Sermon:
September 16, 2001
All Services

Scripture:
Isaiah 55
Romans 8:18-25, 31-38

Seeking to impress upon his audience the dangers of life in the city, the professor said: "Why, did you know that a pedestrian is hit by a car every 20 minutes in New York City?" To which one of his listeners responded: "Gee, he must get awfully tired of that."

Last Tuesday morning we learned that there are more dangers associated with life in the "Big Apple" than simply crossing the street. And today, six days into the worst national ordeal that many of us can remember (having missed both the Depression and Pearl Harbor), there are reports that some are already growing tired of it. My favorite college president, seeking to heal his campus even as he attempts to hold it together (classes, no classes….games, no games…. parties, no parties) writes:

As the days wear on, our strength wanes. Each of us processes a crisis in different ways. Most, if not all, of us are exhausted, confused and very sad. More than ever, we need to be sensitive to the tenderness we all feel.

My friend is looking at his campus and sensing that the weary are becoming edgy, given that the young, who are often the most passionate, will never be mistaken for the most patient. And today, more than yesterday….and certainly more than Tuesday….we need to encourage the marriage of passion and patience….not only in the young, but in us all.

Mitch Albom writes: "We’ve got to get back to normal." George Cantor counters: "If by ‘normal’ you mean the way we were, it will never happen." Which of them is right? They both are. A return to routine will help us. But no routine will erase the fact that life has changed….and with it, we ourselves. Having survived a catastrophic personal tragedy, I can tell you that "normal" will never exist again, except as a town in Illinois. But I can also tell you that while you can never go back, you can go through.

Tuesday night, at a hastily-called service that many of you described as the most moving you ever attended, I suggested that while this was an incredibly big story, we needed to set it in the context of an even bigger story….a biblical story….a story intimately acquainted with death, destruction, deportation and desolation….but also with deliverance. I am talking about a story that says no wilderness is too barren, no valley too godforsaken, no Babylon too pagan, but that God can get you home from there. And while you are waiting for deliverance, God can meet you there, set your table there, feed you supper there and give you succor and sustenance there. That’s what our story says.

If you have stood in Jerusalem as many times as I have, you know it isn’t always possible to say to first-time tourists that they’re walking the very ground where Jesus walked. That’s because nineteen feet of rubble….compacted and built-over rubble….sits between their feet and the original footfalls of Jesus. Which comes as a byproduct of the number of times Jerusalem has been knocked down and rebuilt since Jesus last stepped there. This is our history….if not as Americans, certainly as Judeo-Christians. And which is why hope is always born of a long view….looking back as well as forward.

Hope is born of a view that says evil is very much a part of things, but not in control of things. One hymn writer, Maltbie Babcock, put it this way:

This is my Father’s world.
O let me ne’er forget
that though the wrong seems oft so strong,
God is the ruler yet.

But Babcock’s words are a mere echo of an earlier hymn writer, Martin Luther, who wrote:

And though this world with devils filled
Should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear for God hath willed
His truth to triumph through us.

And without making reference to deity, my favorite local columnist, Susan Ager, hinted at the same thing on Thursday when she wrote:

I tell myself that evil is noisy, but small,
While good is quiet, but huge.

But sometimes "noisy" carries the day and "small" can be disproportionately deadly. So much has been written about the uniqueness of this enemy….how he is hard to name….harder still to find….and how he may hold his mission sacred, but not his life (or ours, either, although one expects that from one’s enemy).

"He," of course, is "they." But how many, we do not know. Or from where, we do not know. All we know is that in the words of baseball’s Todd Jones (last year’s "Fireman of the Year" who, this year, got banished to Minnesota because he couldn’t put them out anymore….fires, I mean):

They just walked into our country, blew up our living room, and we all saw it happen on live TV. Now they’re back wherever they’re at, laughing. It’s pretty tough to take as an American.

Todd’s right, of course (about it being tough to take, I mean). One of life’s most devastating lessons is that some days the bad guys win. Why? Because "the wrong is strong" and devils do fill the earth.

But do not discount the good, which really is "quiet, but huge." It was Alexis DeToqueville who first noted that "America is great because Americans are good." Which may not be true of all Americans, all of the time. But which would appear to be true of many Americans, much of the time. How heartwarming has been the demonstration of his point in this, our time of crisis. A helping hand here. A buck or two there. A pint of blood someplace else. Talk about something piling up. Long after the mound of rubble is gone, we will be left with a veritable mountain of good deeds and caring words. While on the retaliatory level, we want our government to think first and act second, on the benevolent level we have watched our citizens act first and think second. More often than not, our first instinct has been a sacrificial instinct….our initial intuition, a courageous and caring intuition. You have no idea how much applause I give to that and how much hope I take from that.

Unlike a ton of little kids, I can’t remember ever wanting to be a fireman. But in spite of my never having wanted to join them, I can’t tell you how impressed I have been by them. On Friday, I took 50 women on a tour of historic Detroit churches. In fact, we observed the noontime hour in prayer at historic St. John’s Episcopal Church (hard by the ballpark), complete with liturgy from the 1928 Prayer Book and real wine in the communion cup. Had we not been there, the priest would have been preaching to fewer than 25.

But St. John’s, Detroit was not the first stop. St. Florian’s, Hamtramck was. Which is a beautiful Polish church, right out of Europe. There, among other things, we learned who St. Florian was. Florian was a Roman soldier who was credited for miraculously saving the Polish city of Krakow from a disastrous fire in 744. Whenever Florian is depicted (in statuary or painting), there is always a bucket of water in his hand. To Roman Catholics, Florian is the patron saint of firefighters. Peering over the balcony of heaven, I know he must be terribly sad. But I trust he is also terribly proud.

