Thoughts on 9/11

            I heard an odd, dull thud.  Our church custodian was always making noises in some far off corner of the church building.  He’d drop a table or slam a trash can.  It was common.  Except, this thud wasn’t like any sound I had heard from him before.  It was distant and distinct. 

            I went back to the meeting I was in.  A church insurance salesman wanted to talk with me about our policy.  Our cordial conversation, after being interrupted by the distant thud, was interrupted a second time, by a phone call.  It was one of our church members, Bill B.  Bill asked, “Are you listening to the news?” 

            I now know what the thud was, the sound I heard that morning, September 11, 2001.  It was a plane slamming into the Pentagon which sits almost 4 miles east of Greenbrier Baptist Church, where I was serving as lead pastor. 

            Today is the 18^th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that changed America, my generation’s “Pearl Harbor.”  Now we have Department of Homeland Security.  The world has experienced “The War on Terror” and “The Arab Spring.”  America has elected its first black president and its first reality TV star as president.  Strongman dictators Muammar Gaddafi of Libya and Saddam Huessein of Iraq, fixtures in world politics in the ‘90’s, are both dead. 

            On September 10, 2000, the Red Sox, White Sox, and Cubs had each been almost a century without winning the World Series.  Since then Boston has won 4 and both Chicago teams have won 1.  As of September 2001, the New England Patriots had never won a Super Bowl and Tom Brady had not yet started an NFL game at quarterback.  Since then, the Patriots have won 6 Super Bowls and Brady is widely considered the greatest of all time.

            There are four people now in my life that were not a part of my life in September 2001, my wife (married in January 2003) and my 3 kids.  Some of the changes from 2001 to now are trivial.  Others are significant and enduring.  The testament to the significance of the day lies in how well we all remember it. 

            As followers of Jesus, what do we do with that memory and how do we live as his disciples in the world as it is today?  I see the world as temporary, transitory.  It’s not going to be the way we know it to be forever.  Out of love of God and neighbor, we must care for the earth and work for humanity and creation’s thriving.  Recycling, ecological consciousness, and care for the environment are Holy works that honors God.  Exploitation of nature is sin.  And yet, I understand the Bible to say that at some unknown future point, God will restore the world in spite of man’s best attempts to ruin it.  No matter how well or poorly we do in combatting global warming, God will eventually fix it.

            Thus, I grieve the ravages of pollution and man-initiated climate change.  But I don’t fear it.  Humanity’s unchecked rebellion against God is no match for God’s plans for what God has made.  I shudder at the evils man inflicts upon man; mass shootings, institutional racism, terrorism, war, disregard of the poor; it is all awful.  Yet I also absolutely believe that on the last day, when Christ returns, all will be restored and his followers will be with him.

            What does that mean for how his followers are to live now?  We are to lean-in to the Kingdom that is coming.  We care for recreation.  We actively resist global warming.  We fight racism and classism and we work to uplift the poor and vulnerable.  We invite the lonely into community and we share God’s love with all people.  We encourage people to uphold Biblical standards for interpersonal relationships and family and community life.

            As Americans, we are forever affected by the events of 9/11/01.  As followers of Jesus, our calling is the same today as it was on 9/10/01.  We are to love others and share the good news that Jesus Christ is Lord and all people who turn to him in repentance and express faith in Him will be born again as sons and daughters of God.

https://www.amazon.com/Living-These-Days-Responses-Terrorism/dp/B000CPNBF4

Book Review of Peter Bergen's 'The United States of Jihad'

I am extremely grateful for the detailed treatment Peter Bergen gives to America’s so-called ‘war on terror’ in his book ‘The United States of Jihad.’  He paints a picture of a problem that on one hand is too elusive for the massive forces of law enforcement in the United States, but on the other hand is unlikely to directly affect the daily lives of most Americans.  He points out that people are 12,000 times more likely to die in a car accident than in a terrorist attack (p. 272).  However, we don’t live in fear of driving our cars around.  We get in our cars and go without thinking about it.

