What is the role of God in all of this? In what all those people have been through, and are going through, and will go through, for months to come, possibly years before their shattered lives are fully, finally settled? What is God's role in a time of disaster such as this present one? And for that matter, in all those difficult, dreadful ... disastrous times of all our lives, in those tragedies and heartaches and sufferings and pain and loss we have all known, and are seeing so vividly this week on our TV's - what is his role? I do not mean his Role in creation, or redemption, or the universe. I would not begin to attempt to think about that, even privately for myself, much less publicly for my people.

But I think we can approach the more manageable consideration of what is his role in our lives - when we are going through disaster, as well as glory. What power does he have, with what will we credit him, and for what will we blame him? I do not have an astute enough mind to do any more than suggest the kinds of questions that, to me, as your priest, seem appropriate and perhaps useful. I cannot suggest even the possible answers, but I am bold enough to suggest that these are at least proper questions, OK questions.. It is seems to me, divinely permitted, divinely allowed, for thoughtful Christians who take their faith seriously and ardently to ask ... questions.

Sudden and horrible death, rampant suffering and pervasive fear, natural and unnatural calamities - what impact and effect do these have on our faith and on our understanding of God, and our love for him? These are issues that we really do need to confront. The chance of a full and eternally satisfying answer is, in fact pretty bleak, but we need to consider and think and pray and imagine what it is we feel that he has to do with us - how much, how little, in what ways, under what circumstances, in what areas? Insurance companies tend to label unforeseen, catastrophic emergencies as Acts of God, and therefore uninsurable, and not their responsibility. Are they, these so called Acts of God, his responsibility any more than they are All State's or Geico's? I suspect that the insurance companies offer this proposition, this sweeping label: Acts of God. - more to limit liability than to wrestle with theological truth. Insurance policies are not, I think, supposed to be theological documents. But for Christians, if not for insurance company moguls, the sudden eruption of an unexpected, horrendous disaster does, in fact, quickly become a theological concern, a faith issue, a question regarding the role and activity, the power and the care, and the love of God.

Albert Einstein, in the last years of that great mind of his , while he pursued his doomed effort to find a coherent set of mathematical laws governing the universe, reportedly kept repeating: "God does not play at dice". Do we now suspect that God does play at dice after all, or worse, that he has abandoned the game altogether, and walked away? Do we see natural disasters as Acts of God? Or as Absences of God? Or do we see God acting in natural disasters, in all the disasters of our disastrous lives? Responding to them, or maybe even, possibly responsible for them, or at least allowing them, or just as bad, loftily just ignoring them? And what do we think of him afterward? Do we pray and believe or give up? Do we believe enough, and trust enough, to ask questions, to wonder aloud, secure in his love and understanding, unafraid if we admit we do not, oursleves, understand, not at all, why this has happened, why he might have allowed this to happen?

Whatever individual prayers those sad victims may have stuttered out during the worst of Katrina and the later flooding, we may wonder about those people now, still suffering so, why? Not why are they suffering, we have seen why in unforgetbale, nightmarish images every night on the News, and in the Papers. When I say why here, I mean, Why did they pray, why do we pray? Why are they, and we, praying still - here, this morning, and even more amazingly, there?

Well, prayer seems, on the face of it, natural, normal for Christians faced with disaster - but why that reaction, why prayer, what might they, or we, have sought, or seek now, to accomplish, what did they and we intend, what was the hope, the desire, the dream?

The Christian Church does not operate on the assumption that God has little or no interest in our welfare and faith does not operate on the assumption that we need to bring to his attention issues of our concern that otherwise would surely escape his notice, and certainly faith does not operate on, or accept, the assumption that he is powerless and ineffective, and not to be relied upon in time of serious crisis.

