Sermon:
September 30, 2001
Morning Services 

Scripture:
Genesis 18:20-33

As I was passing through the Victoria airport security checkpoint this week, my carry-on briefcase failed to pass the x-ray scanner, and it was set aside for inspection. Lo and behold, the offending item was a crucifix that my grandmother had given me. A sharp instrument, indeed! At first, my reaction was amusement as the guard pulled the offending item from my case. Then I realized it was a grace moment. The cross was not so much an offense to security but rather a defense against insecurity. "In the cross of Christ I glory," as the hymn proclaims. This was a graceful wedge into my being this past week.

Somehow I think the events of September 11 are now beginning to catch up with us, even as we restart our lives. First the images of the dust and ashes at the World Trade Center, which for my son Andrew has become a pilgrimage site as he returns to work four blocks away. By day in the mist of rubble and dust, and at night in the harsh glare of the klieg lights, he stands in awe of the event. Several times he has just stood there in silence. He can’t pass the firehouse near his home in Brooklyn without a tear welling up, knowing that three firemen were lost. Ground Zero has become a place of endings and beginnings for Andrew, for me, for us as a nation. I imagine my son’s face and body covered in dust and toxic particles crying out to the Lord, like Abraham in today’s passage, who proclaims: "I am but dust and ashes." I suspect many of us wanted to take it upon ourselves to speak to the Lord that day. The fact that our sanctuary was full testified to that desire.

Not so long ago, I realized that beginnings and endings mark so much of the story of the people of God. As one door closes, another opens. Just when we think Good Friday is all there is, three days later we are treated to the Resurrection. Such is the rhythm of life. I suspect we all feel somewhat in a Holy Saturday situation reflecting on the events of Good Friday/Tuesday, September 11, wondering if that is all there is. There is an eerie silence in our psyche. All kinds of emotions swirl inside us. We are at one of those junctures. Is this a time of beginnings or endings, we ask? These are the times when the mysteries of life become more evident, more unexplainable, more urgent; a time when the toughest theological questions are asked.

Turning to the Book of Genesis with its many stories of new beginnings out of old endings, I was intrigued by the story of Abraham confronting God in today’s lesson. In verses I didn’t read today (Gen. 19:27-28), we are told that "Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord; and he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the plain and saw the smoke of the land going up like the smoke of a furnace." I suspect many of us felt like Abraham as we watched through our televisions (or in Andrew’s case, in person). What were we thinking? For many of us, the three Rs no longer meant reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmatic, but revenge, retaliation and retribution.

The story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah reflects a theology of retribution, common to ancient middle-eastern wisdom of the time, rather than a literal prescription for today’s readers. With that in mind, I was jarred by an article this week in the Christian Science Monitor entitled "Why Do They Hate Us?" The article had this startling declaration: "In the US, military planners are deciding how to exact retribution. To many people in the Middle East and beyond, the carnage of September 11 was retribution for the United States’ foreign policy and alleged injustices in the region." Whatever the merit of that statement, we are nonetheless faced once again with the issue of balancing justice and righteousness with a natural desire for revenge, retribution and retaliation.

The three verses which precede today’s reading (Gen. 18:17-19) make a remarkable statement: "I have chosen him, that he may charge his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing justice and righteousness, so that the Lord may bring about for Abraham what he has promised him." Then, in the very next breath, we learn that Abraham takes this responsibility seriously and remarkably challenges God with the question of whether it is ever worth destroying the innocent to punish the guilty. This graceful wedge of Abraham’s is asserted as a criticism of the standard quid pro quo mode of retribution. Abraham is later vindicated by the prophet Hosea who, in commenting on the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, says about God in Hosea 11:9 and 11: " I will not execute my fierce anger, I will not again destroy….. I will not come in wrath."

A word of caution is perhaps advised at this point. It is important to see the Bible as a whole. It shows a progression of theological development from the earliest stories of Genesis through the prophets to the New Testament of Jesus Christ. Biblical theological development is not static but dynamic. Scripture is always growing and pointing towards its theological, moral and ethical fulfillment in the person of Jesus Christ, who fulfills all the law and the prophets.

