September
16, 2001
Jeremiah
4:11-12; 22-28
I Timothy 1:12-17
Elie
Wiesel tells this story: When the great rabbi Israel Baal Shem-Tov
saw misfortune threatening the Jews it was his custom to go into
a certain part of the forest to meditate. There he would light a
fire, say a special prayer, and the miracle would be accomplished
and the misfortune averted.
Later,
when his disciple, the celebrated Magid of Mezritch, had occasion,
for the same reason, to intercede with heaven, he would go to the
same place in the forest and say: "Master of the universe,
listen! I do not know how to light the fire, but I am still able
to say the prayer." And again, the miracle would be accomplished.
Still
later, Rabbi Moshe–Leib of Sasov, in order to save his people
once more, would go into the forest and say: "I do not know
how to light the fire, I do not know the prayer, but I know the
place and this must be sufficient."
Then
it fell to Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn to overcome misfortune. Sitting
in his armchair, his head in his hands, he spoke to God: "I
am unable to light the fire and I do not know the prayer; I cannot
even find the place in the forest. All I can do is tell the story
and this must be sufficient." And it was sufficient. [1]
This
past week has been a week in which many of us also have found it
difficult to light the fire; we don’t know what to pray for;
and we aren’t even sure where a safe place is. But we do have
stories. And they must be sufficient....
What
is your story? Mine began as yours did, like any other Tuesday morning.
I had taken the kids to school. On the way to school I was listening
to National Public Radio and there was nothing out of the ordinary.
I was actually half-listening as I often do when there are children
in the car. And it was only later that I realized that Aaron had
heard something that I had not heard, and he asked, "Daddy,
what is a hijacking?" I explained to him what it was, and that
was why we went through those metal detectors at airports, so that
we could fly safely. I didn’t think anything more of it, and
I dropped them off and came in for a meeting with Virginia Dunaway,
our church life administrator. We were talking about the nuts and
bolts of the running of the church when Cheryl McDermott, our children’s
ministry director, came in and said that a plane had crashed into
one of the twin towers.
At
that point it seemed tragic, but perhaps accidental and certainly
far removed, like a plane crash in California.
Fifteen
minutes later she came back with the news that another plane had
crashed into the other tower, and suddenly the day took on a whole
new meaning. A television had been set up in the presbytery office,
and so from time to time I would wander by and steal a glance, but
for the most part the day was a blur, hearing of another jet plowing
into the Pentagon. This couldn’t
be happening! Yet another jet downed in Pennsylvania. And then the
collapse of one of the twin towers, then the other. What would be
next?
We
quickly decided to scrap our usual wholeness service and prepared
a prayer service in case we had a few extra people. Would there
be 25? 50? Let’s do 100 bulletins, we said. They started arriving
early, and sat here in silence. Nobody talked or visited, like we’re
so prone to do here in moments before worship. We just sat here
broken-hearted, shocked, perhaps not even knowing why we were here.
And people kept coming and coming… hundreds of men, women,
and children, each with their own story that they were trying to
make sense of. And it was at that service that I began to get a
glimpse of a larger story. In place of all of those dreadful images
that we had seen during the day, there was another image which will
be indelibly etched in my mind as vividly as those others I had
seen on television.
We
were serving communion by intinction. Since we didn’t know
how many people to expect we only had one station. And as I held
the bread and offered it to one after another after another, I looked
up and the line stretched as far as I could see… all the way
to the back of the sanctuary. No music. Total silence. All waiting,
yearning for something that was more than just the physical bread
and juice. Call it meaning, call it something of eternal significance,
call it peace, call it love. But there you were, believers, or trying-to-be-believers
in another story.
And
that is why we come here today. That is why we come here on every
Sunday, for that matter. It is to wrap ourselves in a story that
is bigger than we are, a story that undergirds and envelops all
of our personal stories, takes those stories and redeems them, placing
them in the context of a powerful story that begins not on a Tuesday
morning but with the words "In the beginning, God…."
And
every now and then we find glimpses of our story in that larger
story. Such is the case with our Old Testament lesson today. Listen
to these words and ask yourself if these 2,500-year-old words could
have been written this week:
My
anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain!…
My heart is beating wildly;
I cannot keep silent;
For I hear the sound of the trumpet,
The alarm of war.
