effort he took a pair of scissors and snipped the remaining bit of cocoon that encased its body. The moth emerged easily, its body large and swollen.  But its wings were small and shriveled.  He expected that in a few hours the wings would spread out in their natural beauty, but they did not. Instead of developing the gift of flight, the moth spent its brief life dragging around a swollen body and shriveled wings.  Here’s the reason.  The struggle to get out of the cocoon is essential if the moth is going to build healthy wings.  It must work tirelessly and suffer greatly in order to get through that small hole.  The struggle sends fluid from the body into the wings.  The man thought he was being kind to the moth by snipping the cocoon.  In reality, he was sentencing it to a stunted and impoverished life.  The struggle will do that to us.  We don’t want it.  We curse it.  We plan our lives to eliminate it.  But we need it.  We will suffer, in body, mind and spirit.  But that is the cocoon that builds our wings so that one day we can fly.

So, if it is correct that suffering is what God uses to bless people, then why ask the question, ‘why does God allow suffering?’  That question presumes that suffering is bad.  If it is correct that suffering brings about good things in our lives then why do we treat it like an enemy to be avoided at all costs?  I think the answer to that might lie in the fact that it takes a superhuman effort to allow God to turn the pain into something beneficial.  It doesn’t happen automatically.  If suffering is going to bless us and produce good things, then it rests on our attitude to it.

When the sickness or the grief or the heartbreak first hits us we hate it.  It throws our lives off course.  It threatens to destroy us.  Sometimes we even feel like we would rather die than endure it.  But it is there, in the middle of our desperation that we meet the Christ who suffered.  Indeed, the Christ who sits alongside us and suffers now, in the present tense, with us.  And I believe that it is only in his strength that we can have our perspective transformed so we see the green shoots of life and healing peeping through the ice and snow of our suffering.   

When we’re in hot water and the temperature is climbing and it’s getting unbearable, we can be an egg or a potato.  If you’re an egg your suffering will make you hard-boiled and unresponsive.  If you’re a potato your affliction will make you soft and adaptable. 

Now, if you’re thinking I’m making this sound pretty easy, then let me apologise.  It isn’t easy to cultivate that potato attitude.  Being an egg is easier.  It comes more naturally.  Neither am I saying that we should welcome suffering; that we should not organize our lives to reduce the potential for suffering.  Do I want to suffer?  Absolutely not.  So, too, Jesus.  Look at him the Garden of Gethsemane.  That’s not a man relishing the pain and anguish he was going to experience in the next 24 hours.  No, he asks God, with sweat like drops of blood even, to remove this cup of suffering.  If someone wants to feel pain then we rightly diagnose them with an illness and the law gives medics the right to intervene against that person’s will in order to stop them inflicting pain on themselves.  And rightly so.  So I’m not saying we should go looking for suffering.  Unfortunately, we don’t have to go looking for it.  It find us soon enough.  It’ll probably find you this week.  A virus, a relationship, a letter, a conversation.  Something will cause a pang of pain or an arrow of anguish.  But when it happens, let’s go there with Jesus.  Let’s spot him there, because the place of pain is the place where he lives.  And we will find him if we look closely enough.  And then in his grace, and if he chooses he will give a glimpse of something beyond the pain – maybe even a flicker of the good that can come from it. 

Let me finish with a story by Max Lucado.  Once there was an old man who lived in a tiny village.  Although he was poor, he was envied by all, for he owned a beautiful white horse. Even the king coveted his animal. A horse like this had never been seen before -- such was its splendor, its majesty, its strength.

Sometimes people would offer fabulous prices for the steed, but the old man always refused. "This horse is not a horse to me," he would tell them. “He is a friend, not a possession.  How could you sell a friend?"

One morning he found that the horse was not in the stable. All the village came to see him. "You old fool," they scoffed, "we told you that someone would steal your horse. It would have been better to have sold him.  Now the horse is gone, and you've been cursed with misfortune."

The old man responded, "Don't speak too quickly. Say only that the horse is not in the stable. That is all we know. If I've been cursed or not, how can you tell?”

After two weeks, the horse returned. He hadn't been stolen; he had run away into the forest. Not only had he returned, he had brought a dozen wild horses with him. Once again the villagers gathered around the woodcutter and spoke. "Old man, you were right and we were wrong. What we thought was a curse was a blessing."

The man responded, "Once again, you go too far. Say only that the horse is back. State only that a dozen horses returned with him, but don't judge. How do you know if this is a blessing or not?"

The old man had a son, an only son. The young man began to break the wild horses. After a few days, he fell from one of the horses and broke both legs. Once again the villagers gathered around the old man and cast their judgments.  "You were right," they said. "The dozen horses were not a blessing. They were a curse. Your only son has broken his legs, and now in your old age you have no one to help you. Now you are poorer than ever."

The old man spoke again. "You people are obsessed with judging. Don't go so far. Say only that my son broke his legs. Who knows if it is a blessing or a curse?”

It so happened that a few weeks later the country engaged in war against a neighboring country. All the young men of the village were required to join the army. Only the son of the old man was excluded, because he was injured. Once again the people gathered around the old man, crying and screaming because their sons had been taken. "You were right, old man," they wept. "Your son's accident was a blessing. His legs may be broken, but at least he is with you. Our sons are gone forever."

The old man spoke again. "No one knows. Say only this: Your sons had to go to war, and mine did not. No one knows if it is a blessing or a curse. No one is wise enough to know. Only God knows."