Part 3 of the "Alleluia: Believing the Risen Lord" Sermon Series

Maybe God does not cause or want to allow any suffering. In the book of Job, we are told about God wrestling with a Leviathan, which is a big beast (Job 41). Although God is ultimately the victor, God does not win easily. The same is the case here. God will be the ultimate victor, but Satan puts up a good fight. God has wins and losses; those wins are the little miracles that we celebrate, but the losses are those where God grieves with us. God is not picking and choosing because God loves us all. Ultimately, God wants to stick with us, and to have us stick with Him. Too often, the existence of suffering blinds people to the possibility of an existence of a just and good God. But our very own parents can be just and good, and still not prevent us from suffering or even from tragedy befalling us. This is not to answer for all time the problem of evil and suffering in the world, but it is to say that just like the disciples chose to stick with each other in a confusing time, and perhaps their greatest time of trial, we should stick with God through our own greatest trials – perhaps especially through them. God cares first and foremost not how far we are away from God in our faith and our trust in Him, but what direction we are facing. As long as we are facing God – turning to God in every circumstance – it does not matter whether our faith is the size of a mustard seed or the size of a mountain. Even faith the side of a mustard seed can move mountains. And further, as our Association Minister Dan Busch preached about yesterday at the annual meeting, doubt is a part of our faith journey. It was a part of the disciples’ journey. And it is also a part of ours. The Easter season - those fifty days between the Resurrection and that first day where the church actually began - which we call Pentecost, is the season of moving through doubt to come to believe. It is learning to trust God even when we do not find everything as we dreamed it would be. That’s exactly the journey that the disciples are making. It is why they trusted God when they were told to teach Saul, who had done nothing but persecute the church. It is why, when Jesus told the disciples to cast the net over the boat one more time, after they had had no luck all night and they were tired and frustrated, they obliged. It is why the Psalmist in Psalm 30 writes, “Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning” (Psalm 30:5).