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Let us pray. Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove; descend on us, reveal your love. Word of God and inward light, wake our spirits; clear our sight. Surround us now with all your glory; speak through me that sacred story. Take my lips and make them bold. Take hearts and minds and make them whole. Stir in us that sacred flame; then send us forth to spread your name. Amen.

Rob Bell tells about walking through the mall with his 2½ year old son. It was the holidays and as if there weren’t enough to sell in the stores, they had kiosks on wheels all through the mall to sell more stuff. One kiosk had all sorts of gadgets and toys in every color imaginable. The guy at the kiosk was pushing this sports ball toy apparatus thing. He says to Rob: “You want to try it?” Rob says, “Sure, okay!” He straps the Velcro thing to his wrist and this wrist thing is connected to a long elastic cord which is attached to a ball. You take the ball and toss it and it comes back. So, he tries it, but it comes back and hits him in the face. Rob is rubbing his face; his son is laughing. The sales person is chatting about how folks use it as a stress reliever. Rob says, “No way!” He starts to walk away, but his son stands there, saying, “I want one.” Rob says, “No, son, we’re leaving.” “But I want one,” he says again. Rob says, “No, we need to go.”

The kid doesn’t move. He’s looking up at the massive wall of toys and he says, “But I need it!” Rob, in a moment of parental brilliance, kneels down by his son and tries to reason with a 2½ year old. He says, “You don’t understand, son; it’s going to wrap around your wrist; it’ll break; it’ll hit you in the face; you’ll lose it.” The boy looks up with tears in his eyes, and his lips pursed, and says, “But I thought you said you loved me.” Rob says, “Don’t do this to me.” The salesman is smiling and thinking, “Go for it, kid!” But Rob picks up his son and walks away. All the while, the little boy is looking over his dad’s shoulder at the kiosk toy and saying, “But I want one. I thought you said you loved me.”

We’ve all been there, haven’t we? It’s one thing for a child to feel disappointed over a toy he or she doesn’t get…but another thing to be disappointed with God. Have you ever been disappointed with God? It's hard to admit, I know. It seems somehow wrong, even sacrilegious, to talk about disappointment with God.

In 1988, Phillip Yancey wrote a book called, Disappointment with God.

Immediately, he got all kinds of criticism for the title of the book…how dare he say that! But then he began to get letters from all kinds of people, people thanking him for giving a word and a voice to their experience. Some had experienced tragedy; some had known great loss. Others said, “There is no one specific thing on which I can pin down my feeling of disappointment, but so often it just seems that God seems so far away.”

I want to say to you this morning that if you’ve ever felt a sense of disappointment with God, I want to give you an encouraging word. The word is this: you're not alone. Not only have other Christians had that experience, but many of the people in the Bible experienced disappointment with God as well. One of those is the author of the text that I share with you today, the psalmist. I invite you to hear these words from Psalm 88.

Psalm 88:1-5; 13-18 Good News Translation Lord God, my savior, I cry out all day, and at night I come before you. Hear my prayer; listen to my cry for help! So many troubles have fallen on me that I am close to death. I am like all others who are about to die; all my strength is gone. I am abandoned among the dead; I am like the slain lying in their graves, those you have forgotten completely, who are beyond your help.

Lord, I call to you for help; every morning I pray to you. Why do you reject me, Lord? Why do you turn away from me? Ever since I was young, I have suffered and been near death; I am worn out from the burden of your punishments. Your furious anger crushes me; your terrible attacks destroy me. All day long they surround me like a flood; they close in on me from every side. You have made even my closest friends abandon me, and darkness is my only companion.

Deep, profound disappointment.

When bad things happen and we feel this disappointment with God, what can we say?

One thing I often hear people say is, “Well everything happens for a reason, you know!” Or someone will add, “And God doesn’t put more on us than we can bear, isn’t that right, Reverend?” I hear such things…don’t you? We repeat those words as if those words were somehow imprinted in scripture, but they are not.

There’s been a tragic accident; the family is in the waiting room and the bad news is piling up; or I’m sitting around in a family’s living room and we’re planning the funeral for a loved one who died before their time…and someone looks at me and says, “Well, everything happens for a reason, right Reverend?”

And I want to tell you that when I am sitting with you in the emergency room or your family room, and you say that to me, I’m probably just going to nod my head and put my arm around you; because at that moment you aren’t really asking for a lecture on theodicy or some information about the philosophy of causation. You’re hurting and asking for some assurance that somewhere down the road this is all going to make sense, because it doesn’t make any sense right now.

But I ask you this morning, does everything really happen for a reason? Does it?

When we say that or when we ask that question, we’re implying that the tragedy that we have just experienced is actually a good thing, somehow. We’re saying that whatever bad thing just happened, that God must somehow be involved in that bad thing, even though it is not clear to us at the moment.

