| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|||||
| |
|
|
|
|||
|
Gospel:
Luke 15:1-10 Dear friends in Christ, I begin this sermon with the assumption that many of our emotions -- indeed, maybe all of our emotions--are probably very much on the surface and terribly, terribly unresolved and unsettled. This has been a week like none other that I can recall, except for two days in my own life. The first was a September day on the hot tarmac of Fort Jackson, South Carolina, in 1962. It was to become known as the Bay of Pigs. The second day was seeing Robert McNamara in 1965 on television explaining a place, a geography, that we were to come to know ever so much: Vietnam. We have been exposed this week to a virtual and constant barrage of tragedy and pain-filled images and stories that move us beyond words. None of us can fully understand at this point, if ever, with any reason or any rational level of understanding, what this is all about. For that reason the words that you will hear this morning are intentionally measured for moderation. This is neither the time for verbal histrionics, nor is it the time for pontifical glibness. I will not repaint any graphic images, nor will I retell any of the hundreds of stories that have moved us to the core so deeply these past few days. Very simply, and in a few words, as one of your priests and one of your pastors, I want to bring you a message of God's hope and of God's certain presence in the very midst of this unfolding tragedy. For we each know that on some level our lives and our liberties--the freedom that we so enjoy and hold so precious as citizens of this bold, democratic experience that our forebears paid such a high price for in the past--may again extract an even higher price. Our lives and our way of living will most certainly be altered. In my admittedly limited reading and understanding of history, however, each time we have collectively paid the price for the gift of our democracy, our lives and our resolve have been strengthened. As a Christian people of God, we must again face those haunting and challenging words of Matthew's Gospel -- words that confront us and maybe even affront us this morning. "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the people of God." We may as a people of faith have a personal certainty of opinion as to how that peace is to be achieved, but be assured that just as certainly, others have different opinions, and we are all the children of God. First of all then, we must be peacemakers, one with another, for peacemaking is a blessedness that is not esoteric, not ethereal, and not only between different nations and different nationalities. It is first one with another here today in this community. The familiar dictum that peace is more than the absence of war or conflict, but the clear presence of dignity, respect and genuine love for one another is the very heart of the Christian Gospel. I ask you, I invite you again this morning, to be instruments of reconciliation by living into the sacred space of being peacemakers, for it is our only hope to prevent continued, useless destruction and immeasurable pain. In order to ground that peacemaking in reality, we must know with certainty that our enemy is not a renegade, hyper-vicious band of Muslim fanatics, but it is evil itself. For the kind of destructive behavior that we have witnessed this week is no more Islamic the bombing and maiming of women's health care clinics in the name of Christ is Christian. Islam is not our enemy. Evil is our enemy. I think our newspaper the Commercial Appeal, got it exactly right on Wednesday, September 12, when it ran "Evil Acts" as the headline. I am so deeply appreciative of our folks at the Commercial Appeal for helping us as a community to hear with a clear voice in a time of such deep uncertainty and confusion, for they have gotten it exactly right. Evil does act. It is nothing less than evil that takes so many innocent lives. It is evil that disturbs every human being on this Earth with a senseless act of destruction. I say this not because the reality of war has been brought to our shores, because regardless of whose homeland evil invades, it destroys innocent lives. And yet we are a people who are guided as peacemakers. These very words, "Blessed are the peacemakers," are words that are linked and bound at the very core to the waters of our baptismal experience. For we are asked, "Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?" Never before can I recall those words being so poignant. "Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?" And in the affirmative we start the lifelong journey of becoming peacemakers. It is our singular commitment to that journey in which God's hope and our human hope is grounded. It is that hope that gives us assurance that our children and our grandchildren will have the possibility of living in a free and safe and love-filled world. For if we didn't have that hope, I don't know that we could have withstood the reality of what has so resoundingly been burned into our souls and our consciousness these past few days. Our hope is grounded in the words of the Gospel this morning. "Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?" That is exactly what we've seen as hundreds, maybe thousands of men and women have sorted through the tons and tons of rubble and steel, literally bucket by bucket. On some level they must know the words of this Gospel in a very particular and in a very real way. "Rejoice with me," says Luke, "for I have found my sheep that was lost." Don't you know that on some level those men and those women have been driven by this hope--hope even where there is no reasonable hope left that one soul might be found alive? It is that hope that gives birth to dignity and compassion and honor. I'm also reminded of words from the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Friends, there are no credibly easy answers, and just as true, there is no theological pabulum. There is no pabulum that will make all of this go away. We each are filled with different, but in many ways the same feelings: anger, disbelief, confusion, resentment, even rage--rage at the horror of all of this. They are perfectly human feelings, and because they are human feelings, they are God's feelings. As Father Allen Robinson said earlier this week, "God is deeply pained at this atrocity." But finally, maybe we are strengthened as we pray with and for those who struggle for life. The last words of Matthew's Gospel, are words that I leave us with this morning, "Lo, I am with you always even to the ends of the earth." Take comfort in those words. Draw strength and courage from those words of promise, my dear friends. But most of all never forsake hope, for hope is in all God's people. "Lo, I am with you always, even to the ends of the earth." Amen. Copyright 2001 Calvary Episcopal Church Gospel:
Luke 15:1-10 15
|
||
 |
|||||
|
|||||