The stories of the different terrorist attacks in the United States are compelling.  The deaths are tragic.  So too is the fact that it will likely happen again and the media will jump on the next event and over-cover it just it has the previous ones.  The ‘terror’ produced by these incidents is disproportionate to the damage they cause.  The tragedy is innocent people do die.  Furthermore, the families of those who become terrorists also suffer deeply.  And law enforcement suffers embarrassment.  Bergen points out of that many of the attacks were carried out by people the FBI had looked at and dismissed as unlikely to commit terrorist acts. 

My conclusion, having read Bergen’s book is that evil has always been a part of the human story and will continue to be.  In the past evil went by names like slavery, institutionalized racism, genocide, and Jim Crow.  Today, evil is named radicalization, Islamophobia, Jihad (that leads to murderous acts), and terrorism.  Of course evil has many other names today, but these are a few of the more high profile ones. This age of terror will pass.  And evil will find new names.  But evil does not win unless we let it.

Who is Like our God (Psalm 113)

Psalm 113

Psalms 113-118 were ordained by the prophets and Torah scholars to be recited as a unit on special holy days. These are ‘Hallel’ Psalms.  According to tradition, as the reader reads the Psalm, when he or she comes to a command to praise the Lord, the gathered worshipers respond “Hallelujah!”  We will read the first of these Hallel Psalms with the congregation responding “Hallelujah!  Amen!”  This will be the primary text for today’s sermon.

Leader: Praise the Lord!
Praise, O servants of the Lord;
    praise the name of the Lord.

Congregation: Hallelujah!  Amen!

² Blessed be the name of the Lord
    from this time on and forevermore.
³ From the rising of the sun to its setting
    the name of the Lord is to be praised.

Congregation: Hallelujah!  Amen!

⁴ The Lord is high above all nations,
    and his glory above the heavens.

⁵ Who is like the Lord our God,
    who is seated on high,
⁶ who looks far down
    on the heavens and the earth?

Congregation: Hallelujah!  Amen!

⁷ He raises the poor from the dust,
    and lifts the needy from the ash heap,
⁸ to make them sit with princes,
    with the princes of his people.

Congregation: Hallelujah!  Amen!

⁹ He gives the barren woman a home,
    making her the joyous mother of children.
Praise the Lord!

Congregation: Hallelujah!  Amen!

Who is Like Our God?  (Psalm 113)

Rob Tennant, HillSong Church, Chapel Hill, NC

Sunday, September 18, 2016

            Last week, we remembered the terrorist attacks of 9-11-2001, looking at them from the perspective of the prophet Jeremiah.  Jeremiah saw God through it all.  Take the emotions, the intensity, the horror of that day; take all of it and imagine it as a still photograph. 

Now, fast forward to 2016.  Maybe the still photograph is of police cars and ambulances outside an Orlando night club.  Maybe it is of Syrian refugees standing waste deep in the surf as they desperately try to get their children onto the impossibly overcrowded boat headed to Greece.  Maybe the photo is of people protesting by taking a knee during the playing of our national anthem.  Others around them glare and gesture angrily. 

            Any of these images could serve as testimony of the pain, the chaos, and the fracturing of society today, September 18^th, 2016.  When Jeremiah sees that picture, he sees something else in the background.  Whatever photo you would choose, Jeremiah looks at your photo and sees someone; God is over the entire picture.  Beyond our picture, there is God.  There is far more going than we can see.  God is in the middle of it alongside those who are angry, those who hurt, and those who suffer.  God is with them. 

            The singer in Psalm 113 asks the question.  “Who is like our God?”  If Jeremiah is right and if we see what he sees, then God is in the middle of everything that happens.  God is never absent.  God is in the thick of it in the worst of places.  God does not cause agony, despair, and madness.  God comforts and helps people who suffer because of the chaos caused by other people - those who have rejected God. 

