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Were the elections really less than a week ago? For me, it feels like a whole lot of life has happened between November 2 and today. Anxiety. Hope. Excitement. Wonder. Hope. Discouragement. Pride. Resolve. Hope. Where are you, God?

Right here. Always have been and always will be – right here. And does my heart hurt.

Scripture has a way of speaking to more than its historical context. Perhaps that says something about humanity. It certainly says something about God. Today’s Hebrew text is from the prophet Haggai. Listen again, with 2004 ears. Who is left among you that saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Is it not in your sight as nothing? Yet now take courage, says the Lord. Take courage all you people of the land, says the Lord; work, for I am with you according to the promise that I made you when you came out of Egypt. My spirit abides among you, do not fear. For thus says the Lord, once again, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land; and I will fill this house with splendor.

The times of ancient Israel were not these times. I acknowledge that this text would likely take many turns if we set about unpacking it with an academic and theological lens. I don’t want to go that direction; I want to keep it simple. Through Haggai we are linked with our ancestors and our future offspring. Life deals blows – in our families, cities, churches, governments and the planet’s turning. In these times, we need courage. It is our faith, I believe, that fills us with that necessary courage. I am with you, says the Lord, according to the promise that I made you when you came out of Egypt.

God’s promise of steadfast attention and care toward our human predicament is one to count on. God’s word is not a vote seeking stump speech. I am with you. Take it or leave it. I hope you take it. God is always with us; that does not mean however, that God always agrees with us. That is why I think God’s heart hurts. No matter what one’s political leanings, Christians must come to terms with the fact that our society has failed and is failing to love in the footsteps of Jesus.

My spirit abides among you; do not fear. Well – fear a little if you choose to do nothing. Actually, fear a lot! I’m not inclined to pull rabbits out of hats. You must live your faith like you mean it. Stand tall with the courage my reality gives you! Together we will bring in a new day and I shall fill this house with splendor.

Today’s gospel is another matter. It reminds me of those story problems that sent me up the wall and down in grade point average. I get the question the Sadducees ask. In a nutshell, they are making their point that belief in a resurrection, an afterlife different from the one on earth, is crazy. They have a biological understanding of immortality. If one has no offspring or is not married (so to at least have an inherited family), one would have no existence.

To review the question: A man’s brother dies, leaving a wife and no child. The brother marries her, they remain childless. Sterility and death play out over and over. The widow has had seven husbands and no children. Finally the widow herself dies. At the resurrection, whose wife will she be?

Jesus’ response is similar to seminary professors that launch into an explanation that makes me dizzy, that is sometimes intimidating, and that always leaves me grateful to go outside. Jesus, after all, was a rabbi. He could hold his own with the best of them. I have read and re-read this text and a few commentaries. The commentaries are nearly as complicated as the text! I think the outcome is that Jesus beats the Sadducees at their own game, using scripture to prove that life in the resurrection is true no matter what biology and society say.

I believe it was Paul Tillich that helped me articulate, until there is a question, the answer doesn’t matter. That in a nutshell is my philosophy of education. As a learner and teacher, it’s discerning the questions that ultimately lead us to meaning. It’s funny and it’s not, the bumper sticker-like phrase: "Jesus is the answer. Now what was your question?" It’s not funny because too many Christian educators live there.

Progressive Christian denominations encourage questions. Questions are indicators of engagement and maturity. They set before us a specific situation and context. As Tillich would say, we then bring a message to the situation. An answer to the question. The answer, a message, that draws upon the language and insights of the question.

Jesus loves you is the answer to the question of whether I am alone in my despair. Depending on the context, the words and images from which I may frame this response could be a cross and intense physical and emotional suffering. Or, I could speak of the heart, hands, and feet of a human being standing in protest of the death penalty. Faith meets our questions where we are.

I digress, a little. Today’s gospel asks a question and records an answer that right now, this week, doesn’t mean much to me. Or if examined a different way, I could take off on theological ponderings regarding resurrection. Resurrection is not as abstract as one may initially think. Why or is Easter important? We die. What’s next?

