The God of Rough Edges of St Mary’s Church, Thames Street, Hampton
Service times at St Mary’s
The Royal Wedding
Passiontide and Easter at St Mary’s
From the Registers
St Mary’s One-Stop- Shop
What’s your employer’s business?
200 years of Hampton Fuel Allotment Charity
Hampton and Hampton North Working Together Group
One Good Turn Deserves Another
The Big Church Day Out
Film Review: Son of Man
Kids’ Page
St Mary’s Drama Group Bells and Bellringing II
Ask the Vicar: King James Bible
Easter services at other local churches
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Someone put to me, ‘It must be the hardest question for a vicar – how can there be a god if there are tsunamis?’ Sadly of course this question keeps coming back – sad because it is re-minted every time there is a terrible disaster somewhere in the world. For now, our sympathy lies with the devastated Japanese nation.
But for me the events of Easter give a straightforward response to the question. Good Friday and Easter introduce us to a god that does not stand aloof from human anguish. Neither does he wring his hands in distress and do nothing. No, he steps into the vortex of pain.
In the twisted body of Jesus on the cross, Christians dare to see God himself present. In the resurrected Christ outside the tomb, we rejoice to see that death does not have the last word at all. Whatever we go on to say about God and the tsunami – we cannot say that God is a stranger to ‘blood, sweat and tears.’
We live in a world with ‘rough edges’. For all the symmetry of a snowflake, we realise that that creation is not all neat and tidy. We love the effects of erosion on our crinkly coastline; we find beauty in valleys hollowed out by glaciers. We understand that the
beauty of a zebra’s colouring is chiefly camouflage against predators. Sadly the foundations of life on earth seem to be related to the plate structure of the crust - to earthquakes and tsunamis.
It may seem very odd, but the death and resurrection of Christ are critical interventions by God in enabling humanity to overcome the rough edges in creation. When all the hatred and barbarism that humanity had stored
up was hurled at Jesus on the cross, God judged it all as rubbish and threw it away. That Jesus rose from unjust execution shows that God really does have the capacity to overcome what is wrong in the world.
But the way that God implements that victory is bit by bit. Through his work in each individual believer and through the forces of good in society, he is working toward remaking the world. This gives us all a chance to join his movement for change. He doesn’t do it for us, he does it with us.
So in answer to ‘The tsunami – where is God when we need him?’ I would say God is in Japan, by his Spirit – he is there, with the people in the rubble and that he is there and here stirring us to action. Will you help him?
Derek Winterburn
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