NRS Job 42:1
Then Job answered the LORD:
2 "I know that you can do all things,
and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
3 'Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?'
Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.
4 'Hear, and I will speak;
I will question you, and you declare to me.'
5 I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,
but now my eye sees you;
6 therefore I despise myself,
and repent in dust and ashes."

Dear Friends in Christ, may the blessing of the Lord rest and remain upon you always; for the sake of Jesus the Messiah. Amen.

As a pastor, you get asked a lot of questions. Mostly, it's things like, "Do you have the keys to the office?" "Where are the bathrooms?" "Do you do non-member weddings?" But sometimes you get asked a question that requires a little more thought than just, "Down the hall and to the left." These are questions that demand more than just simple information, because often they come out of the pain, anguish, or confusion of real life. What's more, these are questions that you can't answer once and for all time; but instead, they keep coming back, and at each stage and age of our lives, they present themselves in new ways and often make new demands on our hearts, and souls, and minds.

For these next five Sundays, I want to take up five questions that, I think, go to the heart of our faith and the meaning of our lives. Again, I can't, of course, pretend to "answer" them, but from out of Scripture and our own rich confessional tradition, I'm praying that I can give you maybe a few tools that might be helpful as you wrestle with these questions in your own faith walk. So this morning I want to lift up what may be the great-granddaddy of all the great, grand questions of faith and philosophy; namely, "Why is there evil, and what is God doing about it?" That's, of course, really two questions, but they're so inter-related that I'm going to address them as one.

If you search Scripture to solve the riddle of evil, I think you're likely to be disappointed. The Bible does not explain the absolute origins of what Psalm 91 terms "the terror of the night, or the arrow that flies by day, or the pestilence that stalks in darkness" (vv. 5,6). The story of Adam and Eve tells how the first human creatures broke faith with God, but it does not explain how the serpent came to tempt them in the first place. Later Judaism tried to address this gap in the biblical narrative with the story of angels rebelling against God and being cast into hell. The Letter of Jude alludes to this story, and later, the poet John Milton made it the subject of his epic poem "Paradise Lost." But even here, there is no final explanation for why God's good creation rebels against the Creator.

What Scripture does say is that God is not the author of evil. God declares the whole creation good, and while that creation often and actively resists the will of God, God is still Lord over all creation. In other words, there is no evil parallel universe that exists apart or independently from God. Christianity and Judaism alike reject dualism, which is the belief that there is not one, but two separate creations, one ruled by a god of good and the other by a god of evil. By the way, that is a very widely held belief today. Many people see themselves living in a world of such terrible evil that it must be ruled by the devil, and therefore the goal of life is to get out of this world into heaven where God rules. Now it's true that the Bible speaks of a devil or adversary, sometimes by name -- Satan, Belial, or Beelzebul. But in the Bible, even the devil has to answer to God, who rules everywhere over everything.

Sooooooo: How come God doesn't just squish the devil like some little pesky bug? Why doesn't God just snap his fingers or wiggle his nose and make all creation fall into line? If God is Lord of all, then why does God allow cells to mutate into cancers, or thunderstorms to morph into killer tornadoes, or fanatics to strap on bombs that maim and kill randomly?

(Deep breath!) Okay. Here's my best shot. We believe in a God of love, who created the world both in love and for love. But the funny thing about love is that you cannot command it, you cannot force it, you cannot make someone love you. Love is a relationship that must be entered into freely, which means that for creation to return God's love, God created a universe of radical freedom. And by radical freedom, I mean a freedom that extends even to the cellular, molecular, and sub-atomic levels of life. God, in other words, made a world with the capacity for the greatest possible good, which is love. But there can be no world capable of love without the same possibility for rejection, rebellion, and evil.

That little bit of theology and approximately $4.50 might get you a venti-size latte at Starbuck's. Because, let's face it, when your back is to the wall and evil is more than just a philosophical concept, theology is pretty cold comfort. And that's probably why the Bible spends less time explaining evil and much, much more time proclaiming what God is doing about it. Scripture attests that even as creation gives into temptation and unravels in death and futility, God never gives up on creation. Though God's heart surely breaks over our sin and the devastation we inflict, God does not just surrender us to the forces of evil. But as we hear in Scripture and sometimes experience in our own lives, God's power is such that God can turn even the most heinous sin to good and weave meaning out of what we can only call meaninglessness. Which is to say, God continues to create out of nothing. As Joseph testified to his guilty brothers, "Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people" (Gen. 50:20).

But God intends to do more than just cope with evil, or accommodate it, or even bend it to good ends. From Genesis through Revelation, the Bible declares with one voice that it's God's stated purpose to defeat evil. And Jesus is what God has done and is doing "to destroy death, to break the bonds of the evil one, [and] to crush hell underfoot." As in the beginning when God called forth the universe in love, so Jesus is God's love to summon forth a new creation, and by new I don't mean one that obliterates the old, but transforms it from rebellion to obedience, from despair to hope. Jesus is God's love in laser focus, the ultimate power of the universe incarnate in one human being to restore all life to the true freedom for which all creation groans in travail. In the cross of Jesus God reveals a love fiercer than death and stronger than the grave, with a brightness to pierce even the darkness of the most dread evil. And by that same love God reaches into the depths of our hearts and touches the core of all being to achieve resurrection, rebirth, and all things made new. Even now, as we are haunted by sin and hounded by death, the light of Christ shines on our way to lift up our hearts, to give us courage, and to inspire in us the love for which God destined you and me from before the foundation of the world.

I've been working on this sermon for about 35 years. That's at least as long as I've been struggling with believing in a good God while living in a world of great beauty and, too often, great cruelty. I haven't gotten it right yet, and if I were to preach on the same theme a year from now, it would be all different, but probably no more right than this one. But it's not my job, or yours, to get it right, because God has gotten it right. In Jesus.

In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.