Disaster overtakes disaster,
The whole land is laid waste.
Suddenly my tents are destroyed,
My curtains in a moment….
I looked on the earth and it was waste and void;…
I looked, and lo, there was no one at all,
All the birds of the air had fled.
…all of its cities were laid in ruins… (Jere.4:19-26)
God
can handle our anguish. That is what so many of those passionate
psalms are about, crying out to God… asking… demanding
that God be God. And as they give voice to their feelings to God,
they become oriented to a new reality.
That
is one reason why it is important for us as people of faith to find
support communities where we can feel safe to voice our feelings.
It is true for our children, but it is also true for us adults as
well. Our psyches have very poor digestive systems and what goes
down can come up in very unhealthy ways unless they are openly and
honestly addressed. ... Many of us are finding that we are having
feelings we didn’t even know we had. One man, a veteran of
World War II, [told me] "I thought I had forgotten how to hate;
but it came back so quickly."
Anger
is legitimate, even called for, but if we let our anger turn to
hate, then we are little better than those who have hated and hurt
us. God knows it is emotionally
satisfying to hate with righteous indignation, but God also knows
that what is emotionally satisfying can be spiritually devastating.
As Roland Bainton once said, "If you have to become the beast
in order to defeat the beast, the beast has won."
We
can learn well from the questions our children ask, for there is
a deep honesty about them. Some of the questions I have heard as
a father are: Are we safe? Why do bad people do things like that?
Why is there evil? Did God cause that?
Let
me say clearly and unequivocally, This was not God’s will!
God did not want those people to die. It is not part of God’s
plan. Jerry Falwell has been quoted as saying that this was the
judgment of God coming down on America because we have been too
tolerant towards some minorities… too liberal… that God
wanted this to happen, indeed, that God caused this to happen as
he recited all of his pet prejudices… feminists, gays, doctors
who perform abortion, the ACLU.
My
friends, listen carefully: That is not simply a distortion of the
Gospel; it is a desertion of the Gospel! Our God’s heart was
the first to break when that first airliner hit the twin tower,
and it broke thousands of times over in the next few minutes.
Further,
fundamentalism, be it Muslim, Jewish, or Christian is dangerous
whenever the purity of dogma is placed higher than the integrity
of love. No, the God of love revealed on every page of scriptures
is a creative God. God does not destroy innocent lives. God may
come across destruction and enter into it with us, but God is always
building, always creating.
Another
question children… and adults ask is about evil. Evil is real....
It is there. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know how
to describe it. I don’t know for sure what to call it. But
we have seen it throughout history, and we saw it on Tuesday. On
Wednesday night Bill Moyers interviewed an ethicist from a seminary
and asked him "What is evil?" And the scholar replied:
"Evil is when you cannot see anything of value in another person."
That kind of evil brought about much destruction, and our God is
a creative God who will build from this, but don’t let anyone
tell you God is responsible for evil.
So
what is to be the response of the family of faith? It is certainly
prayer, but it is more than that. It is to tell the story again
and again. It is the story of salvation, for this story tells of
another power, even more powerful than death and evil and suffering.
And it too has an image that I hope will be imprinted in your mind’s
eye just as those initial images of Tuesday were: it is the image
of a man on a cross, and it is called "suffering love."
"This
saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance: that Christ Jesus
came into the world to save sinners." We hear those words just
about every Sunday in our words of assurance. But is it at all possible
that they have new meaning today? The salvation we are talking about
here is not just the salvation from the pits of hell that some love
to describe theatrically. But rather it is salvation for joy, for
the full and abundant life Christ offers, for knowing that God can
be trusted not only with my sins and salvation, but also trusted
to redeem each and every day from insignificance. God so loved the
world that God sent God’s son.
Let
me share personally about what this means this day as I struggle
to find how Christ might work for good… for salvation…
in the presence of terror and evil:
Jesus
saves me from judging others more harshly than I judge myself. Peace
begins with me. Jesus saves me from hatred and vindictiveness toward
those with whom I disagree, or who have shown hatred and vindictiveness
to me. You remember the camp song of another generation: "Let
there be peace on earth and let it begin with me." God can
work for good, and it begins with me.
