The Prayer of the Imperiled To a God who Suffers

"The captain wired in he had water comin' in and the good ship and crew was in peril.

And later that night, when his lights went out of sight, came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.  Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?"--Lyrics from "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot

I cry out to you because you answer me. So tilt your ears toward me now— 

Listen to what I’m saying!  Manifest your faithful love in amazing ways because you are the

one who saves those who take refuge in you, saving them from their attackers by your strong

 hand.  Psalms 17:6-7 CEB

On November 10th, 1975, the largest freighter that ever sailed on the Great Lakes (at that time) capsized during a storm in Lake Superior.  As a kid listening to Cleveland, Ohio, radio stations, I remember the real-time pleas for prayers for the 29 crew members aboard.  The following August, Gordon Lightfoot would release his song chronicling the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald.  As I listened to the song, I would literally feel waves of dread when the lyrics asked this provocative question:

"Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?"

As a 12-year-old awakening to the presence of God, I had an untested faith that God is able to do all things and a simplistic hermeneutic that the Bible means exactly what I perceive it to mean and that my understanding was "the understanding". I had (and have) a voracious appetite for reading the Bible and so I believed that Jesus would never leave me or forsake me, and that he would always answer my prayers according to my expectations, in the exact way and timing that I framed in the prayer.  This is not to criticize my younger self, but to frame for you how jarring it was for my faith formation to even consider that 29 souls who were in all likelihood crying out to God for help, may have suffered a horrific death in the icy depths of Lake Superior.  To contemplate that my formulaic understanding of God's intervention with humanity, and specifically, with me was inaccurate, uninterrogated, and naive put me into a tailspin every time I heard that song.

The problem of theodicy (the presence of evil/pain/suffering in tension with an all-powerful, loving God) has been a stumbling block in the spiritual formation of many.  I wrote in Prophetic Formation: A Divine and Developmental Approach to Spiritual Formation:

Similarly, many people ask if God is present, powerful, and benevolent, but why does God not intervene when evil occurs? Why does it seem like God has the bystander effect?

To understand that our formation process is challenged by suffering and the presence of injustice is not to praise its effect of promoting the deconstruction of our faith, but to look beyond and recognize that deconstruction (described as unlearning) is necessary prior to reconstruction and reimagining that lead to a more accurate and powerful faith.

But none of that is helpful when you are on a sinking ship, or kidnapped and placed in a foreign prison, unknown to your family.  During that time, we cry out for God to act according to God's character:

No, those who boast should boast in this: 

that they understand and know me. 

I am the LORD who acts with kindness, justice, and righteousness in the world, 

and I delight in these things, declares the LORD (Jeremiah 9:24 CEB)

God acts with kindness, justice, and righteousness in the world.  So when we experience peril, our prayer is to expect an intervention, not based on our deservedness, but on the character of God.  

 But the LORD says, 

 “Because the poor are oppressed, because of the groans of the needy, 

  I’m now standing up. I will provide the help they are gasping for.”

  The LORD’s promises are pure, like silver that’s been refined in an oven, 

  purified seven times over. (Psalm 12:5-6 CEB)

 Throughout Scripture, human cry evokes God's resolve.  God sometimes intervenes through dramatic control of nature such as calming a storm, healing an illness, or "making a way out of no way", where provisions are provided supernaturally.  I celebrate God's love and care through the miraculous.

However, times like the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, or generational and catastrophic suffering like that of lifelong enslavement, people in abusive relationships, and the global rise of authoritarian violence against the vulnerable we question the reach of God as well as the role of God in the midst of such overwhelming pain that exists with numbing regularity.

One of the reasons that it is difficult for me, and frankly most American Christians, to accept the tension of suffering in the context of serving an all-powerful and loving God is that we do not have clarity around the role of suffering and pain.  We also misunderstand the role of the community as agents of shalom, or, as Brazilian Liberation Theologian Leonardo Boff describes, "prayer materialized in action". 

"The God of the cross is a God who suffers with us.  He invites us to work to reduce this world's suffering, but suffering will remain with us until Jesus returns."--Craig Keener in Suffering.

Most Christians have been taught to understand Jesus and his crucifixion in transactional terms (He died and paid for my sin) but not in relational terms (We are joined in Jesus along with his suffering, death, and resurrection).  Relationally, we see a God who suffers with and for us.  This significantly changes our understanding of suffering.  Theologian Grace Ji-Sun Kim writes about how understanding God as suffering changes our response to pain:

"Instead of an all-powerful God who causes or allows suffering, survivors of sexual violence can recognize God as the One who suffers and survives sexual violence with them.  God is present in and experiences their suffering; God is their co-sufferer and companion on the journey through violence and toward healing. Rather than being power-over, God is power-with and power-to. God is in relationship with survivors, affects and is affected by their suffering and their resilience.  Developing images of God as coinhabiting survivor's suffering adds another dimension to understanding of God as we imagine how God can inspire resistance and liberation."--Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Susan Shaw in Surviving God

The Apostle Paul understands this as he reminds the church in Rome that during times of severe distress and instability, God is with you and will not allow violence, darkness, and affliction to be the last word.

Who will separate us from Christ’s love? Will we be separated by trouble, or distress, or harassment, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, 

    We are being put to death all day long for your sake. 

    We are treated like sheep for slaughter.

But in all these things we win a sweeping victory through the one who loved us. I’m convinced that nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus our Lord: not death or life, not angels or rulers, not present things or future things, not powers or height or depth, or any other thing that is created. (Romans 8:35-39 CEB)

The prayers of the imperiled address a God who suffers with us and for us.  It inspires us to be peacemakers and advocates for a God who acts in kindness, justice, and righteousness.  We remind one another in community that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.

So when children are arrested and brutalized by ICE, or entire people are exploited and victimized, we embody Jesus most when we also share their suffering and advocate for kindness, justice, and righteousness.  The prayer of the imperiled is resounding.  I pray that we, as communities of Jesus, respond with a courageous love that changes everything.

"Christianity is foremost a claim that the ned of history has been inaugurated.  And this historical claim entails a call to pledge allegiance to this new politic that has broken into human history... Christianity is a claim regarding the meaning of history: that the direction and the end of history are all revealed in the suffering love of Christ, which has triumphed over all that which seeks to subvert the goodness of God."--Lee Camp in Scandalous Witness

Common English Bible (Nashville, TN: Common English Bible, 2011), Ro 8:35–39.