All Will Be Well

Sermon for North Hill Adventist Fellowship, November 3, 2012

About 600 years ago, an English woman had a vision. In her vision, she heard God say to her, “All will be well. All will be well. And all manner of thing will be well.”

At the time of her vision, Julian herself was deathly ill and her world was ravaged by the plague.

It was not the best of times, to say the least.

Words that are more familiar to most of us were written by an American business man, Horatio Spafford, in 1873.

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

He wrote this after losing his business in the Chicago fire, then losing his four daughters in a shipwreck.

All will be well. Everything's going to be all right. This conviction lies at the heart of our religion. It is declared in many classic passages in the Bible:

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to [his] purpose. Romans 8:28. KJV

And we know that God causes everything to work together* for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.

Footnote: * Some manuscripts read And we know that everything works together. NLT

Don't be afraid little flock. It is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Luke 12:32

Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world." John 16:33

The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces Isaiah 25:8

Everything's going to be all right. It will be so good all our tears will dry. Our sorrows will evaporate in the warmth and light of God's blessing. That's the promise. Right now we need to hear that. We need to sing that.

This week we watched as a swirling 1.8-million-square- mile spiral plowed into the Atlantic coast. The storm surge flooded houses and subway tunnels. Fires raged. People died.

Is it really possible that all will be well? How can it possibly be true that EVERYTHING is going to work for good?

This storm will prompt changes. The Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Cuomo are talking out loud about climate change and some of the steps that must be taken to prepare the city for the reality of sea level rise and increased storm frequency and severity. Maybe thirty years from now when another hurricane pushes a storm surge into New York harbor and levees or flood gates prevent the wrecking of electrical vaults and subway tunnels . . . maybe then people will be able to see Hurricane Sandy as something good, as the catalyst that moved the city to take action. But what about now? What about people who lost loved ones in this storm?

There is no way to calculate the relative value of some theoretical benefit out in the future compared to the horrific loss that is obvious here and now. The loss of human life cannot be measured with mere numbers. How do you recover when the house you've lived in for 50 years and everything in it is reduced to charcoal?

As believers we don't even try to offer some rational, calculated defense of our faith that good will come even from the worst of times. Such calculations are always rude and insensitive. They trivialize the pain of those who have experienced loss. Instead we simply declare our hope: God is at work. Goodness will win. Beauty and justice and happiness will triumph.

This declaration forms the heart of our worship. God is good. God is mighty. God guarantees the ultimate primacy of justice and mercy, beauty and peace. It is a declaration that is better sung than argued. This is why music is so central to our worship. We don't come to church to calculate the difference between our losses and blessings. No, in our music deliberately give full attention to the happiness that is ours in Christ. We sing the promises of blessings that are so rich, so grand, so immense that they incalculably outweigh every loss.

Through music we join the heavenly beings in their eternal rapture.

Let me say again: we don't participate in this symphony through argumentation and rationality. The reality of loss is too keen, too huge to be explained or argued away. We taste the promised symphony of joy through worship and faith, through music and meditation. We deliberately give our attention to the promises. For a brief while in worship we let go of our awareness of loss and pain and open ourselves to the sweetness of affirmation and hope.

We sing, all will be well and all will be well and all manner of thing will be well.

(Allow me a digression. The focus of my sermon is on our hope as believers, the central Christian conviction that God and love will win. There is, however, one “calculation” that it is appropriate to make in the light of Hurricane Sandy: Do what you can to be prepared for likely disasters. We don't have hurricanes here. We are likely to experience an earthquake. Now that we're past summer, make sure you have blankets and some emergency food in your car. Be as ready as practical at home.)

But what if your mind won't let you get there? What if you find yourself sputtering, “But . . . but . . .?” What if you find the words of Julian or Horatio offensive because of the way they seem to gloss over real human suffering. What if Paul's words about everything working for good see out of touch with reality? What then? Is there still any place for you in the church? Is there room in our religion for your mind, for your regard for the real time suffering and pain that pervades the world?

Consider Jeremiah. The Prophet Jeremiah did everything he could to help his people avoid disaster. He put his life on the line with his preaching. If it were not for the protection of one family in the Jewish nobility, he would have been killed early in his ministry. But his preaching failed. He was unable to persuade his people to take the actions required to avoid devastation. At the end of his life, after his city has been demolished and his nation destroyed, he wrote a little book called Lamentations. He begins with a picture of the devastation of Jerusalem, his home town:

Jerusalem, once so full of people, is now deserted. She who was once great among the nations now sits alone like a widow. Once the queen of all the earth, she is now a slave. She sobs through the night; tears stream down her cheeks. Among all her lovers, there is no one left to comfort her. All her friends have betrayed her and become her enemies. . . . The roads to Jerusalem [fn] are in mourning, for crowds no longer come to celebrate the festivals. The city gates are silent, her priests groan, her young women are crying— how bitter is her fate! Lamentations 1:1-4.

The book continues for 5 chapters. It never rises to joy. It does not paint a picture of recovery, restoration and renewal. The books ends:

Why do you continue to forget us? Why have you abandoned us for so long? Restore us, O LORD, and bring us back to you again! Give us back the joys we once had! Or have you utterly rejected us? Are you angry with us still? Lamentations 5:20-22

In his longer book, Jeremiah had written promises from God about a bright future. Desolation was not to be the final end of the story. He had written the promises, but in his life time, desolation was the final story. And Jeremiah's final words in Scripture are the plaintive lament: “Have you utterly rejected us? Are you angry with us still?”

Early in his ministry Jeremiah had a vision of God's own grief over the coming devastation of Jerusalem. Through the prophet God says,

If only my head were a pool of water and my eyes a fountain of tears, I would weep day and night for all my people who have been slaughtered. Oh, that I could go away and forget my people and live in a travelers' shack in the desert. For they are all adulterers— a pack of treacherous liars. . . . I will weep for the mountains and wail for the wilderness pastures. For they are desolate and empty of life. Jeremiah 9:1-10.

God was not blind then to the tragedy of the world. He is not blind now. And neither are we. We weep for our own losses and for the losses of others. Then we come to church and celebrate a different truth: All will be well and all will be well and all manner of thing will be well.

We celebrate the triumph of beauty and goodness, justice and mercy.

The promise of the ultimate triumph of goodness forms the heart of our worship together. A deep awareness of and regard for human suffering sits at the core of our theology. Both are part of our faith. If you find yourself dismissive of the suffering in the world. If other's pain does not move you to compassion and action to ease suffering, then spend some time with Jeremiah. Learn to weep with the prophet and with God.

On the other hand, if the weight of the pain and trouble of the world is crushing your soul, let it go for awhile. Come and worship. Come sing songs that declare all will be well. As our hearts are brightened and made light through worship we will be better equipped to serve as agents of the kingdom of God in our homes, our neighborhoods, at school and work and beyond.