Sermon preached by The Reverend Eric Kimball Hinds at Saint Peter's
Church, Mountain Lakes, New Jersey. Lessons: Amos 8:4-7 (8-12); Psalm 138; 1 timothy
2:1-8; Luke 16:1-13.
The
Christian Response to 9/11
We
have been through quite a week. Coverage of the aftermath of the September
11 attacks has been constant and extensive. We have many of us discovered
new names of people affected by tragedy. We have continued to mourn
and pray together. Across this region many services have been offered
in tribute to lives taken too almost too quickly to comprehend. In the
midst of all this, in the midst of our grief and loss — and as
life goes on, I want to simply mention and address two things. The first
is to affirm a basic tenant of the Christian Faith, and the Second is
to challenge ourselves to examine a demand of the Gospel.
First the affirmation, which is that Good will always triumph over Evil.
This is a fundamental affirmation and promise of Christianity. Notice
that it is not: Good might edge out evil — or that evil sometimes
falters and as a result good wins; rather it is that in the ultimate
scheme of things Good will always triumph over evil. This is a basic
tenant which holds that the very act of creation was born out of the
creative goodness of God and that all creation is connected to the divine.
To be involved in creative activity is then to be connected to the goodness
of God. By contrast evil is merely the negation of good and it can only
be measured in terms of distance from Good.
Dante
understood this principle. By describing hell as a succession of circles
further and further removed from heaven he was steadily increasing
the distance from God. For all its pyrotechnic glitter and vivid imagery,
the worst chamber of hell merely describes the absence of God. Evil
then is simply the negation of Gods creative Goodness, and Evil has
no claim to a creative power of its own. Christians affirm that evil
is by its nature finite and limited, while the creative power of God
knows no bounds.
This aspect of our faith is perhaps difficult to see in the midst
of tragedy — when a gaping gash is torn in the fabric of creation,
but just look at the events of the past two weeks. Examine how the
people of our country have responded to tragedy. In New York people
immediately came to the assistance of those in need. Fellow workers,
fire fighters, police officers, medical personnel, rescue workers
and countless volunteers offered assistance many without regard to
the risks involved. And this outpouring of support has only multiplied.
Indeed it is like watching the concentric rings of waves expand from
an initial pebble dropped into a still pond.
In
our communities the response to the great evil of September 11 has
been tremendous and overwhelming, a continuous out pouring of love
and support. Numbers increasing in ratios from lOO's to l,OOO's to
lO,OOO's to one are the measure of people reaching out to lend assistance
to those hurting from disaster. To be a Christian is to claim a connection
to God's creative goodness and to be involved in God's redemptive
work. And that is the Good news that we proclaim and need to hold
on to.
Jesus understood that evil will never have the last word, not even
in the darkest moment of Good Friday, for the promise of Easter is
that God is always involved in the creative redemption of the world
and that evil and death never has the last word ever. The task of
confronting evil and absorbing its reality is never easy or painless
yet we do well to remind ourselves that the promise of the gospel
is that Good will always triumph.
Perhaps a much more difficult part of the Gospel message for us to
come to terms with, especially at this time, is the command of Jesus
that comes to us from Luke in the following words: "But I say
to you that listen, love your enemies, do good to those that hate
you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you."
These are difficult words to hear at any time, and I must confess
that I feel that their challenge to us is enormous. I suspect that
most of us would rather view this text as some sort of biblical typo
— yeah this is what Jesus is supposed to have said but how can
we ever really take this seriously.
Well
maybe it's helpful to keep a couple things in perspective. First of
all, Jesus does not abandon the word enemies. Jesus does not attempt
to say we are all friends — let's pray for one another. He acknowledges
that enemies exist and that they may be set against us. Jesus did
not say hug embrace your enemy or turn over your weapons to your enemy.
He does however say to love, bless and pray for one's enemy. Still
a very tall order.
It seems that we as Christians are given the responsibility of not
accepting any situation as beyond redemption and that in every case
we bear a responsibility to actively seek and work towards a resolution
of conflict. And we may wonder: is this merely prayer in a vacuum?
Futile unilateral prayer? Or something that we are called to go through
the motions of? I hope not — and I hope and pray that we can
somehow begin to contemplate and embrace this challenge.
Of all people, the late Mr. Rodgers offered an insight that might
allow us to hear the command of Jesus to love and pray for our neighbor
in a different context. In his book You are Special, Fred Rodgers
observed: "Often, problems are knots with many strands, and looking
at those strands can make a problem seem different." Now let's
read that statement again this time replacing the word problems with
the word enemies. "Often, enemies are knots with many strands,
and looking at those strands can make an enemy seem different."
This is still a difficult way to look at the world.
To think that we might see our enemies in a different light or context
— and our obligation to pray for our enemies is not an easy task
to swallow. And yet when you think about it this is exactly what we
ask of God. We do not want God to see only our sins; to count only
the magnitude that we have fallen short of God's Goodness. We desperately
ask God to overlook our sins, to look at the many strands that compose
our selves and to accept us as less than perfect and we ask God to
accept us warts and all — or at least to accept us until we can
change.
In the weeks and months ahead we will do well to affirm and claim
that Good is the Victor over evil. And as difficult as the task seems
we will know that we are participating in the Christian promise of
redemption when we dare to offer our prayers for the whole of creation
for our friends and our enemies. Pray for both — God the creative
source of all Good, demands nothing less.
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