Responding to Tragedy

This past Tuesday, I was sitting in my office working on today’s sermon, when Phil List called me and told me to put on the TV. The attacks on the World Trade Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. will be events that every American and many from other nations will have imprinted on their minds. Like the assassination of John Kennedy in 1963, we will always remember where we were when we first heard the news.

This has been an event of extraordinary significance and the aftershocks of this attack will reverberate around the world. The unity of the world in condemning these attacks and resolving to declare war on terrorist groups and nations who support them has been surprising to me. I have sensed a turning point in history and don’t know how it will end up. I pray this will lead to a safer world and not a more dangerous world. May God have mercy on us.

It has been touching to receive condolences from people of other nations for the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. Last Tuesday I received calls from people of many nations. Father Jean Pierre Michau from the Catholic Church here in Rabat called to say he was praying for the situation. We had a special prayer meeting on Tuesday night at our home at which Americans were the minority. We had our regular prayer meeting on Wednesday night and I was the only American present. Last night the Catholic Church had an English mass to pray for those who suffered in the tragedy.

I’ve never felt that one person could represent a country but this experience has made me realize that I do represent the United States and I have accepted those expressions of sympathy on behalf of all Americans. And on behalf of all Americans, I tell you we are grateful for your support.

And I want to express to you, on behalf of all Americans, our condolences for all those who died who were not Americans. This may well be 20% of the deaths. This was truly an international tragedy.

I have received expressions of condolence, but just beneath the expressions of sympathy, there is the sentiment that the US was so proud and arrogant, it needed to be humbled. This is not to say that these people who expressed their sympathy rejoice in the suffering that took place and is taking place, but the view is that one positive consequence of these attacks is that the US will be somewhat less arrogant in the future.

Time Magazine, a US publication, put out a special issue with pictures of the attack and rescue operation. This special issue is mostly pictures, but in an article accompanying the pictures, I read this:
If you want to humble an empire it makes sense to maim its cathedrals. They are symbols of its faith, and when they crumble and burn, it tells us we are not so powerful and we can’t be safe. The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, planted at the base of Manhattan Island with the Statue of Liberty as their sentry, and the Pentagon, a squat, concrete fort on the banks of the Potomac, are the sanctuaries of money and power that our enemies may imagine define us. But that assumes our faith rests on what we can buy and build, and that has never been America’s true God.

I agree that what we can build and buy have never been America’s true God, but money, power and military might have been our false gods, our national cathedrals. Just a few years ago, Tom Wolfe wrote Bonfire of the Vanities, a story of Sherman McCoy, a young investment banker on Wall Street. Sherman called himself “Master of the Universe”, indicative of his view that he was invincible and invulnerable. This is the attitude symbolically represented by the World Trade Center, the most prestigious addresses in Manhattan.

Americans have prided themselves on their wealth, power and military might and there has been a humbling that has taken place. Nineteen men armed with knives and box cutters have dealt a powerful and humbling blow to this great nation.

We are taking a break today from a series of sermons based on the life of the prophet Jeremiah. But if he had been operating out of New York City in the last few years, he would have been telling Americans that the wealth, power and military might of the US are false gods that will not endure.

In one of King David’s psalms we read:
Some trust in chariots and some in horses,
but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.

One of my prayers is that Americans will learn this lesson. There have been great empires in the past and if Jesus does not return before then, there will be other great empires in the future. The Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Romans and Greeks all were proud of their strength and influence and they all fell.

My prayer is that Americans will humble themselves, abandon their false gods and turn to the one true God who alone will endure. “The world and its desires are passing away,” wrote the Apostle John, “but the one who does the will of God lives forever.”

United States currency says on it, “In God We Trust”. I pray that we will take that statement from our currency and put it in our hearts. This tragedy has been a wake-up call to the US. May we learn our lesson well.

Along with condolences, I have heard a question these last few days and that is, “How can I trust in God after all this?”

When we pray at Sunday School or our Wednesday prayer meetings or one of the many other times when we pray, I hear very often prayers for God’s protection. I will travel to the US a week from tomorrow – assuming the planes are flying then – and I am sure people will pray for my protection. We pray for protection for our families wherever they are around the world.