The scriptures are always full of surprises; the last word is never death and destruction. Abraham’s astonishing dialogue with God offers new possibilities against the traditional wisdom of retribution. Noted Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggeman, in his commentary on the book of Genesis (for which I am indebted for much of the theological content of this sermon) believes that the passage I read to you today was written as a response to the events at Sodom and Gomorrah.

Abraham raises a hard theological issue that cannot be silenced by the simplicity of the retribution tale in Genesis 19. Listen to Abraham as he stands near, up close and personal: "Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?" Then he goes on to push God until the principle is established. Abraham seems to be putting God on the defensive: "Shall not the judge of the earth do what is just?" WOW! Tough stuff. Go for it, Father Abraham!! By Abraham’s willingness to take on God, he becomes the bearer of a new radical theological possibility that is taken even further by Jesus of Nazareth who invites us to turn the other cheek and pray for our enemies and, heaven forbid, even love them. As we discuss how we are to respond to the September 11 events, Abraham offers us a caution when I suspect that retribution theology feels like a more natural, if not a more comfortable, response.

Are we to be consigned to the brimstone that follows failed and faithless human action or the justice and peace promised in Jesus Christ? I am reminded of a form of schoolyard justice which says if someone steals or cheats or whatever the transgression, the whole class is punished on the premise that the innocent will flush out the guilty. My own experience was that this technique seldom worked, as the innocent ended up being punished along with the guilty. Sound familiar?

Abraham becomes the bearer of a new theological possibility. God is pressed by Abraham to consider an alternative. Whereas the text states that Abraham stood before the Lord, some ancient manuscripts state that Yahweh stands before Abraham, a truly remarkable role reversal. If that is the case, Abraham becomes God’s theological conscience, taking his charge seriously. How dare he! Oh please, Father Abraham, don’t go there.

Another grace note this week entered my consciousness when I participated in a Roman Catholic funeral mass for my late Aunt Florence. Father Ho, the priest at St. Patrick’s in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, shared with my brother and me his story of how, as a Vietnamese priest trained in a French Seminary in Vietnam, the communists persecuted him for his faith after the fall of Saigon. His vocation and his country had seemingly been turned to rubble and ashes by war. He told us how he escaped on foot through the jungles of Cambodia to a refugee camp on the Thai border. From there, without family, he made his way to Canada, having to learn English along the way. He said he was living out the images in the movie The Killing Fields. What an apt image for the September 11 event. The killing fields are now in lower Manhattan and on the Potomac River in Washington D.C. Yet, here was Fr. Ho, living testimony to courage for his faith, whose cross of faith enabled him to endure a tragic ending to his homeland and life as he knew it, to experience new beginnings in a new land. His was indeed a journey from Good Friday to Easter.

The central question of this passage is: "Will the innocent be destroyed along with the guilty?" "Shall not the judge of the earth do justice?" (Gen. 18:25) Here Abraham says, "Far be it from you," which is, in fact, a cry of: "How could you!" What is at issue in this dialogue is an understanding of the balance between justice and righteousness.

It is the good news of this passage, which presages the good news of Jesus Christ, that in spite of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, God does remember Abraham and saves Lot. One is enough to save. The text ends in Genesis 19:27-28 when Abraham goes to experience the utter quiet after the devastation. All life has been silenced. It is a dramatic scene made more dramatic by the events of September 11. There is only death and hopelessness, or so it seems. The story urges that we must see it ourselves and then challenges us to say: "Never again." There we stand with Andrew before the rubble and wreckage of the World Trade Center asking: "Where is God in all this?" There, too, we stand with Fr. Ho before the rubble and dust of his homeland. As we reflect on September 11, we ask what kind of a world do we want? Are we heirs of Abraham pressing for righteousness and justice? Remembering once again God’s instruction to Abraham: "I have chosen him (us), that he may charge his children and his household after him to keep the way of Lord by doing justice and righteousness." What kind of people of God are we to be? Abraham offers us a legacy and a choice. Are we to follow the traditional three Rs of revenge, retaliation and retribution, or will we heed Abraham’s challenge for the three Rs of righteousness, redemption and reconciliation? Oh please, Father Abraham, how could you!