Who is the God who stays with us no matter what we do?

Who is our God who comforts us when all has gone wrong?

Who is our God who delivers us life everlasting?  Psalm 113 is a Hallel Psalm, a Hallelujah Psalm.  This Psalm shows us this God who is like no other. 

Together, we read the Psalm and raised our own “Hallelujah’s.” God is worthy of ours praise. 

As we went through the Psalm, did you notice the connection?  “Who is like our Lord, seated on high?”  “He raises the poor from the dust; and lifts the needed from the ash heap to make them sit with princes.  … He gives the barren woman a home” and gives her joy.”  How do we get from the Lord of entire universe sitting on high to the poor who are in the dust?[i]

Independence Day was a movie with awesome visuals.  An alien race came to earth in ships that were as massive as our planets’ largest cities.  These ships hovered over New York, Tokyo, Los Angeles, London.  The most important people on the planet – presidents, generals, prime ministers scrambled to respond to the arrival of aliens.  Clearly these aliens were more advanced than us, so the most powerful among humans must be the first of us to respond to their arrival.

That’s a Hollywood movie that cashes in on our thirst for spectacular special effects and our tolerance for bad acting.  But what if God – the only God – showed up in an over-the-top visual fashion so that everyone on earth truly was shocked and awed?  If we were to meet that God, wouldn’t it be the president of the United States or the leaders of the nations on the UN Security Council at the front of the line to shake God’s hand?

Not in Psalm 113.  Unnoticed God moves past the white house, past the Pentagon, past where millionaires live.  God keeps stepping, past middle class neighborhoods, past working class communities, past farm houses, past the decent apartment complexes.  God finally stops where the poorest of people are – those barely surviving, wallowing in the dust. 

We sing Hallelujah because we think we can at least see how mighty, big, and awesome God is.  We praise God because God is so impressive.  But as Psalm 113 moves from stanza to stanza, we see the impressive God sitting down beside people who are stuck at the bottom.  Who is this God we worship?

Walter Bruggemann sees this God as he tracks the journey of the ancient Israelites from Egypt to the Promised Land.[ii]  Israel had been enslaved in brutal conditions, doing the hard labor in the construction of the pyramids in Egypt.  They baked in the desert sun and collapsed under the whip of the Egyptian taskmaster.  Then Moses, under the power of God, led the people into the Sinai wilderness.

There they were an entire nation on foot moving through wastelands.  In their thirst and hunger, they despaired.  They longed to go back to Egypt, back to slavery. At least in slavery, they were fed. 

Who is our God? 

God responded by giving manna – bread from heaven.  God poured out water from the rock.  God heard their hungry cries and broad birds to eat – quail.  They had plenty; never too much, never not enough.  They thought the Egyptians were the source of food.  If they could settle down and build cities and plant gardens and pasture herds and flocks then the land would be the source of food and stability. 

We think America’s military and our local police department and fire department and hospital  is our source of security and safety and freedom.  Our soldiers and marines and sailors and airmen, members of the coast guard, our officer and firefighters – they are all courageous, worthy our respect and our support.  The should receive our appreciation and our love.  But they are not the source that gives what we need.  That’s God.  In Israel’s history, the wilderness was where they were closest to God.  All their needs were met by God’s touch.  They lived in completel reliance upon God. 

From a human standpoint, could any situation be more desperate?  Five hundred thousand people in the desert with no food and water: we call that a humanitarian crisis.  For God, it was an answer to a question.  Who is this God we worship?  He is Provider.  Who is like our God?  No one. 

Who is our source?  Who meets our needs?  Our employer?  Our parents?  Our government? 

Do you remember the story of Hagar in Genesis 16 and Genesis 21?  Abraham was told by God he would be the father of a great nation.  But when the promise came, Abraham was a very old man, his wife Sarah was very old, past childbearing years, and they had no children.  He had no children, but God said he would be the patriarch of a great nation.  Abraham did not trust that God was his source.  He thought natural procreation and childbearing, in other words the natural biological process, was his source.  So he and Sarah came up with a plan.  Their slave, Hagar, would be the surrogate mother. 