Yet some who prayed, like us, better than us, died, or lost everything, even loved ones, or suffered in ways far worse than we even imagine. In a huge disaster, no one gets what he deserves. Those who come through unscathed, did not deserve it, and those who perished, did not deserve it. A natural disaster takes no note of the morality of those affected, and does not assign its effects accordingly. If the results and effects of a disaster have no relationship to our deserving, to our moral rectitude or guilt, even so such events have no relationship to God's care or his love or his power. One of the faithless statements well-meaning people occasionally, thoughtlessly, toss off is, "There but for the grace of God go I." Whatever they mean by that, they cannot mean the real Grace of God, the genuine thing. It is not by the "Grace of God" that I stand here well and safe and fed and clothed and housed and happy, while little children in the South now face the rest of their lives orphaned or injured, sitting in the rubble of ruined homes, waiting for help, attention, evacaution, notice. And those who have been rescued, but are now with distant cousins, the remnants of their family, or now lacking any family, are with caring, but complete strangers. That is not the Grace of God. Intelligent people would never tolerate for a moment that my retaining what those children and adults lost has anything to say about the value of our individual lives. It is not "but for the Grace of God" that it has happended to them and not to me.

The faithful Christian will be as just as adamant that if it has nothing to do with me or them, it also has nothing to do with the care and love and Grace of God himself . It was the movement of wind and water, which do not care, and have no grace to offer. The Grace of God will operate powerfully to enable those children, now orphaned and terrified, to live and grow and flourish again in their young lives, to persevere, and finally to triumph. And it will enable and equip me to accept without guilt that I was unscathed, and will enable me to forgive myself that I have not suffered as they have. Now all of that will be the grace of God at work.

But if God loves us, why did he not do other than he did, why did this happen, given his power and his love? I don't know. But I do know that the faithful Christian will start from a specific place of understanding, called faith and trust, and so end in a very specific place. Not "if God so loved the world? he would not have ...", but rather, "since he so loves the world", why has this happened, why have things come to this? The Christian will cautiously but courageously wonder what does this mean, what do I make of it, how do I respond, where will all of this lead, how will this strengthen and deepen my love of God and trust in his care, making it better and finer, leading ever onward toward his final and perfect love?

Random disaster and random suffering say nothing about God's love for us, but they do cause us to consider our love for him, and the nature of our faith. It does not, ultimately, ask us to consider does he have more than a vague interest in us, but is does, I think, ask us to consider: Do we have an abiding trust in him? If we think, as we might well, that he seems aloof in the time of disaster. Then faith, even just basic fairness, should lead us to wonder if we, on the other hand, might also give that impression to him, that we are aloof and distant and unavailable to him when things in our lives are going wonderfully, or at least reasonably, well.

As this Hurricane inclines us to consider how we think of God, it insists that we also consider what we think of our fellow, people just like us, but in horribly different cicumstances. How accepting are we of all the extraordinarily different reactions they all had to that event? We need to have and show evident and helpful sympathy and understanding for those who are,or were, so anxious, so frightened, so despairing that some of them reacted in wild and even violent ways. We will all react differently, and unpredictably, and perhaps unreliably to disasters and tragedies.

We cannot condemn or judge those who reacted in ways in which we hope never to react. And we cannot condemn those who, in the terrible time of testing flinched and behaved badly. It might well be argued that those who may regret what they did, or said, or did not do, did not offer, were so late, too late, in offering need love and encouragement more than those who were heroic and helpful and courageous, and in time. There were and continue to be acts of surpassing generosity and donation, and impulses to cruelty or indifference, and human frailty and foolishness, and delay and dithering that sadden or appall us. The Christian community has to acknowledge and proclaim that that is all understood. The strain and the stress of these two weeks will show in countless ways, the annoyance and irritation, the friction and anger that may well have erupted between spouses and friends and neighbors and fellow citizens, by those suffering and yes, by those summoned to help, supposed to help. All of this hurt, and hatred, needs to be overcome and healed in love and understanding too. The disaster itself was hard enough on all of them, we need not also be harsh and judgmental and condemnatory to them, always remembering and remaining confident that God is never, and would never be, that hard on us. Confident that we ought and can and will love each other and ourselves and help each other as best we can, and understand each other as much as we can when we fail in that help,or are late offering it, and we need to pray as constantly as we can, and see and know and share something of the love with which God loves us - always, and in the Day of Disaster - now, and at the Hour of our Death.