Tacloban's Emanuel

The last human sound to be heard on earth will not be a whimper. It will be a cry of protest - "Why?"

“Why?”  is the great levelling question, whether you have a faith or not. Perhaps it is also the question which starts us out on life. The newborn infant’s cry is rarely a whimper. More often, it is a cry of protest, demanding an explanation. Why has the infant been thrust from the comforting darkness of the womb into the noise and light of an alien environment? Why this enforced submission to the hands of other human beings? Perhaps she is also protesting at what she knows to be the beginning of a difficult lifetime, the protracted end which leads to death. 

At moments of intense trauma, particularly those of birth, death, fear or loss, the question is always “Why?”  Anyone who has allowed themselves to engage with what has happened to the people of the Philippines (and there are probably many who have not), will be asking it still. Whether or not they think of themselves as  people of faith, they will be asking this question of God, either directly or indirectly.

We only really ask “why?” when reality kicks in, when we experience trauma ourselves or because someone we love is going through hard times. Direct experience of the suffering of others, even if we are not there to share it with them, proceeds from love. So when we allow ourselves to be touched by what is happening to the people of Tacloban and its outlying regions, we are loving them as deeply as it is possible for one human being to love another. We are asking with them for a response to the question “Why?”

 A response is not an answer. It does not solve problems or provide definitive explanations. When asked of God, it does not even allow us to apportion blame where blame seems to belong. Instead, God’s response to the pain and the loss of the Philippine people, to its cause as well as to its effect, is that he is fully present to both.

The only surviving buildings pictured in some of the many photographs to come out of Tacloban are a church and a sports stadium. Both are places where people normally gather, but the church has a special significance. People are sleeping there, being cared for with the very limited resources available – and they are praying. They are probably asking “Why?”, wondering what God’s purpose can be in all this, as if God had caused it all to happen as a kind of cautionary tale pointing to the human destruction of the environment. Those who are suffering in Tacloban do not need to hear cautionary tales. It is the rest of us who need to hear them. What the Philippine people do need, however, is the sure knowledge that God is fully present to them, that he is literally ‘tenting’ with them, to use the biblical expression from the book of Exodus. He is totally bound up in their situation. He is with the children, the anxious and exhausted parents, the elderly, the relief forces, all those still waiting for food, water and medical supplies. 

The name Jesus is a translation of Emanuel which means ‘God with us’. God’s presence with the suffering is not just a comforting idea. It is a reality voiced in the “why?”, a question which refuses to make do with platitudes or pious clichés, a question which insists on response. Jesus is both the question and the response. His life is so bound up with ours that it is impossible to separate them. Wherever we are, there is Emanuel, God with us, and wherever he is, there too are we, both in this life and in the next.