It appears that there will be at least 5,000 people who died in these two terrorist attacks. Should we assume that no one was praying for their protection? Should we assume that none of these 5,000 were among God’s children?

What about the other people around the world who suffered that day or any other day. I doubt that there were significantly more people who suffered unjustly this past Tuesday than any other day of the year worldwide. Suffering worldwide is constant. It is simply that this suffering in the US was more spectacular and more concentrated.

In Jos, Nigeria, Christians and Muslims are killing each other, Protestants and Catholics are boiling with hatred for each other in Ireland. Sunni Muslims and Shiah Muslims are killing each other in Pakistan. Christians are being exterminated in Sudan. Israelis and Palestinians are killing each other in the Middle East.

Around the world, sex traffickers and pornographers and pedophiles are exploiting and abusing women and children, women are raped by strangers and beaten by husbands and boyfriends, people are robbed, kidnaped, murdered.

Pick up a daily newspaper and start making a list from just that day’s news. It is terrifying. So the question is not simply how to deal with the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., the question is how to deal with the terror that exists in the world every day and occasionally comes closer to home.

Don’t think that this is a recent phenomenon. There has not been a time in history when there has not been this condition, of innocents suffering. There has not been a time when people have not used their power to abuse others for individual gain.

Technology allows the tragedies to be on a grander scale. With technology, it is possible to kill and injure more people at one time, but acts of terrorism are not new to history.

So the question of how we can trust in God who allows all this to happen is not a question for this week, but a question for all time.

There is not enough time to deal with this question in a twenty minute sermon, this has been a question of the ages and book after book has been written on this topic. So let me get straight to the crucial point.

If you are asking that question, “How can I trust in God after all this?”,  you are asking a dead end question. There is no truly satisfying answer to the problem of the presence of evil in this world. The book of Job in the Bible focuses on this question of the presence of evil in the world and after 15,630 words of Job and his friends trying to figure things out, God finally speaks in Chapter 38. As Frederick Buechner writes,
God doesn’t explain. He explodes. He asks Job who he thinks he is anyway. He says that to try to explain the kind of things Job wants explained would be like trying to explain Einstein to a little-neck clam.

Billy Graham said this on Friday at the service in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. There is no satisfying answer to the problem of the existence of evil in the world. We must choose to believe by faith in God who loves and is sovereign.

But let me say what is clear in Scripture. You cannot reduce God to your material terms. God does not promise that you will not suffer. God does not promise that you will not experience tragedy. In fact Scripture reveals quite the opposite. We are told that suffering will be part of our lives.

There has developed in the US and the world a terribly destructive theology that says that if you have enough faith, you will be healthy and wealthy. This is a seductive theology because we live in a material world that is all around us and we have faith in an eternal world we are not able to see. We must believe by faith in what we cannot see and it is too easy for us to revert to faith in what we do see around us, our health, our wealth, our ease of life.

Listen and listen well. There are only two promises in Scripture that God makes to us.

The first is this: God promises never to leave us or forsake us.

God spoke to Moses and Joshua telling them
I will never leave you nor forsake you.

Paul in his letter to the Romans wrote this
38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,  39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This is the first promise of God to us, that he will never leave us or forsake us.

This is a promise God will not break. This is a promise God did not break this past Tuesday. God was present with his children who were burned, fell to their death or were crushed by the falling buildings. And God is present with those who now grieve for the ones they lost. My prayer is that they will open their hearts to him and receive his love, grace and mercy in their hearts. I pray that they will allow God to begin to heal the pain they are experiencing.

The second promise of God is that when it is time for us to die and leave this world, he will take us to be with him for eternity.

In John 14 Jesus spoke to his disciples
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.  2 In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you.  3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”

This is also a promise God kept last Tuesday. His children who had trusted in him are now with him for eternity. We are glued to the TV, hoping for news of some survivors. But they have been rescued and are now safe in the arms of the one who most loves them.

God loves us and died in our place so we could live in eternity with him and he has promised that in this life, he will never leave us or forsake us. Beyond that, when we are shaken by some tragedy and begin to question his love and protection, we are expecting something God has not promised. God does love us and he will protect us. “Nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

These promises give us hope of eternal life, but is there any hope for this world, here and now?