Abraham went into Hagar and she had a son, Ishmael.  That wasn’t God’s plan.  God was not the source of that plan.  All that did was bring tension between Abraham and Sarah, Sarah and Hagar, and between Ishmael and Isaac.  Despite what Abraham thought, God is the source and when he said barren Sarah have a son, she did. When we ignore God and try to work things out with our wits and power, we interfere with the picture God is painting.  We should contribute to the flourishing of the people around us, but in concert with what God’s doing and in recognition that we need God.  Abraham and Sarah ended up sending Hagar and her child out to the wilds of the desert.  Relying on themselves, the plan backfired.

God is the source of every blessing, of fulfillment, and of every good thing.  And this God was with Hagar when she was cast out.

Abraham and Sarah’s action of rejecting her robbed her of her humanity.  Hagar, you and your child are nothing, and nothing is easily discarded.  No, God responds.  As Hagar gave in to a wilderness death – death by heatstroke, starvation, and dehydration, God declared no to the forces that would rob her of her humanity.  Psalm 113, in showing why God is worthy of our ‘Hallelujah’s,’ says that God gives the barren woman a home.

Hagar had a son, but she turned away from him, too heartbroken to watch her child die (Gen. 21:16).  Barren?  No, she wasn’t barren, but she had accepted labels affixed to her.  You are nothing.  She accepted that.  You are a lost cause.  She accepted that.  How many people in our society are so broken, they accept that all they will ever be is broken?  How many here accept labels like mediocre, failure, worthless, or stupid, or something worse?  We have asked, ‘Who is our source?’  Here is a second question.  Who shapes our lives?

God heard Ishmael’s cry and said, “Do not be afraid, Hagar.”  She is alone in the wilderness forced to watch her child die.  Do not be afraid (Gen. 21:17).  She accepted the label ‘nothing,’ but God calls her by name.  God promises her a future.  Abraham and Sarah imposed an identity on her, but now God comes and Hagar finds that the most blessed place she can be is in the desert with nothing.  It is there that God comes to her.  Who is this one we call our God?  Hagar calls Him El-Roi, the God who sees (Gen. 16:13). 

Who shapes my life?  The voices of society?  A man my age, with education, should be earning so much money by now, I am told.  Advertising tells me I should be driving a certain type of car by this stage in my life.  A friend from college makes 1000’s of dollars more than me and cannot understand why I won’t travel with him on a vacation he knows I cannot afford.  Salary; professional success; comparisons; are these the things that determine who I am?  

What if I am right where I need to be because God had called me here and in answer to God’s call, I am forced to depend on God?  We should all strive to be responsible with finances.  We should be grateful for what we have (and I try to be grateful).  I recognize how good I have it.  But what if the reason you or I have it good our accomplishments, but rather our need?  In place of deepest need and greatest weakness, we meet God.  Nothing compares to walking hand-in-hand with God?  This is true whether today is the best of the best days or the worst of the worst. 

Who shapes my life?

Who is my source?

Who is this God that we worship? 

We move from “seated on high” in Psalm 113:5-6 to “raises the poor,” “lifts the needy,” and “gives the woman a home,” in verses 7-9.  Rich, filled, and secure, we can’t see our need for God and our praise may be heartfelt, but it falls short.  We meet God when we align with the needy by seeing and acknowledging our own need.  Aligning with the poor is recognition that we are just as poot.  Unless go to the wilderness and wander with Israel, unless we see how small and dependent we are, we can’t know God. 

Who is our God – the God who is bigger than history, the God who hovers over us, the God whose shadow makes insignificant institutions of power – who is this God?  This is the God who sees, the God who is our source, and the God who shapes our lives.  No one else tells us who we are.  Only God.

