Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 10:26-33

I had a friend in medical school who was very bright and destined for a great career. In the summer of our fourth year, he joined a group of medical students and a few professors and went to Mount Everest with the intention of climbing the highest mountain on earth. Through a freak accident he slipped while not attached to the safety rope and fell to his death. We, his classmates, couldn't believe it. What terrible luck. What an awful roll of the dice.

One of the mysteries that confront people who believe in God goes something like this: If God is good, why does he let evil happen? And if God is all powerful, why doesn't he stop evil from happening? And if Jesus promised that if we ask anything in his name, it will be given to us, why is it so obvious that this doesn't work?

There are many different answers to this theological problem. One, advanced by the mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Leibniz, is that of all the possible worlds that could exist, this is the best. In other words, God has seen to it that everything is optimal, and if you were to change one thing, other things would change for the worse. This is the best of all possible worlds. And of course the response comes: how do you define “best”? Isn't this sort of a cop-out? Any human being could point out a few little things that could make everything better and if we are considering everything from a cosmic perspective, it is no consolation that there is innocent suffering and tragedy in this particular moment in space and time.

Our Muslim brothers hold that everything that happens is the will of Allah. Most Muslims are like you and I, they don't think too hard about what their religion teaches. But a few who realize the implications of this are the ones who will blow themselves up in a public square; after all, if it happens, it was Allah's will. And if you truly believe this, then whatever you do is Allah's will, even if it means that you end up in hell. There is no wiggle room, there is no freedom at all.

Alfred North Whitehead theorized that God was what he called “dipolar”. In his primordial nature he is unchanging, all powerful, present everywhere, all knowing – all those things we think about when we think about God. But God has a consequent nature as well; he is affected by everything that happens in the universe. Everything that happens is received by God, who saves everything that can be saved. God alone is the sum of everything that could be; and the things that make up the universe as yearning for permanence, for transcendence, which only God can provide. So God and the universe are interdependent, in a way. Professor Whitehead started a movement called “process theology” which still has many adherents. While this is a solution to the problem of why bad things can happen, it goes against the Judeo Christian conception of God as completely independent of the Universe.

But Jesus gives us an insight today. He talks about sparrows, and that not one of them falls to the ground apart from the Father's care. In other words, sparrows fall to the ground. The fact that they do does not deny that God cares. The fact that a sparrow falls is not a moment of bad luck, an unfortunate circumstance, a chance happening. At the same time it isn't something God causes to happen. It is as though God steps back, allows his creatures freedom, and then takes whatever happens and weaves it into his grand plan for the universe he created. Do we have anything to say about this? Not really. God's will will triumph, and we can't do a thing about it. But what we can do is align ourselves with God's will. We have the example of Jesus, who prayed, “Father, if you are willing take this cup from me, but not my will, but your will be done.” We have the example of Mary, our mother and Jesus' mother who said, “Be it done to me according to your word.”

Everything that happens is God's will. But we are not robots, we are not puppets in God's hands. God gives each of us total freedom, so that we an always choose to do his will or to resist it. And if we resist it, in a sense we create our own reality, in which we choose not to be part of God's plan, which ultimately is hell. Saint Theresa of Avila said two things about hell. One was that she had experienced a vision in which she experienced hell. It was not hot, there were no devils poking her with pitchforks. It was a state of having no sensation at all. She could not see, hear, taste, smell or touch; she was aware of being entirely alone – forever. She could not even experience the passage of time. When you think about it, that is worse than any picture of hell you might have imagined. Human beings, even hermits, are social creatures, and we define ourselves in relation to other people. To be deprived of this is devastating, and babies who are not touched and held and spoken to wither away and die.

Saint Theresa also said that she truly believed in hell, that there was such a state of being. She did say that she did not think there was anyone there.

So whatever we do, God's plan goes on. We see this in the Old Testament; whenever the Jewish people abandon God, he rescues them and gets them back on track. The individual people who might have lead the Jews astray may die, but the plan goes on, and it still does.

And the best thing is that God has revealed in Jesus his plan for the universe, his plan for the human race, and his plan for you and I. And as Jesus has shown, and as Mary has shown, those who embrace God's plan, those who choose his will over their own, they are the ones who can expect resurrection and eternal life. There is no chance in God's world, no bad luck or good luck. There is only the unfolding of the plan, and our freedom to be part of it or not. Today let us pray that we will be willing agents of God's plan by listening to His Son.