I became a Christian when I was in college and began to argue with my sociology professors from my new world view. My professors said man was basically good and all we needed to do to improve our society was to create new and better institutions. Get rid of racist institutions and racism would disappear.

But I argued that creating a new institution would fail because institutions are created by flawed human beings.

In the 1960s those who follow the stars were encouraged by the dawning of the age of Aquarius. This sign from the heavens signaled the beginning of an era of love and peace. Communes were created as havens of peace and love. But what has history reveled? The culture of free love and rejection of God resulted not in peace, love and harmony, but in broken marriages, broken families and damaged children.

The hippie communes that were created to be havens of peace in a corrupt world ended in authoritarian control and abusive relationships. No utopian community has ever succeeded and nor will one ever succeed because it is flawed humans who constitute the membership of these communes.

Some look to technology as the solution. Buckminister Fuller who designed the geodesic dome, wrote in a book I bought in the 60s that in technology lay all the solutions to our problems. And what has technology led us to? Ethical dilemmas where the law courts struggle to determine in divorce settlements who has the right to frozen embryos.

The law is called in to choose the legitimate parent of a child who was the result of invitero fertilization. Is the parent the woman from whom the egg cell came? The man from whom the sperm cell came? The woman who was contracted to have the embryo grow in her womb?

We are making fantastic progress in our technology but we are not getting closer to utopia. We keep thinking we are making progress but reality slaps us in the face and forces us to realize this search for utopia is a dead end.

The only solution to the evil that is in our world is a moral solution. Institutional, political and technological solutions to problems are helpful, but they are not and never will be the solution.

At the end of the first millennium, in the dark ages of Europe when my Viking ancestors were raiding the Isles of Britain and the coast of Europe, there was despair. Raid after raid demoralized the people living along the coasts.

What changed that caused the Vikings to stop raiding? It wasn’t diplomacy or improved technology. The castles and monasteries did not develop better defenses. What changed is that missionaries to the Vikings brought Christianity and over the course of a couple generations, hearts were changed and the Vikings traded raiding for farming. Violent reprisals against the Vikings were not the solution. Prayers for the Vikings led to peace.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim feeling in the US right now. Muslims and Arabs are being attacked and harassed by Americans who are angry at what has happened. This anger will do nothing but inflame the situation. I pray that Americans will experience God’s love in their lives and begin to pray for the terrorists whose hearts are filled with hatred. I pray that angry attacks will be transformed into fervent prayers. I pray that the terrorists’ hearts will be filled with the love of God and turn to peace.

The circle of violence that we see in the world will not end without this change in the hearts of people.

Those of you who have read Romeo and Juliet know about the circle of violence between the Montgues and the Capulets. West Side Story adapted this story to New York City and street gangs, the Jets and the Sharks. Americans may know the story of two families in rural Appalachia, the Hatfields and the McCoys, who battled and killed each other for years.

Today on the news we watch the ongoing violence between Palestinians and Israelis. In all these cases, it is an exercise in futility to try to determine who started this violence. There is no begriming and there is no end. It is a circle of violence. Every time a suicide bomber blows himself up in Israel, Israel’s position hardens. Every time Israel retaliates, they create new suicide bombers. It’s almost like a science fiction movie in which every time the alien is killed, it rises up from the ground as three aliens. The more you kill, the more aliens there are to kill you.

If the US retaliates, as it seems certainly it will do, how many more terrorist cells will be created?

Let me tell you two stories that illustrate how it is possible to end the circle of violence that disturbs and frustrates us.

Corrie ten Boom was a Dutch Christian who helped Jews during the Nazi occupation of Holland in WWII. She was taken by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp along with her sister and father. Both her father and sister died in the camps, but Corrie was miraculously released. After the war, she felt called by God to have a ministry of reconciliation and began speaking throughout Europe.

At one meeting in Germany, after she spoke, she saw a man coming up the aisle toward her and she recognized him as a guard who had beaten her sister in the camp. He came to her and spoke. “Fraulein, you don’t know me, but I’ve done some terrible things and I need you to forgive me.”