In just saying that, somehow we hope it will give us a sense of peace and stability when our world is reeling; it helps us to know that even if we can’t understand why this bad thing has happened, a good and loving God wouldn’t do something bad or unloving. And so we say: everything happens for a reason. (Hamilton)

But for many of us who have wrestled with that question in our own experience, for those of us who day in and day out seek to care for hurting people, we look at that and we say, “Now, wait a second, what is it that we are really saying when we say ‘everything happens for a reason’?”

We seem to be saying that this bad thing is somehow a part of God’s plan! God somehow wanted and needed it to happen. And if God wanted and needed it to happen, then God must think it’s okay for it to happen. While I can’t see it, it must be a part of God’s bigger plan.

I want to be totally honest with you this morning! I have a very hard time believing that it was part of God’s plan that a man would become angry with his co-workers and shoot them at point-blank range. Is that really what God wanted? Or that it was part of God's plan that a deranged student would take the lives of fellow students and faculty members at Virginia Tech. Is that part of God’s good and perfect plan? Or when a father sexually molests his daughter, or a woman goes out on New Year’s Eve leaving her two children to die alone in a fire…is that what God wanted? Is that what God is like?

This is very important! It is to the core of how I understand our faith. I see nothing consistent with the character of Jesus in that kind of an understanding of God. Nothing! To attribute what we cannot understand to God just because it makes us feel good does an injustice both to God and our understanding of God.

And so when you are hurting, you’ll never hear me say, “God causes everything to happen for a reason.”

Besides, if everything happens for a reason, then God is controlling everything that takes place in our world. You and I don’t really have any choices in life. We’re pawns, robots, pre-programmed characters in a cosmic video game. God may give us the illusion of making decisions, but God is controlling every life, every thought, every action in every life at every moment. (Hamilton)

But do we really believe that God is orchestrating and controlling every thought and action of more than 6½ billion people so that everything can happen for the right reason at just the right time for God’s perfect and pre-ordained plan? Is God controlling the thoughts of sexual predators? Did God arrange for certain folks to work at the World Trade Center because God wanted them to die on 9-11? Did God send the hijackers to kill them?

A few years ago, after the dot.com crash, I heard a man on TV talking about how he’d lost a fortune.

He explained it like this: “I lost everything; but I know God took away my wealth to teach me a lesson. I’d gotten too materialistic.” Now, do you know what he’s saying? He’s saying that God controls the NASDAQ! That God is in charge of the economic markets. But not only that, God caused the market to lose a huge amount just so that this man, this one person, could learn a painful lesson. Frankly, if that’s the case, I’m mad at this guy who had to learn a lesson at my expense and at the expense of so many others.

There is a more faithful way to view all of this. To understand it, let me tell you about a man named Douglas. It’s a true story.

Douglas is a good man, a trained psychotherapist, who gave up a lucrative practice in order to work in the inner-city among the poor. Yet, shortly after he did, life started to fall apart.

First, his wife came down with breast cancer. Chemotherapy left her tired and often sick. Later, cancer spread to her lungs. And a new series of treatments started.

In the middle of this, his family was involved in a serious traffic accident. They weren't doing anything wrong, just driving down the road. A drunk driver crossed the median and smashed into them. Douglas's 12-year-old daughter went through the windshield; her face was badly lacerated. His wife was also hurt. And Douglas had a severe head injury that left him with terrible headaches; he was unable to work a full day and he had double vision that made him unable to read or drive or walk down the stairs.

Philip Yancey interviewed Douglas over breakfast. After the breakfast was served, Philip said, “Douglas, I'm writing a book about disappointment with God. I was thinking of people who might be disappointed with God and I thought of you. What would you say to people who are disappointed with God?”

Douglas thought for a minute and then he said, “You know, Philip, I don't think I've ever been disappointed with God.” Philip was amazed; he’d specifically chosen Douglas because he was likely to be disappointed, even angry at God, because of the unfairness he had experienced.

Douglas said, “You know, Philip, I learned a long time ago not to confuse God with life. Is life unfair? You bet it is. Is what happened to my wife, my daughter and what has happened to me unfair? Of course! But I think God feels exactly the same way about it as I do. I think God is grieved and hurt by what that drunk driver did as much as I am. But I don't confuse God with life. I have a relationship with God that is bigger than my circumstances and so I have something to hang on to when life begins to fall apart.”

