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September 16, 2001

When Terror Strikes
The Rev. Dr. Stephen R. Montgomery

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)

 


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