When the former prison guard asked Corrie to forgive him, she found herself unable to do so. The pain of what he had done to her sister was too much. Then she prayed, stuck out her arm and she says she felt God’s power move through her arm and was able to say, “I forgive you.”

How do you forgive someone who tortured someone you loved? It is not humanly possible. Only God is able to take former enemies and heal the wounds that divide.

In Chuck Colson’s latest book, How Now Shall We Live, he tells this story:
In June 1972 during the war between Vietnam and the US, a photo appeared in the papers of the US that defined for many Americans the cruelty of what was taking place there. The photo is taken after a bomb has been dropped. A huge black cloud is rising in the background and what is most disturbing about the photo is the children who are running toward the camera and away from the explosion. In the center of the photo is a little girl running, her clothes burned off, her arms stretched out pleading for help. Her skin was burned black by napalm, her mouth screaming in pain.

The photographer took the girl to the hospital where he later learned her name was Kim Phuc, a name that means “Golden Happiness”. Through his efforts, she was taken to a doctor who had set up a clinic to treat children with burns.

After fourteen months in the hospital and seventeen surgeries, Kim Phuc was released to live a life of embarrassment because of her scars and a life that required daily washing and medication of her scars.

As a young woman, she was given a job in a library and found on the shelf a Bible which she began to read. The Jesus she read about in that Bible was not the Jesus she had heard about and in a church in Vietnam, she gave her life to Christ. She married in 1992 and on her honeymoon to Cuba, she and her husband deported to Canada when their plane stopped off in Newfoundland.

In 1996, Kim agreed to speak at Veterans Day ceremonies held at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. Can you imagine what ran through her mind and how much it cost her to stand before these veterans in their uniforms and have to relive her painful memories?

She began to speak. “As you know, I am the little girl who was running to escape from the napalm fire. I do not want to talk about the war because I cannot change history. I only want you to remember a tragedy of war in order to stop fighting and killing around the world.”

Her voice dropped. “I have suffered a lot from both physical and emotional pain. Sometimes I have thought I could not live, but God saved my life and gave me faith and hope.”

And then she uttered healing words of grace and forgiveness: “Even if I could talk face-to-face with the pilot who dropped the bomb, I could tell him we cannot change history, but we should try to do good things for the present and for the future to promote peace.”

When she finished her brief but moving remarks, the veterans rose to their feet and broke into an explosion of applause, many of them in tears. “It’s important to us that she’s here,” one veteran said. “For her to forgive us personally means something.”

One man, overcome with emotion, rushed to a patrolman and scribbled out a note, asking him to deliver it to Kim. “I’m the man you are looking for,” the note read.

Intermediaries asked if she was willing to see him. Yes, she said, if they could arrange a meeting away from the crush of people. Officials brought the man over to her car.

When the reporters cleared away, Kim turned and looked straight into the man’s eyes and then held out her arms…the same arms she had held out as she ran along the road, in agony from her burning skin. She hugged the man, and he began to sob.

“I’m sorry. I am just so sorry!” he said.

“It is okay. I forgive. I forgive,” said Kim Phuc, echoing her favorite Bible verse, “Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” (Luke 6:37)

Call me naive but I call myself a realist. History reveals what has worked and what has not worked. This is what will bring peace to this world. If I had time I would tell you stories of Protestant and Catholic radicals being reconciled in Ireland and studying the Bible and praying together. I would tell you a story of a national leader of the Ku Klux Klan and the Propaganda Minister of the Black Panthers meeting and praying for each other. I would tell you a story of a mother whose son was killed by a drunk driver and who was able to forgive this man who now comes to the school where she teaches each year to talk to her students. I could even tell you stories of Israelis and Palestinians who have become brothers in Christ and are working together for peace.

We need to work diplomatically and politically. We need to continue to develop technology. But if we want change, we must seek a change in the hearts of men and women. It takes God’s love to transform bitterness to forgiveness.

I don’t know how you have reacted to the events of this past week. I don’t know where your heart is this morning. But I pray that you will be filled to overflowing with the love and peace of Christ and that you will allow your experience of God to transform your relationships with those who share this planet with you.

May God bless you and give you his peace.