September 16, 2001
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and Rescued Unison Prayer: Lord God Almighty, heaven is your throne and earth is your footstool. Today our country is in pain. Extend to us your peace like a river, and restore us to a sense of hope and care for one another. God of compassion, you watch our ways and weave out of the terrible happenings wonders of goodness and grace. Surround we who have been shaken by tragedy with a sense of your present love and hold us in faith. As parents comfort their children, so comfort us that our hearts may rejoice, and that we may flourish like a garden tended by your hand. Though we are lost in grief, may we find you and be comforted through Jesus Christ, who was dead, but lives, and rules this world with you. Amen. What then are we to say about these things? In the seasons of the calendar year, it is late summer on the way to autumn. There is a hint of crispness in the air, and soon leaves will begin to change color. This is the time of year when the days are bright, the nights are cool, and we enjoy a kind of fullness of life for which we are grateful. In the seasons of the church year, it is ordinary time. We are in the long church season of spring, summer, fall, almost to winter when we consider want it means to be church in the months between the celebration of Pentecost and the beginning of Advent. Ordinary time. This past Tuesday morning, I looked at the morning paper to see whether the Dodgers were any closer to clinching a playoff spot, whether Barry Bonds was any closer to breaking Mark McGuire’s single season homerun record. I looked at the editorial pages, I glanced at Ann Landers and Dear Abby, and I checked on how the wedding plans were coming in the comic strip ‘For Better Or Worse’. I wondered while I ate breakfast what I would have for lunch and dinner, and how the Board meeting would go that evening. I wondered about all of the ordinary stuff of an ordinary day. In New York City, it was mayoral primary day. Some people voted early, others I’m sure, planned to vote later that day. People got up to go to work in and around a magnificent set of buildings at the southern end of the island of Manhattan. Parents and children said good-bye to each other at schools and day care centers nearby. In Arlington, Virginia military and civilian personnel made their way to their desks and other assigned stations at the Pentagon. In Boston, Massachusetts and Newark, New Jersey people got on airplanes heading for the West coast. Some of their stories are emerging. Some were on vacation, going to Australia and Asia by way of San Francisco or Los Angeles. Some were going to see the Golden Gate Bridge, or Fisherman’s Wharf, or the wineries of Napa and Sonoma Valleys. Maybe they were going to Disneyland, or sightseeing from an urban corner in Southern California west along Sunset Boulevard through Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Brentwood, Westwood, Pacific Palisades, all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Maybe they were on a business trip or perhaps they were just going home. It was a picture perfect day in ordinary time. Then one terrible moment, one unbelievable instant became minutes of terror and agony. There was time for a few phone calls, some last good-byes, a cherished final, “I love you”. Acts of defiant heroism, and then nothing would never be the same. Suddenly, in a blast of smoke and debris, fire, broken glass, twisted metal, and terror, an ordinary September day became anything but, and joined the list of other days of disaster that have assumed an extraordinary place in our history. You know the dates: December 7, 1941 (Pearl Harbor); November 22, 1963 (John Kennedy assassinated); April 4, 1968 (Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated); June 4, 1968 (Robert Kennedy assassinated). May 4, 1970 (The shootings at Kent State); January 28, 1986 (The Challenger Explosion); April 19, 1995 (The Oklahoma City bombing); April 20, 1999 (The Columbine killings); and now September 11, 2001. More than the endless loops of videotape, the newspaper and magazine clippings, and computer images, our own memories will remind us of where we were and what we were doing when we heard the news. A plane had crashed into the World Trade Center, and then another, and then news of a plane crashing into the Pentagon, and another into a field in western Pennsylvania, and then the crashes and the collapse that changed the skyline of Manhattan and seared the souls of the world. Like many of you, I will remember what I felt and what I continue to feel. Shock, outrage, confusion, fear, deep sadness, horrified unbelief, vulnerable, helpless, violated, unable to speak coherently, filled with mind numbing grief. What do we do with what we feel? We have relied on our faith in God to get us through. Some of you will remember that a few months ago I shared with you the message on the sign in front of Redeemer Lutheran Church. The church has been under renovation for more than a year, and the sign was meant to encourage the members and all who passed by the church. It said: “Our God reigns, all the evidence to the contrary.” That is the foundation on which we stand, it is the source of our hope. These extraordinary days have helped to make clear to me that the church has a unique role to play in these days. For the church of Jesus Christ, this is our opportunity to be the city on a hill that God calls us to be and to declare that our God reigns. Our role is not to explain the unexplainable. Our role is to bring a word of Christian hope and understanding to what is incomprehensible, and we join with other faith groups as we do. What happened last Tuesday morning was not an act of God, it was not, as some have said, God’s punishment of a nation that allows freedom of reproductive choice or gives legal rights to gay and lesbian people. It was not, as some have said, just retribution to a nation some would call the Great Satan. It was none of these things. It was a hateful act by people doing evil and the witness of the church is that our God reigns even in the face of unspeakable acts. These events we have witnessed defy belief, they are against all logic, violate our sense of what is fair, and assault our sense of what is just and moral. Still, the witness of scripture is that God reigns in all circumstances. God reigns as we recall that each of us is redeemed and rescued by God. We are found when we are lost, we are ransomed when we are held captive by all that keeps us out of relationship with God and our neighbors. We are rescued when we are in danger. What is the danger? The danger is in letting our feelings get so far ahead of us that vengeance and justice are confused. The reality is that anger is a part of what we feel, along with a hurt so intense that the temptation to seek revenge and retaliation is great. But remember, justice is doing what is right being accountable and responsible. Vengeance is God’s and God’s alone. We need to trust that those responsible for the outrage of last Tuesday morning will be held accountable for what they have done. Justice