Dear friends in Christ, everyone wants to see and understand what the hand of God is doing in history; we all want to know the mind and hidden will of the Creator, and how His plans and purposes are going to work out. It is easy to assume that the hand of the good God is at work when good things happen, when we're happy, content, at peace. But how often is that in reality? The world is not a good place, but is filled with chaos, wars, violence, destruction, brutality, fear, guilt, shame, and we can't distance ourselves from these evils; as St. Paul puts it, we are confronted by fightings without, fears within (2 Cor 7:5). Terrorists hijack planes and kill thousands; wildfires destroy the homes of friends and neighbors; we lose loved ones in car accidents or to cancer; we suffer abuse at the hands of the wicked; droughts persist. And so on. I could go on for hours listing disaster after disaster, misery after misery, but you know of many of these things firsthand, by experience, and know of others by things that have happened to others.

The temptation among some so-called Christians is to try to explain God's plan behind the disasters that happen to a nation or a group. Two days after 9/11, Jerry Falwell said that the terrorist attacks had occurred because of the sins of homosexuals and abortionists. While there is no doubt that an individual's sins can bring about horrible consequences on himself, to say that certain groups of sinners have caused a terrorist attack or drought or fire is a presumptuous road to go down, because we are all completely guilty in God's sight, and it's not like disasters happen only to outwardly wicked people that seemingly get what they deserve. The Old Testament is filled with laments about the wicked prospering and the righteous suffering. And we can cry out in lament to God today concerning the same things: How many pious Christians prayed for God's help on 9/11 only to be met with death and loss? How many faithful believers prayed that their homes would be spared from fire this past week, only to find nothing but rubble left behind? How many holy people who live by faith in Jesus have pleaded to the Lord each day for rain, yet we still find ourselves in the midst of the worst drought in a century with no rain in the forecast and this phenomenon called La Niña that suggests the drought will continue through next year?

Many people have concluded from the apparent randomness of disaster and suffering that there is no good God above the heavens, and such unbelievers often parade before us the misery of this world and taunt, "Where is the mighty hand of God in all of that? Where is your good and gracious God now?" Or as Gordon Lightfoot asks in "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," "Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?" (He was talking about a bunch of men on a wrecked ship sinking to their doom, and asks where God's love was in all of that). In fact, many people choke to death on these questions, spiritually speaking, and they conclude from the miseries of this life that there is no God at all, or perhaps if there is a God, He must be weak or powerless, or He is completely indifferent and uncompassionate toward the children of man. Perhaps in the face of such questions you have found yourself speechless, like the deaf-mute in today's Gospel reading.

Does Jesus offer us any help, as we struggle with these difficult issues ourselves? If we listen to what He really says, then yes. And St. Paul tells us in our Epistle that faith comes by hearing the Word of Christ. So today we will hear some of the things our Lord has to say about disasters and suffering.

Some of the answers Jesus gives to our questions about suffering don't seem very comforting. For example, in Luke 13, Jesus says that a group of Galileans who had been slaughtered by Pontius Pilate weren't worse sinners than anyone else because of the way they suffered, and then He says, "But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish." Then He describes eighteen people in Jersualem who were crushed when a tower fell on them, and He says that they weren't any worse offenders than anyone else in Jerusalem. And then He says again, "But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish." So Jesus doesn't give us an explanation for why some people suffer disasters, but He says that all catastrophes speak the same message to those who are left behind: "Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish."

This is a hard, terrifying message, much like Luther says in the Small Catechism: "God threatens to punish all who break [His] commandments. Therefore, we should fear His wrath and not do anything against them." Here is what you should learn from all disasters: repent or perish, for we all deserve to perish not only physically, but also spiritually-as all of us stand before God's judgment seat, we are all equally guilty of and worthy of damnation, as Dr. Luther also says in the Catechism, "we daily sin much and surely deserve nothing but punishment." So repent-that is, turn from your sins in sorrow over your guilt before Almighty God, and be given the forgiveness and salvation that Jesus delivers to you in the Gospel and Sacraments. Every day we must be found living in our Baptisms, putting to death the Old Adam through contrition and repentance, and rising up to new life in Christ by His grace and mercy.

Jesus talks about suffering another time, in John 9, when the disciples ask if a man who was blind from birth was blind because of the sin of his parents of because of his own sin. Jesus answered, "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him." In this blind man's case, the works of God were displayed when Jesus showed that He is the light of the world by healing the man's blindness and then by bringing him to faith in Jesus as the Savior. From this we can take comfort that God is working out His plan for the world even through our afflictions, but that doesn't mean that they will be easy to bear in the meantime.

But why does God work in our lives this way, through suffering? The answer becomes clear only by keeping our eyes on Jesus. You see, the most important event in human history-the death of Jesus by which we are redeemed-it was the grossest miscarriage of worldly justice in history. The righteous Jesus, who had never sinned and had shown only love and compassion for His neighbor, He was betrayed into the hands of sinful men by a traitor, and then wrongly accused and falsely sentenced to death by crucifixion. He was shamefully hung on a cross between two guilty criminals, the last place in the world He deserved to be.

