Song Sung Blue
Sermon
Sermons on the First Readings
Series II, Cycle C
Object:
Some records are made to be broken -- like Olympic speed skating; Cal Ripkin, Jr.'s, most consecutive baseball game appearances; and North Dakota's longest cow chip toss. Other records we'd prefer to let stand -- the world's deadliest disaster, or the most active hurricane season, for instance. Years 2004 and 2005 will probably make the books as among the most dramatic in weather history. Hurricanes pounded the southern coast of the USA. Floods and blizzards battered the midwest. Earthquakes devastated parts of central Asia. And one of the deadliest of disasters -- the tsunami -- decimated whole villages in southeast Asia. Global relief agencies, both governmental and private, were stretched to the breaking point. Some experts are saying even these records might not stand for long.
In late summer of 2005, the wind and water of Hurricane Katrina cut a path of destruction stretching over ninety miles of the Gulf coast. Only a few weeks afterward, Hurricane Rita pounded Texas. Even yet, as the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, continues to mop up and rebuild, images of stranded homeowners atop their houses and frustrated evacuees pleading for help outside the Super Dome continue to linger in the national consciousness. Most of the nation remained glued to their television screens moment by moment as the disaster unfolded. The chaos amongst emergency service providers, the fear, the anger, and the dead bodies shoved aside, the starvation, the disease, the looting, and the violence -- all played out live as the world watched on FOX and CNN and the evening news.
Although most folks would never recognize it as such, what played out on the airwaves and news commentaries in the ensuing months was what biblical writers knew as lamentation. The term "lamentation" is a written form musicians might call a dirge, such as would be used, or sung at a funeral. The book of the Bible we know as "Lamentations" was just such a dirge, adapted to fit the public forum. Scholars tell us it was originally written to corporately grieve the fall of Jerusalem after eighteen years of siege warfare. The city had been surrounded by Babylonian enemies and its inhabitants left to starve or die of pestilence or violence.
Imagine that, if you can -- a city, say New Orleans -- cut off from help and public aid -- not for a few days or even a week -- but for a year and a half. Imagine the condition of the Super Dome after eighteen months of the leaky roof, clogged toilets, and scarce supplies. Well, let's not -- the thought is too traumatic to even conceive!
But the similarities are striking: Jerusalem and New Orleans, Judea and Mississippi or Alabama. Cities and people divided by time and geography, yet united by their experience of suffering and destruction -- destruction not only of lives and property but the loss of public trust and cultural institutions. The shock, the despair, the blaming, and the search for a reason -- whether in ancient Hebrew or American English (or Cajun) -- the sentiment is much the same.
Yet, in some ways, the differences are equally striking -- at least in the content of the laments. For days and even months after the hurricanes, the television news seemed to lay its lamentation at the feet of the government in general and at the feet of President Bush in particular. Not that earlier failure or oversight or indifference on the part of civic officials were not contributing factors to the overall disaster, but listening to some newscasters one would have thought the president himself had conjured the storm for political gain.
Subsequent investigation revealed there was enough guilt to go around, but assigning blame to the mayor or the governor or even the president just didn't get at the real issue for many. Just why did this happen? Meteorologists explained the science of a hurricane and the Army engineers explained the physics of water pressure on dirt levees. City planners and social analysts could pronounce theories about why so many folks could not or did not get transported to safety. But these answers just were not enough to satisfy the big question: Why did it happen to us?
A few religious extremists claimed that the city was experiencing God's wrath in response to convocation of homosexuals the city had welcomed. Others pointed out that a number of church assemblies were scheduled to convene there as well. At least these views, right or wrong, included God. Atheists had to look elsewhere.
How does a secular society, which separates religion from science, answer such a question? In recent years we have gone to battle over the constitutional validity of "one nation under God" in our Pledge of Allegiance and "In God We Trust" upon our currency. But that creates another dilemma: When God is removed from the public picture, who is left to hear the lament? The president may rightfully admit blame for an ill-prepared Federal Emergency Management Agency, but despite what some may want to think, even he cannot control wind and wave and the currents of the jet stream. Who, then, is accountable? Who is there to respond to the wounded and grieving soul when one's whole world has been washed away by a tidal wave, flattened by a tornado, or even devastated by a divorce or an inoperable tumor?
In the face of such calamity, we need to cry, we need to moan, we need to ask why. But who is there to hear when God has been eliminated from the equation?
That is precisely where the Bible departs from the secular worldview. When their world collapsed -- when the temple was razed and Jerusalem lay in ruin, the Jewish believers took their grief and anguish directly into God's very presence. Their government could not help -- it was literally held captive. Their priests were of no use -- the temple and its altar of sacrifice were gone. Only God's Word remained. Only God's promise could sustain.
