This sermon wrestles with theodicy—the ancient question of why an all-good, all-powerful God allows evil—using the 1755 Lisbon earthquake and Voltaire's poetic response as a starting point. Moving through scripture's competing perspectives (the prophets, Job, the Psalms), the message acknowledges that the Bible offers no easy resolution, only the recurring witness of a God who enters suffering rather than explaining it away.
Drawing a striking connection between the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the killing of George Floyd, the sermon confronts an uncomfortable pattern: we only seem troubled by evil when it falls on people we've deemed innocent. From there, it offers a reframing of theodicy itself—suggesting that God's goodness is better understood as love than as raw power, and that God chooses to limit divine power precisely in order to love authentically, as seen in the incarnation.
The sermon closes with a challenge: that we are called to choose love over power, even when love looks weaker or harder to justify, and that real change in the world begins from that posture rather than from control or dominance.
Notes:
You can read the entirety of Voltaire's poem here: http://people.whitman.edu/~iversojr/Candide/lisbon.htm
David Bentley Hart discusses theodicy in light of the Indian Ocean Tsunami here: https://firstthings.com/tsunami-and-theodicy/
