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The Rev. Richard Floyd Ridgefield-Crystal Lake Presbyterian Church September 4, 2005 Ordinary 23 (A) (Hurricane Katrina aftermath) Matthew 18:15-20 This is not the sermon I intended to preach today. I was going to talk about how important community is, how Jesus calls us to stick it out with each other even when we sometimes hurt each other. That’s a good message; maybe that’s part of what we need to hear today. But the devastating aftermath of hurricane Katrina has haunted me all week, as I’m sure it’s haunted you. On Sunday everyone braced for the worst. On Monday everyone breathed a sigh of relief as it looked like the worst hadn’t happened. But by Tuesday it was becoming terribly clear that parts of Louisiana and Mississippi were devastated. And as the week went on, with each passing day, it just got worse. Whole cities in ruin—New Orleans, Biloxi, Gulfport. Thousands of people presumed dead. Hundreds of thousands of people homeless. People trapped with no food and no water and no help and no hope. It’s been a heartbreaking week, even from a thousand miles away. We can’t even begin to imagine what it’s like on the ground there. So maybe it’s best for us to be silent. But we can’t do that, because there are others who are more than happy to tell us why this happened and what it was all about, and we can’t let them go unchallenged. Some Muslim extremists have celebrated the disaster as evidence that Mother Nature is on their side. Some advocates for Israel have suggested the hurricane was God’s punishment for pushing Israel to withdraw from Gaza. Not to be outdone, some Christian radicals are claiming this was God’s judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah. A pastor from a suburban church in New Orleans celebrated that the city was now free from the sins of abortion and homosexuality and witchcraft. He said: “God simply, I believe, in His mercy purged all of that stuff out of there.” New Orleans was Sin City, so God finally got fed up and sent a hurricane to wash it clean. I’d like to believe God is fed up. Only I’d like to believe God is fed up with hateful people claiming to speak for God, using God to push their own selfish and sadistic agendas. I’m going to risk saying a few words about where I see God in all of this. Some of you aren’t going to agree with what I’m about to say, and that’s okay. No one said we had to agree all the time. Finding God in this disaster is not easy. It can’t be reduced to a “sound bite” or a pious bumper sticker. All we can do is be honest about what we see and what we believe. I think everyone who thinks God caused this hurricane is wrong. I don’t think God’s in the hurricane business. I don’t think God causes them; I don’t think God directs them; and I don’t think God stops them. Hurricanes happen because low pressure areas form over warm waters, not because God decides it’s time to unleash some destruction. The state of Texas agreed to take in tens of thousands of refugees from Louisiana. Rick Perry, the Texas governor, said they had to do it because, “but for the grace of God, that could have been us.” I honor his decision to welcome refugees, but I disagree with his theology. Texas wasn’t spared because of God’s grace, and Louisiana wasn’t hit because of God’s wrath. I don’t believe God works that way. In December of 1982, the 21-year-old son of William Sloane Coffin, then the pastor at Riverside Church in New York City, drove off a bridge into Boston harbor and drowned. Trying to comfort Coffin, a woman said to him, “I just don’t understand God’s will.” Angry, Coffin shouted back at her: “I’ll say you don’t understand God’s will, lady. Do you think it was God’s will that Alex never fixed that lousy windshield wiper, that Alex was probably driving too fast in such a storm, that Alex had probably had too much to drink? Do you think it’s God’s will there are no street lights along that stretch of road, no guard rails separating the road and Boston harbor?” Coffin later wrote: “For some reason I can’t get it through people’s heads that God doesn’t run around the world pulling triggers, clenching knives, turning steering wheels” —or, we might add—stirring up hurricanes. He continues: “My own consolation lies in knowing that it was not the will of God that Alex died— but that when the waves closed in over the sinking car, God’s heart was the first of all hearts to break.” (Adapted from Living the Questions) We want to believe in a God who pulls all the strings, a God who’s got the whole world in his hands, a God who’s fully in control, a God who can even stop hurricanes. But that raises an intolerable question: if God can stop them, why does God not stop them? Please don’t try to answer that question; our failed answers only make the suffering worse. Instead, know that God’s heart was the first of all hearts to break when the flood waters closed in over so many. Despite what the insurance industry calls it, this was not an act of God. It was an act of nature, a perfectly predictable pattern of wind and rain, that just happened to hit the wrong place at the wrong time, not because God willed it, but because that’s the way the world works. God can’t be found in the wind or the rain. And if not in the wind or the rain, where then? There are many terrible stories coming out of this disaster. It really shouldn’t surprise us. When human beings are pushed to the edge of survival, many give in to the darkest impulses of the human heart. What should surprise us, and where we may begin to see God, is in the images and stories of people who have not given in, who have not given up, who are finding the courage to live compassionate lives in the midst of unbearable conditions. Of the many images that have come out of New Orleans, one picture struck me deeply. In the center was an old woman in a wheelchair, apparently unconscious, dehydrated, near death. Three people stood around her: a man looking around for help; a young woman with her head in her hands in grief; and a middle aged woman holding a cloth to the old woman’s face. The old woman appeared to be white. The three others were black. And they weren’t scratching and clawing to save themselves. And they weren’t even fighting to save their own families. They were struggling to save this woman who may have been a total stranger. And I have no doubt there are hundreds and thousands of similar images, similar stories. And you know why I have no doubt that’s true? Because that’s where God is—not in the wind, not in the rain, not pulling all the strings of life and death. But filling people’s hearts with courage and compassion. I see God in the sacrifice of those people. And I see God in every little bit of humanity that people are able to hold on to when it’s so tempting to let it go. And I see God in the courage of so many people responding to this crisis, risking their lives. And I see God in the generosity of so many people, volunteering to shelter refugees and sending money and blood and food and water. I see God in the tears people have shed. I also see God in people huddling together, clinging to one another, for strength, for life. For where two or more are gathered, I am there among them. That’s what Christ said. Where two or more are gathered, I am there among them. In the people gathered together, in attics and refugee camps, in buses and hospitals— God is there, giving hope, giving courage, giving compassion. And God is here, too, as we gather together, giving us hope, giving us courage, giving us compassion. Once we acknowledge the possibility that God can’t protect us from all the dangers of life, we realize how fragile and precious life is, and how important it is for us to stick together: To nurture our faith, to nurture our hope, to nurture our love— trusting that when two or more are gathered together, Christ is with us, giving us strength for the journey. That may not seem like much. But it is enough. |