It took the destruction of Jerusalem and Judea, but the people did return to Yahweh. So far as we know, they did not address their lament to Baal, whom they had once worshiped in the shrines. They cried out to God as they had done in Egypt and Sinai and on Mount Carmel. To their credit, the survivors of the Exile (on the whole) learned from their calamity. They acknowledged their sin and idolatry and asked for forgiveness.
It was this shift in attitude ("repentance" is the biblical term) that made all the difference in the world. They opted to cling to God rather than deny his power or his love. This faith decision not only changed the course of their history but also preserved them as a people and a culture. Their religious reflection on this experience inspired them to write or revise much of the Hebrew Scripture we read today. The faith and hope they found amidst the calamity became the bedrock upon which they built their subsequent faith story.
In the aftermath of personal and communal disaster, our human tendency is to blame everyone else. And it is the tendency of everyone else to blame the victim. Neither approach can diminish the pain -- it is real and it is important, but it is also essential that in the face of any calamity we address that pain, that we learn from it, and that we grow through it. Only then can we draw power from it.
Only a few months after the New Orleans tragedy, a small town in West Virginia faced a calamity of its own -- a tragedy on a smaller scale but equally devastating. Twelve of its citizens -- fathers, sons, brothers, and friends -- were trapped in the darkest reaches of the earth after an explosion in the local coalmine. While rescuers worked frantically to save them, an army of government experts and media reporters besieged the community to watch and wait. There in the public forum, in full view of the cameras, was the tiny little community church where the families waited -- and prayed -- and worshiped! They did not scream at the president, nor bemoan the economic realities, which sent these miners into such an inherently dangerous workplace. They revealed their inner strength and professed their faith in God even when word came that eleven had not survived.
The investigation into the cause of that explosion continues, at the time of this writing, and no doubt some very real human failures will prove to be factors. But, as much as much as we'd like to put human beings in charge of the universe, we are forced to acknowledge there are even yet forces out there that are simply beyond our control -- like it or not. We do, however, have a choice in our response to such realities.
Radio commentator, Paul Harvey, closed his post-Katrina commentary with a story about a visit he had once made into the devastated area of Louisiana. He described how once upon a time, hundreds of years earlier, other winds and waves had toppled the magnificent trees of the bayou, leaving them underwater for centuries. Then he described how these fallen trees had been transformed into timber of such strength and beauty that modern loggers would brave the perils of the swamp to mine this underwater treasure. He reflected with awe and a touch of sadness upon the magnificent beauty of the swamp he had visited and how those very trees had tumbled into the depths of the bayou.
Then he finished with this profound observation: "And then the wind blows -- and the present is decimated -- and the future is renewed."
The Bible records how God once decimated Jerusalem, and how God used that experience to restore the future God had promised. Even now, as we face the calamities, which assail us all from time to time, the question remains: When the winds blow and our present is demolished, can we trust God to do the same for us?
In late summer of 2005, the wind and water of Hurricane Katrina cut a path of destruction stretching over ninety miles of the Gulf coast. Only a few weeks afterward, Hurricane Rita pounded Texas. Even yet, as the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, continues to mop up and rebuild, images of stranded homeowners atop their houses and frustrated evacuees pleading for help outside the Super Dome continue to linger in the national consciousness. Most of the nation remained glued to their television screens moment by moment as the disaster unfolded. The chaos amongst emergency service providers, the fear, the anger, and the dead bodies shoved aside, the starvation, the disease, the looting, and the violence -- all played out live as the world watched on FOX and CNN and the evening news.
Although most folks would never recognize it as such, what played out on the airwaves and news commentaries in the ensuing months was what biblical writers knew as lamentation. The term "lamentation" is a written form musicians might call a dirge, such as would be used, or sung at a funeral. The book of the Bible we know as "Lamentations" was just such a dirge, adapted to fit the public forum. Scholars tell us it was originally written to corporately grieve the fall of Jerusalem after eighteen years of siege warfare. The city had been surrounded by Babylonian enemies and its inhabitants left to starve or die of pestilence or violence.
Imagine that, if you can -- a city, say New Orleans -- cut off from help and public aid -- not for a few days or even a week -- but for a year and a half. Imagine the condition of the Super Dome after eighteen months of the leaky roof, clogged toilets, and scarce supplies. Well, let's not -- the thought is too traumatic to even conceive!
But the similarities are striking: Jerusalem and New Orleans, Judea and Mississippi or Alabama. Cities and people divided by time and geography, yet united by their experience of suffering and destruction -- destruction not only of lives and property but the loss of public trust and cultural institutions. The shock, the despair, the blaming, and the search for a reason -- whether in ancient Hebrew or American English (or Cajun) -- the sentiment is much the same.
Yet, in some ways, the differences are equally striking -- at least in the content of the laments. For days and even months after the hurricanes, the television news seemed to lay its lamentation at the feet of the government in general and at the feet of President Bush in particular. Not that earlier failure or oversight or indifference on the part of civic officials were not contributing factors to the overall disaster, but listening to some newscasters one would have thought the president himself had conjured the storm for political gain.
