God: Why have you forsaken us? Tsunami and the Interruption of Our Faith [2]
Prelude – A Halting Song
Introduction – Claudio
Welcome everyone. Right after the beginning of the Iraq war, Prof. Janet Walton asked us all in a lecture she gave, what if we were to worship God with Iraq people? What would it change in our services? This is one question to be thought again today in this service: How to worship God after the Tsunami? How to make sense of our faith after this natural cause that has taken away the lives of 350 thousand people in Asia, and God knows how many more, who were left in despair and unspeakable loss?
It is amazing how much we have already forgotten about the tsunami. What did we do here at Union to help those who were affected by it? Lydia told me that our school has sent U$ 2.000,00 to a relief fund managed by the National Council of Churches. Have you got any e-mail from any professor or even our president about this situation? Well, let’s forget that.
The Tsunami challenges us in many ways and one of them is: What do we do with our wishy-washy eco-theologies that highly praise our mother earth who is so loving and has giving us abundantly for so long? What about this mother earth who kills 350 thousand of her daughters and sons without notice or apologies devastating the eco-system for the future generations?
The same question we asked when September 11th happened, we could ask it again today: Where was God during Tsunami?
Let us suppose for our chapel service today the following: the way we worship God has to do with the way we believe in God. Again, that the way we worship God has to do with the way we believe in God. If this is truth, and let us suppose it is, how to worship God when our lives are interrupted by the unexpected and we cannot get where we were thought we would? In other words, how to worship God when the lives of your loved ones are taken away before time? Or, when you discover a terminal disease? Even worse, how do you worship God when you lose all your family and your house and your job and you are left literally alone without anybody, without a place, without money, without a way out? How do we negotiate our faith when our lives are mercilessly interrupted? Let’s try to worship God: …
Hymn – Saranam – Lidya leads the congregation
‘GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN US?’ / Silence
VIDEO STARTS
Prayer – Story 1 – By Lydia
Cut Mytha
She lost her widowed mother, 2 sisters, 1 brother and her nephews and
nieces. Pause
She asked: ‘Can I still express ‘alhamdulilah’, praise be to God, in such a misery?’
Could anybody pray for her? Let us stand up and pray:
Silence – Then the piano makes huge and uncomfortable noises, people rush in and take some chairs away. Somebody cries out loud:
‘GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN US?’ / Silence
Prayer – Story 2 – By Claudio
Rev. Elisa Tambunan
He lost 15 members of his immediate family, including his mother, who were gathered in Banda Aceh for family Christmas gathering.
He asked: ‘Should I simply accuse evil or nature as the cause of this devastation in order to rescue the image of a loving God, the Supreme Protector, as I have been teaching my congregation about?”
Can you pray for him? Let us stand up and pray.
Silence – Then the piano makes huge and uncomfortable noises, people rush in and take chairs away. Somebody cries out loud:
‘GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN US?’ / Silence
Prayer – Story 3 – By Christine
Cut Rosa
She lives in New York now. She lost her mother and all siblings and could not go back because she will not be able to return to the United States because of her immigration status.
She said: I’ve been trying very hard to pray, but whenever I started my brain refuses to do so, my head starts to tremble, and I just can’t ! I would rather ask you to pray for me.
Could you pray for her? Let’s stand up and pray
Silence – Then the piano makes huge and uncomfortable noises, people rush in and take chairs away. Somebody cries out loud:
‘GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN US?’ / Silence
Prayer – Story 4 – By Claudio
50.000 orphan nameless children in Banda Aceh who lost their entire family. They mostly asked: ‘Why my parents are just taken away? Who will take care of us?’ Some of them are now in the hands of traffic dealers, being abused sexually and they have nobody to protect them…
Can you pray?? Let’s stand up and try!
Silence – Then the piano makes huge and uncomfortable noises, people rush in and take chairs away. Somebody cries out loud:
Sermon
‘A New Wake’ by Meghan Deans (USA) – (An Edited Version)
I don’t know you at all…….
Still I want to touch you to tell you I understand you, even though
I don’t
Even though I’ve barely learned to name all the parts of your
disaster…
We know that it rains very hard, snows very hard, winds blows
strong…
but do we really understand that sometimes the land we believe to be
steady,
the one we build foundations on it, we brace ourselves against,
can slip ?
I feel a little crazy trying to be mad at nature, even on your
behalf,
but it does not argue back…
I feel ridiculous when I realize I’m actually upset at ‘something’
that does not act with intent, or ‘act’ really, at all…
We are secretly crossing our fingers,
unless someone is planning a coalition against gravity and the ocean
floor…
we choose the songs, the words, the settings,
and we hope that we are doing right by you
and all we don’t know about the way you lived……
Indonesian Song – Lidya
Benediction – Claudio
Today we will not make any sense out of this tragedy. In the Greek tragedy, Oedipus blinds himself because he could not see the look of the others upon him. Albert Camus used to rage against God for God’s unattended absence. And we today, masters of making meaning out of literally everything, today we are going to leave the chapel without making any sense out of our faith.
Moreover, what to do when yesterday news says the following: “Three months after a tsunami devastated the city of Banda Aceh, vast areas remain a flatland of rubble, mud and stagnant water where only palm three and the stumps of broken buildings break the low horizon. Teens of thousands of bodies from among more than 126.000 reported dead in Aceh Province have been cleared away and nearly half a million homeless people have found other places to live. But among the ruins here, and for many miles along the coastline of barren fishing villages, almost nothing seems to have been done to begin repairs and rebuilding…”
This benediction will send you forth with the following question: “Why God: Why have you forsaken so many of our brothers and sisters? Why?”
And we will leave our chapel without an answer, just for today. We will postpone the meaning, at least for now. Meanings seem to fail us when we are in the midst of an interruption…
[2] This liturgy was done at James Chapel – Union Theological Seminary