*********************************************
09/16/2001 - Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost - Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28; Psalm 14 or Exodus 32:7-14; Psalm 51:1-10; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10; Sunday Bulletin Service Theme: God is their refuge; Used Romans 8:18-23 and Luke 15:1-32; note: since the 15th chapter of Luke is a single literary unit, the whole chapter was read. The Sunday after the terrorist attack on Washington and New York.
The Ultimate Concern
In Luke’s Gospel the son who has stayed at home says to his father, “...‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends.’” — Luke 15:29.
Where were you when it happened? Were you at work? At home? On the road? Were you alone? With someone? Did someone call and tell you to turn on the television or radio?
Or were you out of touch, fishing or hiking and not find out about the terrorism until many hours after it happened? Just like Pearl Harbor or the Challenger disaster, we all will long remember where we were or in whose company we found ourselves.
I’m sure you’ve heard this said by others, but it seems to have credence. At 8:48 on Tuesday morning, life, as we know it, changed forever. The way we live our lives will never be the same for our country or the world. This is because, as Secretary of State Powell eloquently stated, the actions Tuesday were not merely or only an attack on this country. They were an attack on civilization... all civilization.
And, as Shimon Peres noted, this is not a clash between civilizations— for instance: the Muslim world versus the Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and Jewish worlds. The is a clash within each of these structures among those who condone unacceptable behavior toward other people and those who don’t condone it.
We all know there are Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Jews who believe, as Christians do, that we are accountable, in God’s dominion, for responsible behavior toward all people, so to label any group as liable would be emotionally immature. Therefore, let us act in an emotionally mature fashion about this, abandoning inappropriate anger.
It would also be wise for us to remember what President Lincoln said of the South during the Civil War: “They pray to the same God.” No one needs to go to war with the millions of Muslims who pray to the same God we do. [1] To be theologically clear: we may have different means of expression and even different understandings, but God is God.
There are, of course, some individuals in each of these groups, Christians included, Americans included, who are nihilists. A dictionary definition says nihilists are people who deny there is any sound basis for knowledge or truth as perceived by most of humanity. Hence, nihilists are individuals who see only their own, personal truth, nothing else. Because any individualistic truth eventually turns virulent since it is inbred, these people believe only self-proclaimed insight matters.
There’s an eventual latent consequence to inbred truth: it leads to a self-centered belief that one is not to be held responsible for behavior towards others, therefore anything goes. It’s little wonder this kind of position culminates in believing one’s own law and insisting that one’s own understanding of the law must reign supreme. This kind of thinking only results in a conclusion which insists the ends justify the means.
Christianity and all the great world religions, when well understood, have, at their core, a history which rejects nihilism, rejects ignorance, rejects insular judgments, rejects legalism, rejects the darkness found when one surrenders to an impulse which says cruelty to others is acceptable behavior. Indeed, the great world religions often use metaphors, verbal equations which state that God is light or knowledge or truth.
None of these metaphors can be construed to suggest God somehow condones harboring hate. None of the metaphors even suggest that God is law. The most common metaphor used says God is love. (Pause.)
Now, I’ll bet a few of you are sitting there saying, well Joe, you’ve presented a fine intellectual analysis of what’s gone on here, but I need an emotional place on which to hang my hat. I need to emotionally grapple with what’s happened. (Pause.) Yes, I agree. And so do I. And so do millions and millions of other people.
But grappling with this situation emotionally is not going to happen just yet. It’s too soon. That’s going to take months, perhaps even years. There will be a long process in just identifying our own emotions, a long process grieving for ourselves and for others.
And I can even tell you what it will be like when we’ve come to the point where we have all actually succeeded in emotionally grappling with the terror of last Tuesday. (Pause.) We will have succeeded in emotionally grappling with the terror of last Tuesday, when we’ve finally managed to forgive those who perpetrated this horror.
In the meantime, the thing about which we must be careful is we might presume that, in our response, we are not and should not be held responsible for our behavior towards others, or that we might think cruelty is acceptable behavior, or that we might believe anything goes, or perhaps even believe that our own law and our own understanding of the law reigns supreme. If we start down that road we might end up claiming the ends justifies the means. (Pause.) Let us not, ourselves, turn toward a vision of darkness which leads to such sure destructiveness. (Pause.)
