Hard to imagine. It has been three years now since the
September 11th attacks. "Life will never be the same again," we
heard over and over, and that prediction has more or less proven
true, although probably not in the ways that any of the pundits
assumed. Perhaps you saw "The Word on the Street" column in
yesterday's paper - the question of the week was "Do you think
America's war on terrorism has made our country safer?" The
majority said "No."(1) And they are right. Life is not the same
as it was three years ago, not so much because of what the
terrorists did to us, but because of what we continue to do to
ourselves. In many ways, we are still living in fear, and, in my
estimation, rightly so. It does not take a Jeremiah
to see that more is coming - as a nation we have not addressed
the motivations of the terrorists, and in fact, by our
government's responses, the problems have been exacerbated. It
does not take a revelation from God to see that our problems are
far from over.
This week, the 1,000th U.S. soldier died in Iraq, according
to the Pentagon's own accounting, going back to the beginning of
the invasion. Grieving those 1,000 lives has been made
tragically difficult, since the public relations of war dictates
that Americans should not see their soldiers come home in body
bags. No photographs of flag-draped coffins. After all, war is
best fueled by ideologies, slogans, and fears. The faces of
victims throw us off. But it IS personal, and a funeral here in
Warren tomorrow is a tragic reminder. Are we safer? Ask John
Mallery's family.
On the other side of that coin, we are a nation that has
changed in its understanding of our heroes. After 9/11, we saw
our police officers and firefighters in a brand new light - one
that was long overdue - as it came home to us that these
dedicated men and women put their lives on the line for us,
unheralded, every day. They have always deserved our respect and
gratitude, and since the attacks, they have gotten a bit more of
their due. That is a good change.
Speaking of Jeremiah, you probably recall after
the 9/11 attacks, some of our more fundamentalist preachers who
figure they are this generation's reincarnation of the prophetic
voice managed to find television cameras to make it heard. They
proclaimed to all the world that the attacks were God's judgment
on America for our toleration of a list of social positions that
were in conflict with their own - gay rights, abortion, prayer in
public schools, anything supported by the ACLU, etc. You might
also recall that the response to those remarks was absolute
outrage from people with any brain at all.
As you can surmise (if you did not already know), I think
their position was abominable - the events of 9/11 are certainly
not a reflection of the God I have come to know in scripture, in
experience, and certainly not in the life and ministry of Jesus
Christ. For that matter, it is not even the Allah that is met in
the pages of the Qu'ran, despite what you hear from Islam's own
radical right.
So saying, where IS God in all this? Read the Old Testament
and you regularly find predictions of gloom and doom for a sinful
and unrepentant people. You heard Jeremiah: "My people are
fools; they do not know me. They are senseless children; they
have no understanding. They are skilled in doing evil; they know
not how to do good...This is what the LORD says: "The whole land
will be ruined..." And, yes, you certainly do find those
predictions coming true - defeat in battle, years in exile, and
so on. For that matter, you will hear "prophetic voices" most
anytime some horrendous event occurs.
For example, those of you who grew up here in Pennsylvania
no doubt remember your state history and the horrific Johnstown
Flood of 1889 - on May 31st of that year, after days of rain, the
South Fork Dam collapsed and unleashed a wall of water reaching
up to 70 feet high that swept 14 miles down the river valley,
carrying away steel mills, houses, livestock and thousands of
people - more than 2200 dead. As might be expected, countless
sermons on "The Meaning of the Johnstown Flood" were delivered.
In New York the illustrious T. DeWitt Talmage, using the 93rd
Psalm as his text ("The floods have lifted up, 0 Lord, the floods
have lifted up their voice..."), told an audience of some 5,000
that what the voice of the flood had to say was that nature was
merciless and that any sort of religious attitude toward nature
meant emptiness. "There are those who tell us they want only the
religion of sunshine, air, blue sky and beautiful grass," said
Talmage. "The book of nature must be their book. Let me ask
such persons what they make out of the floods in Pennsylvania,"
he thundered. Good question.
Not a few ministers chose to talk about the spirit of
sympathy that was sweeping the country. The New York Witness, a
religious newspaper, went so far as to say there was a "loving
purpose of God hidden in the flood," which turned a great many
stomachs in Johnstown.
But the theme that set the most heads nodding in agreement
was the old, old theme of punishment from on high. The story of
Noah was read from thousands of pulpits. ("And God looked upon
the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt...And God said unto Noah,
the end of all flesh is come before me...")(2) This was The Great
American Flood; it had been a sign unto all men, the preachers
said, and woe unto the land if it were not heeded. The steel
town had been a sin town, and so the Lord had destroyed it; for
surely only a vile and wicked place would have been visited by so
hideous a calamity. Sounds like Falwell and Robertson, doesn't
it?