Subsequent investigation revealed there was enough guilt to go around, but assigning blame to the mayor or the governor or even the president just didn't get at the real issue for many. Just why did this happen? Meteorologists explained the science of a hurricane and the Army engineers explained the physics of water pressure on dirt levees. City planners and social analysts could pronounce theories about why so many folks could not or did not get transported to safety. But these answers just were not enough to satisfy the big question: Why did it happen to us?
A few religious extremists claimed that the city was experiencing God's wrath in response to convocation of homosexuals the city had welcomed. Others pointed out that a number of church assemblies were scheduled to convene there as well. At least these views, right or wrong, included God. Atheists had to look elsewhere.
How does a secular society, which separates religion from science, answer such a question? In recent years we have gone to battle over the constitutional validity of "one nation under God" in our Pledge of Allegiance and "In God We Trust" upon our currency. But that creates another dilemma: When God is removed from the public picture, who is left to hear the lament? The president may rightfully admit blame for an ill-prepared Federal Emergency Management Agency, but despite what some may want to think, even he cannot control wind and wave and the currents of the jet stream. Who, then, is accountable? Who is there to respond to the wounded and grieving soul when one's whole world has been washed away by a tidal wave, flattened by a tornado, or even devastated by a divorce or an inoperable tumor?
In the face of such calamity, we need to cry, we need to moan, we need to ask why. But who is there to hear when God has been eliminated from the equation?
That is precisely where the Bible departs from the secular worldview. When their world collapsed -- when the temple was razed and Jerusalem lay in ruin, the Jewish believers took their grief and anguish directly into God's very presence. Their government could not help -- it was literally held captive. Their priests were of no use -- the temple and its altar of sacrifice were gone. Only God's Word remained. Only God's promise could sustain.
It took the destruction of Jerusalem and Judea, but the people did return to Yahweh. So far as we know, they did not address their lament to Baal, whom they had once worshiped in the shrines. They cried out to God as they had done in Egypt and Sinai and on Mount Carmel. To their credit, the survivors of the Exile (on the whole) learned from their calamity. They acknowledged their sin and idolatry and asked for forgiveness.
It was this shift in attitude ("repentance" is the biblical term) that made all the difference in the world. They opted to cling to God rather than deny his power or his love. This faith decision not only changed the course of their history but also preserved them as a people and a culture. Their religious reflection on this experience inspired them to write or revise much of the Hebrew Scripture we read today. The faith and hope they found amidst the calamity became the bedrock upon which they built their subsequent faith story.
In the aftermath of personal and communal disaster, our human tendency is to blame everyone else. And it is the tendency of everyone else to blame the victim. Neither approach can diminish the pain -- it is real and it is important, but it is also essential that in the face of any calamity we address that pain, that we learn from it, and that we grow through it. Only then can we draw power from it.
Only a few months after the New Orleans tragedy, a small town in West Virginia faced a calamity of its own -- a tragedy on a smaller scale but equally devastating. Twelve of its citizens -- fathers, sons, brothers, and friends -- were trapped in the darkest reaches of the earth after an explosion in the local coalmine. While rescuers worked frantically to save them, an army of government experts and media reporters besieged the community to watch and wait. There in the public forum, in full view of the cameras, was the tiny little community church where the families waited -- and prayed -- and worshiped! They did not scream at the president, nor bemoan the economic realities, which sent these miners into such an inherently dangerous workplace. They revealed their inner strength and professed their faith in God even when word came that eleven had not survived.
The investigation into the cause of that explosion continues, at the time of this writing, and no doubt some very real human failures will prove to be factors. But, as much as much as we'd like to put human beings in charge of the universe, we are forced to acknowledge there are even yet forces out there that are simply beyond our control -- like it or not. We do, however, have a choice in our response to such realities.
Radio commentator, Paul Harvey, closed his post-Katrina commentary with a story about a visit he had once made into the devastated area of Louisiana. He described how once upon a time, hundreds of years earlier, other winds and waves had toppled the magnificent trees of the bayou, leaving them underwater for centuries. Then he described how these fallen trees had been transformed into timber of such strength and beauty that modern loggers would brave the perils of the swamp to mine this underwater treasure. He reflected with awe and a touch of sadness upon the magnificent beauty of the swamp he had visited and how those very trees had tumbled into the depths of the bayou.
Then he finished with this profound observation: "And then the wind blows -- and the present is decimated -- and the future is renewed."
The Bible records how God once decimated Jerusalem, and how God used that experience to restore the future God had promised. Even now, as we face the calamities, which assail us all from time to time, the question remains: When the winds blow and our present is demolished, can we trust God to do the same for us?
