One blustery day in the middle of May 2020, I lay next to my grandfather talking. He had questions. Eighty nine years old, but strong and robust, independent and able. His body was being subjected to the indignities of a brain tumour. He was dying. “Why,” he wondered, “has God chosen this way to take me home?” 
I had an answer. I’ll share it with you, now. But that wasn’t the time.
These questions belong to a family of others we call ‘theodicy.’ ‘Why is there suffering?’ ‘Why do I suffer?’ 'Why does God allow it?’ ‘What does God have to do with it?’ We ask these questions when war consumes whole peoples and nations, when disease ravages the innocent, when we despair at the devastation always waiting to be seen by looking eyes.


I don’t actually have an answer. There may not be an answer to the question ‘why?’ It is entirely possible that we will never know. Our scriptures seem to pride themselves (particularly in books like Job) on not answering these kinds of questions. As I’ve written before, understanding is not the same as believing. Still, we might rule out a few of the more presumptuous answers and suggest the answer to another pair of questions: ‘What does God do when things like this happen?' and, ‘What do we do?’  


Laying there, next to my grandfather, a few passages of scripture came to mind. Reading them helped me to put the pieces together. I’ll share two of them here, The first comes from the Gospel of John and the story of Jesus’ friend Lazarus. “When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’  When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.  ‘Where have you laid him?’ he asked. ‘Come and see, Lord,’ they replied. Jesus wept” (John 11:32—35). 


The second comes from John’s apocalyptic vision of the end.  “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away’” (Rev. 21:3—4). 


There is no explanation, here, for the problems of death, evil, or pain. They weigh on us heavily, now. They are gone in the end. There is no explanation given for Lazarus’ death. There was no explanation for my grandfather’s. I can’t explain why you have lost, why you have suffered, why you have experienced evil, why we will all die (memento mori!).  There is no ‘why’ here or anywhere else. Still, our scriptures are not silent on evil, suffering, and death. God responds to them. God grieves. God suffers. God redeems. 


At the beginning of his story, Lazarus is alive. In the middle somewhere, he dies. And when Lazarus dies, Jesus weeps. Sure, by the end of the story Lazarus is no longer dead. But Jesus is weeping. Let him weep. Wrestle with Jesus’ tears. Resist pragmatism. ‘Why does Jesus cry?,’ so many ask, ‘when he has the ability (and knows he will) raise Lazarus from the dead?’ Explanations that dismiss the grief of God and the weight of death fall flat, cloy with saccharine sweetness, reek of presumption, and  cannot hold the gaze of Jesus’ bloodshot eyes. Meeting Jesus here, seeing ‘I am the resurrection and the life’ grieving his dead friend offers us a glimpse into our problem. Jesus weeps because his friend has died. Jesus weeps because death is not his, it is not his friend or ally, it is not God’s tool or will. Death is the last great evil. Lazarus has suffered death. God grieves death. God grieves Lazarus’ death. God would come to grieve my grandfather’s death, and God will one day grieve yours and mine. God grieves when his creation—those he called “good”— suffers death. God responds to death in many ways. Grief is among those responses.


But that’s not all. In response to the evil of death, God suffers. God submitted himself to the worst of human evil (including death). In Paul’s letter to the Philippians, the God of glory is said to shun everything that is rightly his for the sake of humanity, to suffer death, even death on a cross, and that—as a result—humanity is freed from sin and death, and God is once more highly exalted. Then, Philippians calls its readers to behave as Christ did.  


The same pattern (do this because…) is found in 1 Peter. The Apostle Peter describes Jesus’ death as the submission of the most-innocent to the most evil, bearing our sin, suffering, and death “so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness: by his wounds you are healed (citing Isaiah 53).  There is still no answer to the question ‘why?’ But there is something, here, about the relationship between God and suffering, evil, and death. They are not God’s idea. And, while God does not explain their purpose, cause, or reason, God suffers on our behalf. God grieves every death and weeps as a co-sufferer of every evil. 


But God also redeems. Christian hope is always in the end. This is all going somewhere. And we are offered the hope of a perfect end. We are not told ‘why’ but ‘what perfectly,’ ‘what truly,’ and ‘what eternally.’ For God, the answer is “I am.” ‘I am the way,’ ‘I am the truth,’ ‘I am the life,’ and ‘I am the resurrection.’


John’s prophetic vision in Revelation offers a vision of God’s ultimate response to suffering, evil, and death. The Christian hope is the hope of resurrection, the hope that all who have suffered and died will one day have a home with God. Suffering, evil, and death will die. “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” Perhaps (remembering that God weeps) the God who has suffered and died with humanity will be among those for whom all mourning will come to an end. 


So what do we do? We imitate Christ in his suffering. We endure this present darkness with hope, and not with answers. We witness to what is good. We’ve seen a glimpse of it in John’s prophetic vision. It is alive to-and-in us already as Christ-the life and Christ-the resurrection. We witness to the God who weeps, who suffers, and who redeems so that others might come to have a place where suffering and tears and death are gone forever. 


On that cold blustery day in May, I didn’t say any of that to my grandfather. It wasn’t what he needed. I held his hand and kissed his forehead, and a few days later, he died. I don’t know if he understood what was happening. It doesn’t matter much, now. He died, God wept. God died, God rose again, and God-the-resurrection gave James Gordon Sheldon eternal life. I couldn't explain it. But I suspect that, by now, he knows all of this better than I do.