As we prepare to sing, I invite you to respond to the God who is our source and who shapes our lives.  Pray in silence.  Ask God to reveal your need.  Maybe you have a good job and are financially OK.  Still, in your life as in the life of all people there is poverty.  There is deep, deep need.  It could be relational.  It could be emotional.  It could be spiritual.  Maybe for some it is material.  Ask God to show you your deepest need. 

In silence we all pray and ask God to show us our deep need for Him.  You may come and kneel at the steps as you pray.  We’ll have people at the front and back if you’d like someone to pray with you.  After a few moments, we’ll sing, but you may keep praying as long as you need to.  Don’t let the moment pass. Whether you kneel at the steps, pray in your seat, or come to pray with one of us, turn to God.  Ask God to lead you to the desert, to wander to with Israel, to sit with Hagar, to sing the Hallel Psalm with the community.  Ask God to bring to that place, because that is where you will meet God.

AMEN

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[i] Elmer Martens (1981).  God’s Design: A Focus on Old Testament Theology, Baker House Books (Grand Rapids), p.163.

[ii] Walter Brueggemann (1977).  The Land.  Fortress Press (Philadelphia), p.25, 31, 33, 34.

Jeremiah's View of 9-11

Jeremiah’s View of 9-11 (Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28)

Rob Tennant, HillSong Church, Chapel Hill, NC

Sunday, September 11, 2011

²³ I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void;
    and to the heavens, and they had no light.
²⁴ I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking,
    and all the hills moved to and fro.
²⁵ I looked, and lo, there was no one at all,
    and all the birds of the air had fled.
²⁶ 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. – Jeremiah 4:23-26

            I remember where I was when the earth became a wasteland, the heavens darkened, and the fruitful land became a desolate desert.

            I was sitting in my office at the church on South 7^th Road in Arlington, Virginia with a man who wanted to look at our church insurance policy to see if he could make us a better offer.  I did not want to spend my morning talking to an insurance salesman, but, at my time, my father sold insurance to churches and I hoped pastors would be nice to him when he came calling.  So, I listened to this man, treating him the way I hoped pastors would treat my dad.

            We heard a muffled thump.  I thought it came from somewhere in the building.  We had a crotchety old custodian.  Bob was a thick, stump of man who was grumpy all of the time, his incoherent muttering echo through the old building throughout the week.  Bob was always slamming trash cans and dropping tables. 

            Though the sound was not one I had heard Bob make before, I assumed he found a new way to clatter around.   Then the phone rang.  Now, I don’t remember who it was, but the caller asked, “Are you watching TV?  But the sound we heard was not Bob in some far reach of the church building. 

            The caller told me about the planes that hit the World Trade Center in New York.  The insurance salesmen left, and I went upstairs to afterschool learning center that met on the second floor of our building.  The only there was the director. He and I turned on the TV and stared in horror.  The sound I heard, came from 2.5 miles to the east of us, the Pentagon.  I heard the plane hit.  I just didn’t know what I was hearing.

            After an hour of watching the news coverage, I was in a fog and I couldn’t shake it. I had to do something.  There was nothing to do.  I walked to the home of a friend a couple of blocks from our church.  He let me borrow his bike and I just pedaled around Arlington.  I didn’t really know where I was going.  I was just riding to keep some part of my body moving, doing something.  I didn’t know what else to do. I pedaled and prayed.

            If you are old enough to remember 9-11-2001, you, like me, probably remember in detail what you were doing when you heard of the terrorist attacks.  The Biblical prophet Jeremiah, who lived in the 6^th century BC, spoke on September 11, 2001.  “My anguish, my anguish!  I writhe in pain!  Oh, the walls of my heart!  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” (Jer. 4:19-20a). 