will be served. Our task as the church of Jesus Christ is to be a voice of just faith and reasoned behavior in these emotional times. It is to defend people who are being harassed, threatened and vandalized. It is to call on the highest values of this community to speak a word of hope and peace. Our hope as Christians is that the grace of God still flows, still teaches, still guides us, even in times like these. So great is God’s love for us that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. In the eighth chapter of Romans Paul wrote some remarkable words - words that strengthen us now. “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to God’s purpose.” (Romans 8.28) What good can come from this? We have seen glimpses. We see the good in people even now risking their lives to rescue and recover people. We see it in blood donated and in thousands of acts of kindness as when food is brought to rescue workers. We see it in a nation that last week was split along fault lines of race, class, gender, political parties and competing interests, is more united than at any time in the memories of most of us. We see it in the way that in mosque and synagogue, temple and church, worship places have been filled with people who are finding comfort in the household of their God. This event so horrible that we cannot easily name it has helped us to see that our bond with God is strong and sure. I will remember forever our unofficial theme from Vacation Bible School - what can separate us from the love of God? Nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing. What protects us is our inseparable connection with God. We belong to God and nothing can ever change that. Who can be against us? When it seems like terrorists can, God is just and God is in control of this world. It is not controlled by those who call upon depraved destruction, nor is it controlled by those who try to frighten us into violent reaction. The assault was great, the effects are permanent, but the God from whom we cannot be separated will have the last word. The Psalms bear witness to what the love of God can do. God’s love can calm us when we are overcome with anger. “When you are angry, do not sin, ponder it on your beds, and be silent. Offer right sacrifices and put your trust in the Lord. There are many who say, ‘O that we might see some good! Let the light of your face shine on us, O Lord! You have put gladness in my heart more than when their grain and wine abound. I will both lie down and sleep in peace; for you alone, O Lord, make me lie down in safety.” (Psalm 4.4-8) God’s love will hear us as we pray out of our anguish, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken us? Why are you so far from helping us, from the words of our groaning?” (Psalm 22.1) God’s love surrounds us when death confronts us. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod (designed to protect us from our adversaries) and your staff (to guide us when we are heading in wrong directions) they comfort me.” (Psalm 23.4) We are redeemed and rescued by a God that loves us unconditionally. That is why God gave Jesus Christ to us and to the world. God gave him freely. Jesus gave himself to us and for us freely. We receive him freely. And if we have that free gift, there is nothing God will withhold from us, especially not God’s presence. Because nothing can separate us from the love of God, we know protection, we have an advocate, we have received forgiveness and we are called in time to do the hard, almost impossible work of forgiving others, even those who did this terrible thing. God is with us in this time of national hardship. God is here as we live in the middle of heartbreaking distress. God is here as we feel persecuted today. But the promise is sure and can be believed absolutely. Nothing in all of creation will separate us from the love of God. Nothing, not even death. We know that people of every race and religion died Tuesday morning. I do not doubt that God was present in those airplanes and office buildings at the moment people were taken, and that God embraced them all. Many of you will recall that yesterday was another defining date. On September 15, 1963, four little girls were killed when a bomb exploded near their Sunday school classroom at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. A few days later, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered the eulogy for three of them. During his sermon he said: “So in spite of the darkness of this hour we must not despair. We must not become bitter; nor must we harbor the desire to retaliate with violence. We must not lose faith [in ourselves]”, or I would add in the basic decency of human beings. Dr. King goes on to say, “Somehow we must believe that the most misguided among [those who support what was done] can learn to respect the dignity and worth of all human personality.” Then addressing the children’s families, he said words I want us to remember today: “I hope you can find some consolation from Christianity’s affirmation that death is not the end. Death is not a period that ends the great sentence of life, but a comma that punctuates it to more lofty significance. Death is not a blind alley that leads the human race into a state of nothingness, but an open door which leads [us] into life eternal. Let this daring faith, this great invincible surmise, be your sustaining power during these trying days. “At times, life is hard, as hard as crucible steel. It has its bleak and painful moments. Like the ever-flowing waters of a river, life has its moments of drought and its moments of flood. Like the ever-changing cycle of the seasons, life has the soothing warmth of its summers and the piercing chill of its winters. But through it all, God walks with us. Never forget that God is able to lift you from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope, and transform dark and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of inner peace.” (A Testament of Hope, The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. p. 222) Beloved in Christ, that is our faith. It is our hope, it is the good news we have for ourselves and it is the good news we share with the world. It is what helps us face the deaths of thousands of people who had lives and hopes and dreams. It is what helps us face our own deaths and to look beyond this life into eternity. It also gives shape and meaning to our lives now. May this become a time when we look to God to help us heal, help us through, help us say no to more bloodshed and terror. May we find the grace and strength to say yes to justice, to peace, and respect. May this be the time we claim our place among the redeemed and rescued and declare wherever we are that our lives are led by God who along with Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit is sovereign through the ages. To this God, who is immortal, and invisible, yet so very present to us, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.
Dr.
LaTaunya M. Bynum |
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Street Christian Church
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