But here is the wonder of God's mercy: hidden in the flesh of the man Jesus was the only-begotten Son of God, who had come down from heaven to be conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary. And there on the cross, God's beloved Son suffered in the flesh for the guilt of all humans. God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, and He gave Him over to death for the sins of all people. This, of course, isn't fair either-God the Son shouldn't have to bear our guilt and be punished for our sins under God's wrath-but this is how deep God's love for us goes, and Jesus did it willingly, for us men and our salvation. He thought not of Himself but laid down His life for you.

And so in the mystery of the cross we see a wonderful exchange that benefits only us: our guilt is placed on the Lamb of God so that after His death and resurrection He could bestow upon us forgiveness and His own righteousness that saves us from sin, death, and hell. But how did the wonderful Good News of our salvation come about? By the injustice of the cross, the suffering of an innocent man, the death of God's Son. This is not the way we sinners would have planned it out, for when it comes to conducting our own lives, we always want to be treated with utmost justice, we want to avoid pain as much as we can, and we want to preserve our lives no matter the cost. But what is God's way? His plan and will are hidden under suffering and the cross.

Now if you know your Old Testament, this will not surprise you. Consider Job, a faithful believer whose faith is tested beyond anything we could imagine, yet continues to confess, "I know that my Redeemer lives!" Or Joseph, betrayed by his brothers and sent into slavery, only after many years to save his family during a famine and forgive his brothers completely. At the time of Job's suffering, could he see the good God planned through it all? While Joseph languished for years in prison, could he tell what God would work through his imprisonment? Of course not. Just as we could not have looked at the cross of Jesus and recognized that the redemption of the world was occurring in that horrific event.

But the eyes of faith see beyond mere appearances to the reality. And faith lives only by hearing and believing the Word of Christ, as St. Paul explains in our Epistle: "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ." Faith clings to the promises God has made in Christ, and as St. Paul says, "all the promises of God find their Yes in" Christ. So for you, even if the disasters that you see going on around you shout, "No! God does not care! He doesn't even exist!" yet the promise that God is merciful and just is found only in Jesus, who says, "God so loved the world." When your own experiences of misery tell you, "God has abandoned you!" yet the promise that God cares for you and will never leave you or forsake you is found in Jesus, who says, "Behold, I am with you always!" In other words, when God's Law and wrath threaten and terrify you, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the better and greater Word of God that says, "All who believe in Jesus shall not die, but shall live forever in the resurrection!"

In our Gospel reading, we see some people bringing a deaf-mute to Jesus and they beg Jesus to lay His hand on the man, to heal him. St. Mark says that Jesus took the man aside from the crowd privately, "put his fingers into his ears, and after spitting touched his tongue. And looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, "Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened." And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly." This was a remarkable miracle that teaches us that Jesus is the Messiah, and that He wants to open our ears to hear His Word. He also shows that He loves to have people ask for His help.

Today we still pray for the healing, helping hand of God to spare people from terrorist attacks, fires, droughts, and all the other sufferings we experience, but we must not get the idea that He is not gracious and merciful when in His hidden counsels He permits such things to happen, even to us. Rather, we have seen the grace and mercy of God in the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and so the only way we can see the gracious hand of God in history is in the taking up of human flesh by God the Son.

As sinners, we would prefer Jesus to continue to work miracles the way He did in today's Gospel reading - by swooping down with His strong hand, putting out fires before they get out of control, swatting away jet planes as they fly toward skyscrapers, pouring down rain whenever we ask for it - but if we expect that kind of Jesus, our ears are still plugged and we are not listening to the true Jesus, but rather to our own ideas and expectations.

The mercy and goodness of God is shown in the hand of Jesus nailed to the cross, the hand of Jesus pouring water over sinners in Holy Baptism to save them, the hand of Jesus making the sign of the cross and absolving sinners through a called minister, and the hand of Jesus reaching down and placing His own body and blood on our tongues. So today we beg that the hand of God will bring healing and peace to our world, but most of all we pray that Jesus would reach down with His gracious hand to put His fingers into our ears and unstop them so that we can hear and believe His Word and be comforted in the midst of all our afflictions. In Jesus Christ: that is where God's merciful and saving hand is for you. And then, confident that He is truly merciful, kind, gracious - then you can believe the unbelievable - that all things work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to purpose; all things, even our sufferings.

Yes, in spite of all the apparent randomness and chaos of this world, the truth is that God cares for you, each of you-and if you can swallow that, then you can give up on trying to figure out God's ways and instead you can receive everything as a gift from His hand. And everything He gives you, He blesses you with, beyond anything you can figure out. The things we can't figure out, what we cannot recognize as for our good, we know that He knows what is for our good better than we can figure out, for He went to Calvary for us. In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

And the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.