            We, you and I, belong to Jesus.  We are His possession.  He determine our outlook.  Do we mean it when we claim to be Biblical Christians?  I believe we do.  With the Bible is our authority, we consider history from God’s point of view.  If our allegiance is exclusively to the Kingdom of God through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, then when we remember the terrible events of 9-11 and this age of terror that has followed, we do not consider it all from the viewpoint of citizens of the U.S.A. 

We see the drama of history of our nation and of all nations, and we prayerfully look at it from God’s point of view because we are God’s.  The entire earth, all nations, the United State government, our cherished history – it all belongs to God. 

In 2^nd Corinthians 5:16, the Apostle Paul describes our new perspective:

¹⁶ From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view;^[a] even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view,^[b]we know him no longer in that way. ¹⁷ So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!

Everything old has passed away.  This includes every government system in the world.  The eternal Kingdom of God will not be anything like the United States.  What we see now will all pass away when the world is made new, joined with Heaven made new, and we reside in the Holy City as sons and daughters of God.  Passionate patriotism is at odds with passionate discipleship because following Jesus demands exclusive loyalty, and the way of Jesus leads to eternal life.  Passionate patriotism demands reverence for country above all other things including faith in Christ.  The two things cannot go together. 

It doesn’t mean we hate our country.  I think Christians live for the good of the country.  In a few weeks, I will make that case that disciples of Jesus are the best citizens.  I won’t make that case today.  Today is about looking at history as God sees it.   In Christ, our destiny is assured.  We are bound for an eternity of abundant life.  As we live into that eternity, we are witnesses to the world as it is; dying in decay of sin, bound for destruction.

For that reason, as Christians in America, remembering the horrors 9-11 and trying to testify to the salvation we have in Jesus on September 11, 2016, we take our seat beside Jeremiah.  Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann points out the first thing we, which is a picture that is complicated.[i] 

Jeremiah hears the Lord say, “The whole land shall be a desolation” (4:27).  “The earth shall mourn, and the heavens above grow black” (v.28).  But wait, Jeremiah was talking about the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 586 BC, not the destructions of the Twin Towers in September of 2001.  Of course that’s true.  Jeremiah could not see that there would be airplanes or a United States of America or skyscrapers.  He saw much more than that.

Jeremiah was endowed by the Spirit of God, enabled to see clearly things no one else saw.  He saw the hand of God in the events of history.  No, God did not work the Babylonian tyrant Nedbuchadrezzar as if he were a puppet on strings.  Nebuchadrezzar conquered Judah and destroyed Solomon’s temple because he was a murderous megalomaniac who wanted Babylon to be a feared world power.  His sins are all his own.  Neither did God guides the steps of Mohammed Atta and the other 9-11 highjackers.  They are responsible for their own hostility in taking over planes, crashing them into buildings, killing 1000’s, and setting off wars that have now lingered on for 15 years.  God did not perpetuate evil in 586 BC or in 2001 AD.  But Jeremiah saw God over the entire picture, around the entire scene, and all-powerful throughout the drama.

Think of it this way.  God allowed what happened to happen and allowed it to happen when it did.  Nebuchadrezzer’s Babylon defeated a Judah that had become corrupt, soaked in greed, and a Judah that had relegated God to a corner society’s consciousness as opposed to being at the center of national life.  Life in Judah was to revolve around the worship of God, but when the nation finally fell to Babylon in 586, they had been moving away from God for generations. 

The American pledge of allegiance claims we are “One nation under God,” but our constitution stipulates against favor for any one religion.  Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, Voodoo – all are supposedly equal in America.  Our national religions is actually wealth.  The chief currency of our system is power: social power, financial power, or military power.   The highjackers attacked the temples where we worship: the World Trade Center and the military center, which we call the Pentagon.

We want to shout, “We’re not like them!  We’re not like the terrorists.”  I agree.  America is not the same as Al Qaeda or ISIS. But from Jeremiah sits, I don’t know if we are any better.  In America, absolute unyielding faith in Christ is fine just as just as any other faith is just fine.  Our system tempts and even coerces all Americans to pay homage to our worship of money and to submit to our love of power.