But, again, that’s not this morning’s direction. I was led to a more significant question. Why do bad things happen to good people? It’s a different kind of "What’s next?" question. How does one reconcile their faith in a God that allows ______ to happen?

Rabbi Harold Kushner is a great theologian, speaker and human being. I wish he was the one standing here this morning. I need his wit and wisdom.

Here’s what Kushner says, first paragraph in his watershed book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People: There is only one question which really matters: why do bad things happen to good people? All other theological conversation is intellectually diverting; somewhat like doing the crossword puzzle in the Sunday paper and feeling very satisfied when you have made the words fit; but ultimately without the capacity to reach people where they really care. Virtually every meaningful conversation I have ever had with people on the subject of God and religion has either started with this question or gotten around to it before long. …

Why do the righteous suffer? Kushner writes: "Sometimes we try to make sense of life’s trials by saying that people do in fact get what they deserve, but only over the course of time. At any given moment, life may seem unfair and innocent people may appear to be suffering. But if we wait long enough, we believe, we will see the righteousness of God’s plan emerge." He refers to Psalm 92. The righteous shall flourish like a palm tree. Slow but sure. You may think it pays to be wicked but justice catches up.

"There’s a lot of wishful thinking in this theology," says Kushner. "How does the psalmist explain the fact that God, who is presumably behind this arrangement, does not always give the righteous person time to catch up? Some good people die unfulfilled; others find length of days to be more of a punishment than a privilege. The world, alas, is not so neat a place as the psalmist would have us believe."

Sometimes there is no reason. Some things are simply bad luck and not the will of God. What makes luck happen? I’m inclined to be a simpleton and say, it just does. Some time ago I was part of a circle of Native Americans sitting in a living room talking about life. I have no recollection of the question but I have a still sharp memory of the woman throwing her head back in laughter saying, "You white people always have to have a reason for things. We Indians understand that some things just are."

God is not in charge of absolutely everything. A stretch for some of us, I know. There is a randomness to the universe. God is not in charge of the randomness. Otherwise, we are left with a cruel God and/or a sinful unworthy self. Kushner elaborates: "Some people will find the hand of God behind everything that happens. I visit with a woman in the hospital whose car was run into by a drunken driver running a red light. Her vehicle was totally demolished. Miraculously, she escaped with only two cracked ribs and a few superficial cuts from flying glass. She looks up at me from her hospital bed and says, ‘Now I know there is a God. If I could come out of that alive and in one piece, it must be because He is looking out for me up there.’

I smile and keep quiet, running the risk of letting her think that I agree with her because it’s not the time or place for a theology seminar. But, my mind goes back to the funeral I conducted two weeks earlier, for a young husband and father who died in a similar drunk-driver collision; and I remember another case, a child killed by a hit and run driver while roller skating; and all the newspaper accounts of lives cut short in automobile accidents,. The woman before me may believe that she is alive because God wanted her to survive, and I’m not inclined to talk her out of it, but what would she say or I say to those other families? That they were of less worth than she, less valuable in God’s sight? That God wanted them to die at that particular time and manner, and did not choose to spare them?"

Did the elections prove that God is a Republican? That God favors some votes and political parties more than others? As in wealth and health, if you have it does that mean God blesses you and if you don’t, well, something is not right with your soul? Had the presidential race gone Democrat, the conclusion could be no less sensible. God favors some votes and political parties more than others? Do we really think God takes those kinds of sides? God help us!

Kushner’s final chapter is called, What Good Then is Religion? "Is there an answer to the question of why bad things happen to good people? That depends on what we mean by answer. If we mean, is there an explanation which will make sense of it all – Why is there cancer in the world? Why did the plane crash? Why did any child die? Then, there probably is not a satisfying answer.

But the word answer can mean response as well as explanation and in that sense, there may well be a satisfying answer to the tragedies in our lives. The response would be Job’s response in the MacLeish’s version of the biblical story – to forgive the world for not being perfect, to forgive God for not making a better world, to reach out to the people around us, and to go on living despite it all.

…And if you can do these things, will you be able to recognize that the ability to forgive and the ability to love are the weapons God has given us to enable us to live fully, bravely, and meaningfully in this less than perfect world?"

What’s next, O people of God?

Amen.