Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

All Sermons are © Copyrighted and may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the express permission of the author.

Jeremiah is beside himself with grief. He is convinced that the story of God's people has reached its last chapter and will soon end. One hundred and fifty years before Jeremiah, you remember, the Northern Kingdom (called "Israel") had been annihilated by Assyria. Now the Southern Kingdom, "Judah," was about to suffer the same fate at the hands of Babylon. And that was all there was. So, for good reason, it would seem, Jeremiah thought he was living in the last days of the Hebrew people: all that holy history (memories of which they had so carefully preserved in scripture) would be forgotten. There would be no one interested in hearing the old stories of Abraham, and Isaac and Jacob, no little children to be told of Moses in the bulrushes, or crossing the Red Sea, or bringing down the Ten Commandments. The powerful words of the prophets and the beautiful words of the poets would all be lost. Jerusalem, the Jew's splendid capital, would become a derelict. In the countryside, the people would look toward Jerusalem and ask, "Is the Lord not in Zion? Is her King not in her?"

The disaster was all the more bitter for Jeremiah because he believed his people had brought it upon themselves. Chronically disloyal to the covenant their ancestors had established with God, the Jews had taken to worshipping images and idols , and (having lost track of the true God, and therefore having no stars to guide them) they were thinking wrong-headedly and living disastrously. Jeremiah said they were ashamed and didn't know how to blush. And there are consequences for living like that. It doesn't mean that God is vengeful. Just the opposite, he is miserable about his people's sin. In fact, God's anguish seems to equal Jeremiah's. In Jeremiah's writings, we often cannot tell whether it is Jeremiah who is speaking or God: "My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick Hark, the cry of my poor people from far and wide….For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt…." Is that God or the prophet speaking? Doesn't matter. God's word is God's word. God's sorrow is God's sorrow. After the tragedies of September 11, church signs everywhere displayed messages of support and patriotism. A minister colleague of mine said she saw the best one. Early on the morning after the attacks, she drove by a sign which said, simply: "Jesus wept." He cried over Jerusalem, and I'm sure he cried, and cries over New York City.

It is hard to see any good, or to find any hope in a tragedy like the one we have experienced. I certainly do not agree with Jerry Falwell that the terrorist attacks were God's judgement on America, God's punishment for our evil ways. Too simple-minded, too disgustingly self-righteous, and (even if you believe it) horribly ill-timed and inappropriate. But, on the other hand, let us not too quickly dismiss the connection between sin and human disaster. Such an event would not have occurred in Eden. Such things are not part of the way God planned the world to be. Something has happened to make such events not only possible but likely. And that something is sin. It is important to say that, because one of the true hopes in any tragedy is that we might learn from it. But we never learn anything if we insist that we are perfect. It is in facing our weaknesses and our faults that we first begin to grow. The old fashioned word for that is "repentance." Which is always our starting point, the front porch of our faith.

I think I am already seeing some good arising out of those ashes. Am I imagining it, or are people being more polite, nicer to each other? Am I imagining it, or are the different political parties, and different races, and different interest groups working together? Am I imagining it, or have the spin-masters disappeared and truth gained the higher ground? Did I hear right that the Association of Trial Lawyers of America is urging its members to hold off in filing lawsuits arising out of the attacks? That's a "repentance" if there ever was one!

I am seeing people who, in most remarkable ways, as the result of this tragedy, are reexamining their lives. Who are striving, with new resolve, to get their priorities right. A woman reporter, on the radio this week, told of interviewing a young boy whose father had been killed aboard the American Airlines plane that went down in Pennsylvania. His father was a retired policeman who, in retirement, had trained to become a flight attendant. The boy was in his late teens. He told the reporter that he knew his father was on board that flight for a reason: so that, as the hijacking unfolded, he could bring hope to the other passengers. What a wonderful thing to say about anybody! But the most moving part of the story was what the woman reporter said of herself. "I didn't sleep at all that night," she said, "and I've had trouble sleeping ever since the interview. "I keep lying awake wondering what my children would imagine about me, and say about me, had I been aboard that flight. Would they picture me panicking, screaming, afraid? Or would they imagine me (because of the example of courage and calmness that I had set for them in life) - would they imagine me, in a terrible moment, remaining calm, and encouraging and helping others? And I knew that the true answer to that question was the wrong answer." People are reexamining their lives in remarkable ways. That is how we grow in tragedy.

Nothing is ever completely hopeless. No sadness is forever. Frederick Douglas, was preaching to a packed church just before the American Civil War. As he ruminated about our country's situation, his words got darker and darker. He said the white man would never give up his slaves. He said the black man would never be given his rights. His dismal preaching went on for a little while, and then Sojourner Smith, who was in the congregation, stood up and said, "Frederick, Frederick! Is there no God?" As long as there is God there is hope. We are only truly without hope when we are without God.

Jeremiah was brokenhearted - we can understand that -- but he was wrong to be hopeless. He asked, in his despair, if there were no balm in Gilled, no physician there to close the wound, and he implied that there were not. He said he wished he had a spring of water in his head, because he didn't have tears enough to convey his terrible sorrow. But, in fact, the Babylonian conquest, while it was a terrible disaster, was hardly the end. God's people would be dragged off in exile, to be sure, but some would return, and rebuild the Temple, and carry on the traditions of their fathers. And, finally, God would fulfill the old promise he had made to Abraham (that Abraham's descendants would be many, and would be a blessing to all the world). God fulfilled that promise by sending Jesus, the Christ. And through the church of Jesus all the traditions and wisdom of Israel would become a blessing to peoples everywhere. The situation was bad, but it wasn't hopeless.

A hockey game halted in Philadelphia because the fans insisted on hearing the President's speech. Can you imagine that? The Star Spangled Banner sung before a baseball game in Shea Stadium, players and fans with tears streaming down their faces, and when the anthem was over the two teams embracing each other and the fans cheering madly for what seemed like an hour. And then onto the field a group of policeman and firemen march as the bagpipes play, "Amazing Grace." And more cheering and more tears. Can you imagine that? Or, on the Dave Letterman show, Dan Rather breaking up as he recites the words, "Thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears." Or that large crowd of people which has materialized every day for the last twelve days, at the entrance to the cordoned-off disaster site, cheering every fireman and policeman and rescue worker as they enter and leave that terrible place. Can you imagine that? Or New York's fanciest and most expensive restaurants with signs in their windows saying, "FREE DINNER FOR RESCUE WORKERS, FIVE TO EIGHT P.M. Can you imagine that?

In these past few days, I have seen America as I had always hoped she would be, and (frankly) had given up hope. In recent days we have displayed "the better angels of our nature." And even if it doesn't last, I have seen it. It is there. We are, indeed, one people. We are "a city set on a hill," a beacon of freedom for all the world. I have understood, again, what Lincoln meant when he called America, "the last, best hope of man." And, for that reason, I come away from this tragedy not hopeless but full of hope. After the darkness, dawn. After the storm, a rainbow. After the grave, resurrection and new life.