From where we are, we followers of Jesus, along with Jeremiah, have to listen and hear when God declares “A hot wind comes from out of the bare heights in the desert toward my poor people, not to winnow or cleanse – a wind too strong for that.  Now I speak judgment against them” (4:11-12).  With judgment nations and individuals who worship money and power instead of the one true God will suffer. 

But, the picture is complicated.  Jerusalem fell, the temple burns, but that’s not all there is.  In the middle of telling us he sees complete destruction that God has allowed and is tied to sinful systems, Jeremiah also hears this.  “The whole land shall be a desolation; yet I shall not make a whole end” (4:27).  What does that mean – not a whole end?  If God’s leaving the door open just a crack and if we look through that crack maybe we, sinful as we are, can see hope?  Bruggemann thinks so.  He holds Jeremiah 31 up as an antithesis of chapter 4.

There the Lord says if the heavens above can measured then I will reject Israel.  The heavens can’t be measured.  God will never reject Israel.  Two hundred years before Jeremiah, the Lord of the universe, cried His divine heart over the northern kingdom.  A prophet like Jeremiah who can see and hear things the rest of us can’t, Hosea, heard God plaintively cry, “How can I give you up, Ephraim?”  God was angry and sorry all once.  “How can I hand you over, O Israel?” 

As Jesus rides into Jerusalem, zealous disciples wave palm branches and sing Hosannas, but his tears fall as he says, “Oh Jerusalem, if you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. ⁴³ Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. ⁴⁴ They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God” Luke 19:41-44. 

He died on the cross on behalf of those who did not recognize the visitation.  He died on the cross on behalf of the evil Nebuchadrezzar and on behalf of the corrupt temple leaders in Jerusalem.  His love is everywhere – for the killer and the victim.  He died for Mohammed Atta and the other terrorists.  He was crucified for the billionaires in the corner offices who made their fortune in corrupt business practices and lost their lives when plane smashed into the buildings.  Jesus died on the cross for the sins of nations and for the people who died on 9-11 and for the sins of the suvivors.  He died for my sins and yours.

The picture of God Jeremiah paints for us as he looks at 9-11 is complicated.  When we see God from Jeremiah’s point view, we immediately realize there is more than we can see, more than we can take in.  But, one image stands out.  God is not angry – not in the sense that 9-11 is God’s punishment.  God did not knock any buildings down.  Whether it is September 10^th, 11^th, or 12^th, God is angry at our collective sin, our near universal disregard of Him.  But in America on 9-11, God is full of sorrow. 

We have grieved that day and that is the right thing to do.  God is a God of life.  When thousands die and evil shouts triumphantly, grief is a right reaction.  God joins us in our grief.  God offers us a shoulder to cry on.  God comforts in a way that only God can; in a way that transforms everything.   

Today’s evil, terror, and horror is an extension of what happened on 9-11.  Terrorism is not the only narrative of 2016, but it is one of the most powerful and awful pictures of the present.  The Syrian war that’s created a refugee crisis as bad any history has seen; Afganistan, Pakistan, and Iraq more bogged down in war and chaos now than 15 years ago; Al Qaeda and ISIS; mass shootings across the United States; sitting with Jeremiah, we that it is bad

He also sees something else, something behind it, something over it, something beyond it.  Jeremiah sees the face God – the God we know in the risen Lord Jesus.  However bad it becomes cannot overcome the life and the hope we have in Christ.  God is with us.  That’s the end – the final promise of Jeremiah.  Believing through the cross and the resurrection, we know that our against-all-odd insistence that God is with us and God is good means we are a voice of hope for today, and in the end, His Kingdom will reign supreme.  We are sure of this.  No matter how bad the world gets, Jesus Christ is Lord and his kingdom will reign. 

AMEN

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[i] Brueggemann, Walter (2006).  Like Fire in the Bones, Fortress Press (Minneapolis), p.44-45.