Events in China and Burma - a Trinitarian response

Text of a sermon by the Rev'd Judith Sweetman on Trinity Sunday 2008

The awful events of the past few weeks, with the devastating cyclone in Burma and the catastrophic earthquake in China have left many wondering how we can possibly believe in a loving God,  if he creates a world where natural disasters can bring such appalling and untold suffering?

Why would a loving God create such a world as ours, with its potential for destruction through natural forces? Painful and unpalatable as it may be, perhaps we need to think hard about the fundamental principles inherent in freedom and creativity. In creation, God bestowed upon the earth the creative freedom to grow in its own way, to develop organically.

The result of such freedom is the staggering beauty, the amazing diversity we see and rejoice in all around us - in our landscapes, in our animal and bird life, in our differing human ethnicities. But where there is freedom, there is risk, and where there is risk, there is the potential for disaster. It is inherent and unavoidable. Parents know this, when they give their child freedom to cross the road on their own for the first time.  Because, to guarantee true freedom, control and restraint must be relinquished. God cannot create a truly free and organic creation, and yet also act as its puppeteer, constantly pulling the strings, to intervene in the natural processes of the earth.

For the same processes, the same forces, the clash of huge tectonic plates, that cause earthquakes and tsunamis, also produce the most life-giving features of our planet. The mountain ranges of the world – the Himalayas, the Alps...without which the whole ecosystem of our world would fail and people cease to survive, as it is the rainfall they produce, it is their rivers and glaciers, which bring us the precious water we need to live.

This, I know, is not an adequate answer to the suffering we witness daily on the news. How can anything be? And if God were only the Creator, we might be left with nothing more to grapple with than this - the complexity and risk of God’s creation; the dangers of an organic and still-developing earth.

But Trinity Sunday celebrates the deep truth that as Christians, we know and experience God, not just as a remote Creator, who leaves the earth he has created to its own devices, relishing its beauty and diversity, but ignoring its destructive power. Instead we know him as God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

As God the Father, God shares the anguish of parents in China, for he too knows what it is to lose a beloved only child.

As God the Son, God shares the suffering of the people of Burma, for he too knows what it is to be in fear and pain and distress, to face a cruel and prolonged death.

But God is also God the Holy Spirit, the very essence and power of God, issuing forth from the Father and the Son, to transform and renew the earth and its people. As the Holy Spirit was there at the beginning of creation, hovering over the waters, so the Holy Spirit is at work now, working to bring about God’s new creation, a redeemed creation, in which there will be a new heaven and a new earth, in which the earth will be set free from its bondage; a creation in which there will be no more weeping, no more death.  It is a new creation which each of us can either hasten or hinder, by choosing to co-operate with or to resist God’s loving purposes for his people and his planet.

May God enable each of us to hasten his new creation, by putting our knowledge, our resources, our compassion and skill into his service, into preventing and alleviating the suffering of our brothers and sisters. And may we show respect for - and seek to grow in our understanding of - the mighty forces of God’s earth. 

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