JOHN DEMPSTER: 'God must be present in all things, good and bad'
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As Claire Gilbert struggled with cancer and the effects of chemotherapy, she lay in bed reminding herself of the presence of God in everything. God in the comfort of the blanket, God in the pain, as she later wrote.
God in the pain? Can we truly say that, I wondered?
I believed that our immense-beyond-understanding God sustains the whole universe from the sub-atomic particle to the glorious wonder of the whole. And where God’s power is, there, surely God is.
But in practice I thought more abstractly, seeing, for example a tree as a physical symbol of God’s presence and creativity in the spiritual dimension. But this approach distances God.
The spiritual and material are not different dimensions, but aspects of the one reality.
As God became visible in Jesus, so something of God is visible in creation. God is present in that tree: as I put my face against rough bark I am touching an expression of God.
But that brings us back to the question: Is God in the pain?
Is God in disaster, pandemic, sickness? Is God in the metalwork of tanks rolling mercilessly into Ukraine? Is God in the chemical reactions exploding murderous shells?
If everything we call material is indeed sustained by, and an expression of God then God must be present in all physical things, good and bad.
But where does it leave our faith in a loving God?
If God has set up a universe where everything from the smallest particle has some degree of freedom, does it mean that God is crucified on the cross of the world, bearing the suffering which results from human sinfulness?
At Easter, the pain of the crucified God became visible in a human body. Jesus who revealed God’s light, love and challenge also revealed God suffering with us, God bearing the sin of the world.
On that glorious Easter Sunday morning when the stone at the tomb was rolled away, Jesus walked free. We see this as a symbol – a foreshadowing – of our own new beginnings as winter turns to spring, as we walk into the light.
But more. It’s a foreshadowing of a universe transformed, evil overcome through Christ’s death, God liberated from the cross, Jesus dancing with humanity. No pain then, no need for comfort, for we will know ourselves loved, and whole, and free.
