27th Sunday Yr A (Gospel: Matthew 21: 33-43) Making sense of tragedy

Last week we had the horrific killing of so many people who were out enjoying themselves at a concert. No one knows why it happened, which itself is so disillusioning and frustrating. For no apparent reason this man Stephen Paddock, carefully planned to murder innocent people. This makes us angry and often we want to lash out at God. From a spiritual point of view, how are we supposed to understand this? Death always brings up far more questions than answers, but especially this kind of murder done for no apparent reason. Why didn’t God stop it? Why does God allow such things?

The reason God allows such things is because God has given us free will and we are responsible for our actions. I was talking about this last week. If we choose to do evil, other people will suffer. The more evil we choose, the more others suffer because of our actions. There is a great amount of evil in the world at the moment because people have rejected God and are choosing to do evil.

In one of the readings from the prophet Ezekiel, which we had last Sunday, God confronts us saying, ‘You say that God’s ways are not fair. Listen house of Israel, is it not your ways that are unfair?’ When we are faced with disasters like this, we become angry because we know it is unjust and we don’t know where to turn. So we often direct our anger towards God. We are usually slower to admit that this has happened because we have been given free will. A big part of our frustration is also that this man killed himself and so he cannot even be brought to justice. However, he most certainly will be brought to justice, as the Lord assures us that we are responsible for our actions. Jesus spoke many times about this, that we are responsible for our actions and we will be judged for how we live.

There is also another way to look at a terrible event like this, or indeed other events like natural disasters. Remember the tsunami in Indonesia in 2004. Approximately 250,000 people were killed! One moment they were alive, getting on with their day to day business, the next moment they were before God. Those who died, just like in a war, have now gone on to the Lord before they expected to and before we expected them to. God knew this would happen. Since the moment they were conceived, God knew the moment their earthly life would be over. But if those who died had tried to live the right kind of life, which most people do, then they are now with God. If that is true, then we can also be grateful to God that their earthly life is over, because it means they will no longer suffer on earth as we will, until we get there ourselves. We are the ones left grieving and in pain. It is also a reminder to us that we do not know how long we will be on this earth and so it is important that we use our time well. If we believe that, then we will live our life differently, because we then have a purpose.

Often when someone dies we talk about them as though their existence is extinguished forever. We say that ‘their memory lives on’ as though that is the only thing that lives on, but as Christians that is not what we believe. We believe that they are even more alive now than we are, because they no longer experience the limitations that we do. They enjoy life with God, if that is what they have chosen. They are now alive in a more intense way than we are, because they no longer have the limitations that we have in this world.

Why don’t people come back to tell us what it’s like? I’m sure it is because they don’t need to. 

Part of our not knowing is part of the journey of our faith. We are asked to believe, but we do not fully understand and we won’t until we die ourselves. Then everything will make sense. For now we have many questions and we ask God to help us not to lose hope. As Christians that should make us different in how we see things. It is normal to grieve and to be angry when something like this happens, because it is wrong, but we don’t despair because we know that all things are in God’s hands and it will make sense to us when we die to.

May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.