"My whole being clings to you; you're right hand holds me fast."    Psalm 63:8

Like most congregations, we have a Worship Committee. The members meet from time-to-time to review our worship life at Grace, and make suggestions. As a pastor, being a part of worship planning is not anything unusual. This however, was unusual on several counts. I met with a young husband and his wife a month ago to plan a worship service. This was unusual because we were planning Suzanne's funeral. Couples in the mid-thirties should be thinking about a Baptism, not planning for the unthinkable. Our meeting last month was unusual, because Suzanne was a vocal participant, selecting both the scripture readings and the hymns. And finally, it was unusual because one of the hymns was an old camp song I had never before sung in church, Kumbaya. Kumbaya means "come by here." It is a bedtime song for Suzanne and her daughters, and she was hoping that by singing it at her funeral, her little girls would find comfort and strength for a difficult future. Come by here, Lord, come by here.

The church was filled on Friday. I'm sure some in the pews were wondering, "Why did this happen to such a beautiful person, so spiritually centered, in the prime of her life"? I suspect that though no one raised it to me, this had to be the unspoken question on the minds of many.

It is tempting for some people to think of the Bible as just a dusty old story book, with little to say about life in the twenty-first century. After all, the newest of the writings are about 1900 years old. To put this in perspective, I've kept some of the books I read in junior high school and I page through them now and again. For instance, the Hardy Boys series, written about eighty years ago. Compared to the Bible, these books are new. Joe and Frank Hardy, were such heroes to me as a kid. But now I see the two brothers as hopelessly old-fashioned and out of touch. Consider this: they are polite to their parents, courteous to their teachers, kind to their friends, and they solve mysteries after school. What young man today could relate? To the solving mysteries, I mean.

But the Bible? To that we can relate. A dusty old story book that is as up-to-date as tomorrow. Consider this: the twin tragedies in our Gospel text. Some folks in the know relay to Jesus the news, "Did you hear the latest? About the folks at worship who were slaughtered by the soldiers of Pilate? Just as an aside, the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate may have washed his hands of the blood of Jesus ... but history tells us that the hands of Pilate were stained with the blood of thousands. Hands so dirty that not even industrial strength Borax could cleanse.

Can you imagine: the blood of the worshippers mingled with the blood of the sacrifices! Sure you can imagine. Just last year, a pastor was shot in Indiana. Just last year an usher was shot in Kansas. In January, seven were killed at worship in Cairo and this morning: five Christians were killed in Pakistan, as they were at worship. The Bible speaks about events and emotions as old as dust and as new as tomorrow.

And then the second of the twin tragedies ... a tower collapsing on innocent people at Siloam. I, for one, can never read this account the same way since September 11. A tower collapsing upon the innocent! The Bible speaks about events and emotions as old as dust and as new as tomorrow.

The people who relay these stories to Jesus are looking for a basic answer to an age old question: "Why does God allow such a thing?" Some people are willing to give God a little wiggle room, "OK, God  did not cause what happened to happen, but the bottom line is this: neither did God prevent it." The concern is a very real one. Why do bad things happen to good people? Like wondering children we persistently ask, over and over again, "Why, why God, why? It seems God sometimes forgets John 3:16, "For God so loves the world."

When our children are young, we try to teach them one of the most important lessons in life: the lesson of cause and effect. Put your finger on a hot stove, and you get burned. Fall and scrape your knee while Mommy's cooking dinner, and dinner gets burned. Scream and cry during Daddy's favorite TV show, and Daddy gets burned. Cause and effect. And this is the world view of the man on the street at the time of Jesus.

There is no such thing as bad fortune. When something goes wrong in your life it is a direct result of the wrong you must be doing in life. It's that simple. Once the disciples asked, "Teacher who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Implicit in the question is this: God makes no mistakes and if a baby from birth is eligible for a guide dog and white cane, either the blind man must have sinned. And if not he, then his parents. Cause and effect!

This is a comforting theology, a way of making sense of God, because it brings us a sense of control over our destiny. If we want to be healthy, wealthy, sighted and wise, we just need to play by God's game plan: obey the golden rule, live by the Ten Commandments, and so on. And this is all fine and good. Until we stop and think about what kind of a God would inflict pain and suffering upon us for every misstep we might make. And besides, the reality of life is that the seemingly innocent people still suffer, bad things do happen to good people.

Jesus certainly could have given a more complete account of the whys and wherefores of life, had he been of a mind to do so. In our Gospel text, he had an opportunity to explore man-made and natural catastrophes. But Jesus sees another question as being more important than why. How? How do we stand before God? We ask Jesus about the unfairness of life; he ignores the question. He wants us to examine our relationship with God. The answer of Jesus in the face of tragedy seems to be: work on your relationship with God ... the very God who will see you through as you live your lives between tragedies! And as followers of Jesus Christ, we have this assurance - God will never allow anything worse to happen to us, than that which happened to God's own Son.

I believe it with every fiber of my being: God is love! God is love and not only on the calm and secure days of our existence, but also, God is love even as the world around us seems to collapse. To be sure, our suffering is strong and enduring. And just as sure, God's love is stronger still!

As I see it, when bad things happen to good people, we basically have three choices. We can write God off as a cruel Deity who takes delight in our suffering. We can dismiss God as a childhood superstition with no more reality than a jolly old man with a bright red suit bearing gifts. Or this: in the midst of the worst that life can dish out, we can grab onto and hold tight to the best God has to offer. We can choose to sing the song of Suzanne, "Come by here, my Lord, Kumbaya." And with Suzanne we discover, not only does our Lord come to us, comfort us, cry with us, but that our Lord was with us - all along!

Kumbaya. Another way of saying, "My whole being clings to you; your right hand holds me fast."    Psalm 63:8