And in Luke’s Gospel the son who has stayed at home says to his father, “...‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends.’” (Pause.)
In the modern era we seem to have forgotten something. Religion does not offer information about facts. Religion speaks about meaning. Hence, if we are religious, attempting to explore how many days it took God to create the world is not a valid position. Delving into ‘why’ God created the world is.
When those who practice religion defend the great symbols of religion, symbols such as creation, as fact and not symbol, they merely surrender any power such symbols might have to move us emotionally. Symbols offer dimension, depth, meaning and address our emotional lives. Facts are strangely one dimensional.
Indeed, in a classic definition of religion the question is asked “What is our ultimate concern?” If truth be told, before Tuesday in the late 20th and early 21st century we, meaning humanity, not only Americans, had all kinds of ultimate concerns which mostly ignored meaning, dimension and depth.
After all, the classic question of our age, world wide, is not ‘what is something worth, what is the depth and dimension of its value,’ but ‘what does it cost?’ We justify everything by what it cost, not by what it is worth, not by its value, not by its meaning.
Indeed, that may have been a mistake made by the perpetrators of Tuesday’s attack. They seem to have thought, because they saw us asking about cost rather than value, we would ask what was the loss in terms of cost, when our response has been to concentrate on asking what this meant in human terms, in terms of value, in terms of dimension and depth of the loss. We realized it was our spirit which was assaulted.
Asking what something cost and not asking what is something worth, asking about its value may seem like a modern malady at first. But over the history of humanity one of our problems seems to be that we are constantly sidetracked into looking only at cost, only at facts, when the depth, dimension and spirit of life entail so much more than that.
This is, in many ways, the problem of the son who stayed at home. He is just as lost, if not even more lost, than his prodigal brother. His brother, in the end, understood something about what life is worth, the value of life, as opposed to what life cost.
Despite being what many might deem the ‘faithful son,’ the one who stayed and worked asks why he has never been given ‘even a young goat?’ He is asking ‘what’s the cost?’ (Pause.)
It seems to me that last Tuesday has the potential, if we allow it, to move us to asking questions about depth, dimension and spirit, questions about what our ultimate concern might really be. Is our ultimate concern cost or is our ultimate concern value?
Is our ultimate concern the God of light and hope and justice and peace and knowledge and freedom and truth? Or is our ultimate concern wrapped up in a nihilism of asking what things cost? Is our ultimate concern wrapped up in seeking our own, individual, inbred, virulent truth in which the ends justify the means? Or does the thought that the Creator of the universe loves us deeply, despite our flaws, have value? (Pause.)
Who were you with last Tuesday? (Pause.) Were you with someone who you did not care for but someone who God called you to love deeply? Or were you with someone you loved, but even so, you still could not begin to process the unfolding events?
Did you find yourself helping someone else as you watched in horror together? Indeed, was that person you were with someone you did not like or was it someone you loved? Or did that even matter, as you recognized your common humanity? And how did you emotionally grapple with recognizing your common humanity? (Pause.)
Where were you last Tuesday? At what place did your spirit find itself? What was your ultimate concern? (Pause.) Were you seeking depth, dimension? Were you concerned with the Spirit of God? Was your life centered on the God of hope, justice, peace, freedom, truth and knowledge, the God of love who constantly invites us out of darkness and into the light? Amen.
09/16/2001
United Church of Christ, Norwich, NY
END PIECE - It is the practice of the Pastor to speak after the Closing Hymn, but before the Benediction. This is an précis of what was said: “Many of you have heard these words. They are from the memorial service of the United Church of Christ. ‘Friends, we gather here in the protective shelter of God’s healing love. We are free to pour out our grief, release our anger, face our emptiness, and know that God cares. We gather here as God’s people, conscious of others who have died and of the frailty of our own existence on earth. We come to comfort and to support one another in our common loss. We gather to hear God’s word of hope that can drive away our despair and move us to offer God our praise.’ As we gather here each Sunday it is well to remember that, as Christians, we believe the protective shelter of God’s care, God’s healing love is available to all people.”
[1] The two previous paragraphs are adapted from an article by Thomas L. Friedman in the NY Times, Smoking or Non-smoking? - 09/14/2001.
No comments:
Post a Comment