Yes, in the last few days goodness has broken its silence and spoken (yea, screamed) with eloquence. And to think that some of us doubted it was there.

But goodness is more than a collective summation of some temporarily-heroic human achievements. Goodness, at its core, has something to do with a God who is good….a God who wills the good….and a God who will not let the good (in the long run) be trumped or trampled. At noon on Friday, George Bush said: "This world that God created is of moral design. Grief, tragedy and hatred are only for a time." Which is not only brilliant and buoyant, but biblical. "Be not deceived," says scripture, "God is not mocked." Or, in this beautiful passage from the Prophet Isaiah:

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven
And do not return until they have watered the earth….
So shall my Word be (that goes out from my mouth).
It shall not return to me empty,
But shall accomplish that which I purpose.
And succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

The title for this sermon ("I Believe in the Final Triumph of Righteousness") is drawn from the credal conviction of the church and is, without apology, shot through with victory language. That which God sets out to do, God will accomplish.

The problem with that promise consists in the fact that some people grab and twist it into something that I (as a Christian) find unrecognizable and more than mildly offensive. I am talking about the people who believe the Kingdom of God will never be visible or experienceable in this life, but will only come after a scenario of climactic battles….battles in which evil’s butt is kicked, evil’s legions are burned in lakes of fire….and history is finished (not "finished" in the sense of "fulfilled," but "finished" in the sense of "crushed" and "kaboshed").

Earlier this week, a Troy-based preacher who has, by my recollection, been televising his predictions of an impending Apocalypse for over 30 years, said he predicted an imminent terrorist attack in a show taped three days prior to Tuesday. This was followed by a written statement which reads, in part: "I have been warning the nation and the world for the past two years that terrorists would soon strike America as a sign that Jesus will soon return to the earth and establish his Kingdom."

He said that while he was saddened by the loss of so many lives, he looked forward to the thousand year respite promised in the Book of Revelation….the respite that would precede one final outbreak of evil, one final battle of eternal significance, and one final vilification of the bad and vindication of the good.

This is neither the time nor the place for me to explore what I think the Book of Revelation is and what I think it isn’t. I’ve done that before. I’ll probably do it again. But if you have been listening in at this outpost with any degree of regularity over these last nine years, you know I do not believe that our friend in Troy has read the times correctly, read the Bible correctly, or read the nature of God correctly.

What happened Tuesday is tragic, painful and (yes, I’m quite comfortable in using the word) "evil." But one thing it is not. It is not to be understood….and certainly not to be welcomed….as the first stage in some Armageddon-like strategy, wherein God has now set the final clock ticking, moving us from what the church calls "ordinary time," to what the Apocalypticists call "end time." Whatever else Tuesday may have been, it was neither "doomsday" nor its precursor. And on that I will stake both my scholarship and my reputation as a preacher.

Righteousness can and will triumph in time….over the course of time. I do not know how that will happen. Neither do I know when that will happen. I suspect that the coming of its victory will outlast me. But as with the prophet and the psalmist before me, I am here to tell you I have seen it, smelled it, even tasted it from time to time….enough to know that it is still worth waiting and working for.

I have walked where Jesus walked, albeit nineteen feet over the rubble in Jerusalem. Which is not to say there will not be more….rubble, that is. But the lovely feet of those who carry the message of peace shall not stumble. Neither shall their voice be stilled in all the land.

But now, as we close, it’s big-picture time. Dare to dream with me. Paul says that the whole creation has been groaning toward fulfillment like a woman in labor. But make no mistake about it, Paul believes that there will be a birth (yea, a collective birth)….whole creation….whole cosmos….whole earth….whole world….whole shooting match….whole nine yards…. anybody….everybody. Which, I would submit, will be God’s ultimate act of deliverance.

To which Isaiah says: "You shall call nations that you did not know. And nations that do not know you shall run to you, because of the Lord your God." And isn’t it interesting that in our hour of great travail, people who have not always liked us, now seem to be turning to us. There are Brits singing the Star Spangled Banner at Buckingham, Czech Methodists e-mailing me daily, along with Arab leaders who are beginning to say: "We’ll listen. We’ll cooperate. We’ll look at the bigger picture." Can we sustain this? I ask you: "How many bridges do you think we can build over these rivers of tears?"

I know that the world divides and redivides itself over issues of "us versus them." But, for the Christian, the vision is never complete unless it includes a seamless vision….not of us versus them, but of all of us in Him.

Does history tell me that human beings can do that?

No.

Does hard-headed realism tell me that human beings can do that?

No.

Do I believe that God….in time….over time….through you and through me….can do that?

I shudder to go on living if the answer to that question be anything other than "Yes."

I wake up every morning, saying with the psalmist: "I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." And I am here to tell you, I am seldom disappointed.

Note: Susan Ager, Mitch Albom and George Cantor are all columnists who write for Detroit newspapers. Todd Jones was once a relief pitcher for the Detroit Tigers who now toils for the Minnesota Twins. President Bush’s statement about America as a moral nation was part of his address to the nation from Washington National Cathedral. The anecdote about being hit by a car in New York City was supplied by Thomas Sowell. The beloved college president is Peter Mitchell of Albion College. I will not name the Troy-based preacher, given that the times will not be well served by the creation of any more enemies.