It was a line of reasoning which many people were quick to
accept, for at least it made some sense of the disaster. But,
according to historian David McCullough in his classic book on
the flood, it was a line of reasoning which met with some
amusement in Johnstown, where, as anyone who knew his way around
could readily see, Lizzie Thompson's house of ill repute and
several rival establishments had not only survived the disaster,
but were going stronger than ever before. "If punishment was
God's purpose," said one survivor, "He sure had bad aim."(3)
That brings to mind the onslaught of Hurricane Hugo in 1988
that did such damage in the Carolinas. If you recall, those were
the days that saw the downfall of Jim Bakker and his PTL ministry
brought on by the fraud which had been perpetrated on unwitting
time-share purchasers at Heritage, USA, and was finally exposed
by the investigative reporting of the Charlotte Observer. That
esteemed theologian Tammy Faye Bakker said the damage from Hugo
was God's judgment on the city that had brought down her husband.
She never did clarify, though, why the storm had damaged the
steeple of First Presbyterian Church but had left the Charlotte
Observer building untouched. Bad aim again? Hmm.
So saying, there really was never much mystery in anyone's
mind in Johnstown about the cause of the flood. George Swank
spoke for just about everyone when he wrote, "We think we know
what struck us, and it was not the hand of Providence. Our
misery is the work of man." The same can be said for what
happened on September 11th or just days ago at that awful
massacre at the school in Russia. This was not God; this was
man...and at man's worst, we might add.
Then what about all those hurricanes this year? Somebody
has to ask what did Florida do to have this giant KICK ME sign
on its back. Is this God's judgment? A certain ilk is going to
think so. Several years ago televangelist and former
presidential candidate Pat Robertson was reinforcing this view of
God when he warned that the city of Orlando might well face a
direct hit by a hurricane because it permitted the display of
rainbow flags out of respect for gay people. Said Robertson: "I
would warn Orlando that you're right in the way of some serious
hurricanes and I don't think I'd be waving those flags in God's
face if I were you." Good ol' Pat.
Fortunately, in our day we have come to see that there are
other explanations for why we have these disastrous storms.
Hurricanes arrive, not because God has a habit of punishing evil
senior-citizen mobile-home-park dwellers in a land devoid of snow
or ice, but because the prevailing winds, ocean currents and
frontal zones combine in ways that make tropical storms more
likely at this time of the year. The same is true of
earthquakes, tornadoes, or floods. All of these are directed by
the forces of nature. This is so in good times and bad and
without respect to the moral climate or condition of the people
who happen to be living in a region where disaster strikes.(4)
The God we meet in the pages of scripture is not this
vicious, violent terrorist that some people want us to see (and
terrorist really is the best word for that kind of god).
Instead, we meet a very different God in the stories of Jesus
like the ones that we read in our lesson. The scripture begins
by saying that Jesus critics sneered, "This man, this Jesus,
receives sinners and eats with them, that is, parties with them."
In response, Jesus has these little stories. "Suppose one
of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not
leave the 99 in the open country - vulnerable to wolves,
wandering off, and other all manner of mischief - and go after
the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he
joyfully puts it on his shoulders - just a lost child - and goes
home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says,
'Come party with me; I have found my lost sheep.'" Well?
"Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one.
Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house, rip up all of the
carpet in the living room, move all of the furniture out into the
front yard, then move all of the heavy appliances out of the
kitchen into the front yard, and search relentlessly until she
finds it? And when she finds it, she comes running out into the
yard, calling to everybody up and down the street, "Come party
with me! I found my quarter!" Now which one of you would not do
that? You know the answer: none of us would do that. None of
us.(5) But Jesus says God would. "I tell you, there is rejoicing
in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who
repents."
When faith faces disaster. In which God is your faith? A
God who sends airplanes into buildings because he is miffed? A
God who blows 100+-mile-per-hour winds through impoverished
Caribbean islands and Florida trailer parks? Or a God who is SO
concerned about our ultimate welfare that the safe return of even
the lowest and least among us is cause for a heavenly party? Not
a hard choice, is it?
I am told that in Johnstown, there is an Episcopal Church -
St. Mark's - that was already in existence in 1889 when the flood
hit, wiped out the town and killed so many, including the rector
of that church and his family. When the flood waters receded and
the church was cleaned up and reopened, the survivors decided to
engrave on the altar a verse not commonly carved into altars.
Song of Solomon 8:7 - "Many waters cannot quench love." The
verse goes on to say, "neither can floods drown it."(6)
Amen!
1. Warren Times-Observer, 9/11/04, A-5
2. Genesis 6:13
3. David McCullough, The Johnstown Flood, (New York : Simon & Schuster, 1968), p.
253
4. Charles Henderson, "God and the Hurricanes,"
http://christianity.about.com/od/adultchristianity/a/godandhurricane.htm?nl=1
5. William Willimon, "Outrageous Parties,"
http://www.sermonconnection.com/SermonConnection.aspx?id=2
6. Carlos Wilton, "The Bridge Is Love," sermon preached at Point Pleasant Presbyterian
Church, November 2, 2003
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