Douglas talked about some of the characters in scripture: Abraham, Joseph, David and Job. They were able to separate the physical reality of their lives from the spiritual reality of their relationship with God. They all had a relationship with God that didn’t depend on how healthy they were or how well their lives were going. (Yancey, Disappointment with God)

I am convinced that a part of the reason that we become disappointed with God is that we confuse God with the circumstances of life! We turn our circumstances into a litmus test as to whether we think God is good…we allow our circumstances to determine how we feel and what we think about God.

Douglas glanced at his watch and as he was about to leave, he said, “Philip, I've got to go. I'll leave you with one last thought. If you are ever tempted to confuse God with life, go back and read the story of Jesus. For me, the cross of Christ demolished for all time, the idea that life is supposed to be fair.”

But if you know the story of Jesus, of how he suffered and died, you know that the story of Jesus doesn’t end there at the cross. At Easter, God took the tragedy of Good Friday, the cross, the worst that could be imagined, and transformed it. God took the unfairness and the tragedy of the cross and made it a great victory, the victory on which our faith rests.

And so, I hold on to that in the midst of the pain and the disappointments of life! I hold tight to the belief in a God of Easter who continually reminds me in the midst of my disappointment, that this is not all there is. God is with me in the circumstances...working to bring good out of our circumstances, but God is always bigger than my circumstances.

Another answer to disappointment is found in Psalm 88. Here’s a guy who is crying out to God, “My life stinks! Nothing is going right!” But do you notice what he’s doing as he cries out in disappointment? He’s praying. He’s staying connected to God. With white knuckles, he’s holding on to the frayed ends of the rope of faith. He’s just holding on. And by praying, he’s saying, “There is still someone there to talk to. God still listens.”

When someone says, “I’m going to turn my back on God because of all the bad that’s happened,” this is what I want them to understand.

I want to say, “Okay, go ahead. But when you turn your back on God, does that make the world a better place? Is one bit of evil reversed? Haven’t you rejected the one source of hope in a world like this? Aren’t you rejecting the one restraining force that helps people choose right instead of wrong? And when you turn your back on God, you turn your back on the only thing that makes suffering bearable!”

Our Christian faith offers us that great promise...that God is with us. That’s the Christmas experience that we have just celebrated. The name of Jesus...Emmanuel...means God is with us in the midst of the mess and difficulty of life.

But the Christian faith offers something else. It offers the experience of a community where Christ is present in the love and prayer and care of the Christian community.

At age 26, Martha was an attractive, young, single career woman, with a challenging job. Then her hand began to tremble; then she couldn’t use her right arm at all.

Then came the diagnosis: Lou Gehrig’s disease. It wasn’t long before she couldn’t use the other arm. Gradually, she loss the use of her legs.

Sometimes Lou Gehrig’s disease takes many years to take its final effect. But in Martha, it just took a matter of months. When she began to have trouble breathing, she knew she was dying.

And Martha wanted one thing. She wanted to spend a couple of weeks, probably her last two weeks, at her home and say goodbye to her friends, her relatives, and all the people she had known. But how could she do that? Someone had to be with Martha constantly. She couldn’t care for herself. She couldn’t possibly afford to pay three shifts of nurses. Where could Martha get this last gift?

She found it in a group of Christians, the Christian community of Reba Place Fellowship. Sixteen women agreed to take care of Martha day and night. They devoted themselves for two weeks.

They got baby sitters for their own kids. They moved in so they could constantly be with Martha. They cooked her meals, cleaned her apartment and took care of her. They bathed her, cleaned her, dressed her, cared for her, and loved her.

And they also talked to her about God and about the future. You see, Martha was not a person of faith. She’d said, “You know, I would like to turn to God, but I don’t want to do it out of fear, or just out of the fear of dying. I want to do it out of love. It is hard for me to understand a God of love when I have this terrible disease.”

Well, in the last two weeks of her life, Martha finally experienced God’s love. She never had a vision of God. But she did see Christ alive in sixteen women. And in a moving ceremony, she professed her faith and was baptized.

And if you asked Martha, “Where is God? Where is God in all the disappointment and loss?” she would say, “God is with me in these sixteen women. Through them I’ve seen the love of God.” (Yancey, Where is God When It Hurts)

Let us pray. O God, there are so many circumstances in life that challenge our trust, our faith, our hope. We look around and see the news; we look within and see the inner struggles. We had hoped that we would be personally further along by now. We find it so hard to stop and be silent and connect with you. So God, it’s so easy to be disappointed with ourselves, and with you, and with the world that you have given us. But remind us of your presence and lead us forward. For we pray in Jesus’ name, in his character. Amen.

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Endnotes: This sermon based, in part, upon material from the following sources:

1. Rob Bell: Kickball, (from his Nooma video by the same name)
2. Adam Hamilton, “When God Disappoints Us”
3. Philip Yancey, Disappointment with God
4. Philip Yancey, Where is God When It Hurts?