Further,
Jesus saves me from indifference to the suffering of other people.
As we have heard these stories of phone calls from airplanes, of
firefighters giving their lives, of people wandering the streets
of New York carrying pictures of loved ones, who can remain indifferent?
Maybe this tragedy can put
us in touch with people around the world for whom suffering is a
way of life. When bombs explode in the Middle East,
when civil wars disrupt in Africa, maybe we can find that we are
one in our suffering, and thus help God build a new world fashioned
upon redemption.
Jesus
saves me from a self-centered view of the world, saves me from thinking
God loves me more than another. Jeremiah’s God was not a tribal
god, but the God of all creation. God loves the Muslims who run
the sandwich shop just down the street from here every bit as much
as God loves the Presbyterians who worship here. And it is absolutely
vital that whenever anti-Muslim or anti-Palestinian or anti-Arab
bigotry raises its ugly head, we go the extra mile to expose it
and confront it with suffering love.
Finally,
Jesus saves me from despair, from ever believing that life has no
purpose, or giving in to those impulses to abandon hope. The cross
reminds us that death and despair are not dead ends, but signs of
an impending resurrection, and only as we have the faith to live
fully in the midst of these difficult days will we too experience
resurrection and the transformation of our lives and the life of
our nation. For that is our calling.
An
old man in India sat down in the shade of an ancient banyan tree
whose roots disappeared far away in a swamp. Soon he discerned a
commotion where the root entered the water. Concentrating his attention,
he saw that a scorpion had become helplessly entangled in the roots.
Pulling himself to his feet, he made his way carefully along the
tops of the roots to the place where the scorpion was trapped. He
reached down to extricate it. But each time he touched the scorpion,
it lashed his hand with its tail, stinging him painfully. Finally
his hand was so swollen he could no longer close his fingers, so
he withdrew to the shade of the tree to wait for the swelling to
go down. As he arrived at the trunk, he saw a young man standing
above him on the road laughing at him. "You’re a fool,"
said the young man, "wasting your time trying to help a scorpion
that can only do you harm."
The
old man replied, "Simply because it is in the nature of the
scorpion to sting, should I change my nature, which is to save?"
Thanks
be to God for this story that begins "In the beginning, God…"
But thanks be to God, it doesn’t end there. At its center there
is an image of suffering love that carries us through the terror
to hope and salvation.
Amen.
[1]
Eli Wiesel, The Gates of the Forest.
[2] Brueggemann, Walter, Hopeful Imagination: Prophetic Voices
in Exile, Fortress Press, 1986, p. 14.
©
2001 Idlewild
Presbyterian Churc h, Memphis, Tennessee
Preached
at Idlewild Presbyterian Church, Memphis,
Tennessee September 16, 2001
Jeremiah
4:11-12; 22-28
At that time it will be said to this people and to
Jerusalem: A hot wind comes from me out of the bare heights in the
desert toward my poor people, not to winnow or cleanse— a
wind too strong for that. Now it is I who speak in judgment against
them. "For
my people are foolish, they do not know me; they are stupid children,
they have no understanding. They are skilled in doing evil, but
do not know how to do good." I looked on the earth, and lo,
it was waste and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light.
I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking, and all the
hills moved to and fro. I looked, and lo, there was no one at all,
and all the birds of the air had fled. I looked, and lo, the fruitful
land was a desert, and all its cities were laid in ruins before
the Lord, before his fierce anger. For thus says the Lord: The whole
land shall be a desolation; yet I will not make a full end. Because
of this the earth shall mourn, and the heavens above grow black;
for I have spoken, I have purposed; I have not relented nor will
I turn back. (NRSV)
I
Timothy 1:12-17
I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me,
because he judged me faithful and appointed me to his service, even
though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence.
But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief,
and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love
that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is sure and worthy of full
acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of
whom I am the foremost. But for that very reason I received mercy,
so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost
patience, making me an example to those who would come to believe
in him for eternal life. To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible,
the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. (NRSV)
|
