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Easter Message 2011
In the past few months we’ve really been through the wringer in our part of the world. Floods, cyclones and earthquakes in Japan, New Zealand and Australia have hit us again and again. The pictures of the ruins of Christchurch's Catholic and Anglican cathedrals are etched on our memories even from the safe distance of Parramatta.
And people ask: Where was God in all this? Where was He in Jesus’ last days – in the melee in the garden, the conspiracy of the priests and politicians, the jeering of the crowd, the torture on the cross?
Where was God at Auschwitz? Where was He hiding during the recent natural disasters? Is there any more to this world than destructive natural forces and survival of the fit and fortunate?
At one time or another we all wonder at the problem of evil, whether natural or human. Sometimes we find half-satisfying answers, until something new guts us. Then we feel as the Mother of the Lord must have felt at the foot of the cross. We gape with mute incomprehension and impotence before the mystery of suffering.
Against the backdrop of these recent tragedies Parramatta cathedral was full on Ash Wednesday and I predict it will be full again on Good Friday. Whether queuing for the ashes or ‘creeping to the cross’, people respond when the Liturgy speaks so directly about evil, suffering and mortality.
Dust we are and to dust we shall return. No words, no answers suffice: as in true love, so too in suffering, body language speaks louder than words.
We stand by the cross and wonder at evil. But after the grief our gaping mouths and haunted minds, our sickened hearts and paralysed bodies can move on...
We try in our little way to make some sense and to find some comfort. We conclude, as Christians must conclude, that storms and quakes and other evils are no ‘act of God’ whatever the insurers say; that no innocent person suffers by God’s active will; that even what God permits so as to allow us freedom costs Him greatly; that suffering and death are NOT the last word.
Jesus dies upon the cross in solidarity with all suffering humanity. God goes down into tomb with all those we’ve loved and lost. Jesus goes to the land of the Dead, to speak the compassion of God even there. And He shows them and us the way out. We move with him from the numbness, anger and disgust, to better feelings such as pity and hope. We come to trust creation again, to be reconciled with our enemies, to believe once more.
We too can know compassion, the compassion in own hearts for others who suffer, the compassion others show us when we are hurting. In the cross of Christ is the power to conquer sin, suffering and death. We find, as our fellow Australians, Japanese and New Zealanders did amidst the recent natural disasters, that we can give of ourselves to others, even to strangers.
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