Why do you stand looking up to heaven?

Seventh Sunday of Easter + Year A (RCL)

Acts 1:6-14, Psalm 68, I Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11

You don’t need me to tell you that there is a lot of suffering in the world today. Natural disasters, such as earthquakes, tornadoes, fires, and floods, take many lives and leave thousands devastated. These calamities are not signs of the end-times; they are the normal outcome of a troubled planet and a world without faith.

Natural disasters are not our only danger. Man-made threats such as oil spills, nuclear waste, and antibiotic-resistant germs and viruses threaten many lives, even in developed countries.

And, as if all the above were not enough, we are still fighting and killing each other, with greater efficiency and lack of emotion than ever before. We are raising generations of children who play violent computer games, so that when they come of age they can operate the high-tech weapons that will allow them to kill an entire village in a country a thousand miles away and feel nothing (or, worse yet, high-five each other for doing it).

Two reasonable questions occur to people of faith when we consider all these bad things: why does this happen, and how should we respond?

First―the why. Why is there evil in the world? Where did it come from? Why does God permit it? Why doesn’t God simply stamp it out?

We have spoken before about the fact that God does not have “a plan.” God does not predestine everything that happens to you and me. God has not already decided when and how you and I will die. Rather, God created a universe that operates very efficiently according to natural laws and responses to events. If we poison a river, the fish die, animals and people starve, and countless people downstream are affected. This was not God’s plan. God did not cause this to happen. Most surely, God did not want this to happen. But God gave us the most precious gift that we can imagine: freedom. God took a great risk in giving us that gift―the risk that we might misuse our freedom, that we could use it to destroy the beauty that God created, that we would use it to destroy one another.

It would be comforting to think that, no matter how bad things look, God is completely in control and that everything that is happening is doing so because God wills it. On the other hand, believing in a God who deliberately causes or callously allows suffering and pain would be very difficult. That is not the kind of God that I believe in.

God is all-powerful, but not all-controlling. God chooses not to intervene, no matter how much it pains God to see what we are doing, the mess we are making of things. This is an act of love. A God who controlled everything that we said and did would never know the joy of receiving our love and gratitude.

And yet, I am not saying that God does not act in our world, in our lives. Not at all! God is ever-present―through you and me.

As our Psalm says, God is the “Father of orphans” and the “defender of widows.” [Psalm 68:5] “God gives the solitary a home and brings forth prisoners into freedom.” [Psalm 68:6] How does God do this? Through the actions, the caring, the love of you and me. We take care of widows, orphans, the homeless, and prisoners. We bring God’s love and compassion to them, we represent God to them. God acts through us!

You and I know, as Saint Peter wrote, that our “brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering” that we endure, every day. [I Peter 5:9] Yes, the world is a terrible place. Yes, natural and human disasters, and the cruelty of people to each other, create unspeakable suffering.

But God also shows us the way out. God doesn’t abandon us to our misery. Without intervening, without forcing us to stop hurting this planet and one another, God gives us a simple answer: “Cast all your anxiety upon him, because he cares for you.” [I Peter 5:7]

Cast your cares upon the Lord. That is, know that God loves you so much as to take on your burdens. Not to make the world stop being such a bad place, but to make it bearable. Peter reminds us that “after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the power forever and ever!” [I Peter 5:10b-11]

When we are faced with the challenges of living in the world today, when disasters threaten or fill us with fear and sorrow, when all seems hopeless, remember those angels who appeared at Jesus’ ascension. What did they say? “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” [Acts 1:11]

Why do we stand and look toward heaven, when the work to be done is here on earth? Why do we stand and look to heaven, when God is right here beside us, ready and willing to work with us, in and through us? Why do we expect heaven to fix our problems, when we created them and have to live with them, suffering “for a little while,” but sure in the knowledge that our suffering will end, that God will take care of us, and that we will receive “eternal glory in Christ?” [I Peter 5:10]

Bad things do not happen because they are part of some plan of God’s. They happen because we are sinful, because we hurt one another and destroy this planet. But we should not despair, because we have God’s promise of better things.

The promises are clear, sisters and brothers. God does not promise to stop the suffering caused by natural forces, human actions and inactions, and the result of sin in our lives. What God does promise is that all who suffer will be helped, through our actions―not by looking up to heaven, but by looking around. You and I are God’s answer to the suffering in this world. We are the means through which God helps and heals.

And how can we possibly do that? How can we do God’s work in the world? It’s very simple, really: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.” [Acts 1:8]

Receive that power.

Take that power.

Use it to do God’s work in the world.

Accept your suffering as a temporary thing.

Cast your cares upon the Lord.

Don’t stand there looking up into the sky; get to work, doing God’s work every day, for every person you meet.

You can do it! You have God’s promise. You have the power of the Spirit!