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September 15, 2001
In David Heller's book, Dear God: Children's Letters to God, there is a letter from a 10-year-old boy named Ian which says: "Dear God, I have doubts about you sometimes. Sometimes I really believe. Like when I was four and I hurt my arm and you healed it up fast. But my question is - if you could do this why don't you stop all the bad in the world? Like war. Like diseases. Like famine. Like drugs. And there are problems in other people's neighborhoods too. I'll try to believe more. Ian." All across the country - in fact, literally around the world - people have been asking similar questions this past week as we watched over and over the horror of hijacked jetliners slamming into each of the twin towers of the World Trade Center and into Pentagon, as well as a fourth plane being heroically and self-sacrificially crashed into the ground in a field in western Pennsylvania. And in the presence of such sudden, mind-charring disaster, we're faced with the stark fact that these deaths were not accidental, but the result of a cold, calculated rage - a rage that struck without warning against those who had nothing in common except that of being in the same place at the same ill-fated moment and that of being united in a fiery and tragic death. What could cause such a rage? What mind could conceive of a plan that would value human lives only for the sheer physics of adding that much more body mass to be smashed into buildings or to be transformed into soulless statistics whose sheer numbers are designed to increase the level of terror this heartless act inspires? This past week, we have looked once again into the face of evil and have shuddered to realize that such an evil could have an completely human appearance. Sadly, that discovery is far from something new. In the mid-1500's when John Calvin was developing the theology that would lead to the founding of the Presbyterian Church, he talked about the "utter depravity" of humanity. In today's world, that phrase might pass for the title of a cable TV movie of the week. But what Calvin had in mind was something far different. He believed that we humans are deeply and irresistibly drawn toward sin - to such a degree that the entire world has been distorted by human sin. Calvin said that when we look at the world, it's as if we look through a blurring prism of sinfulness - our own and that of others - a prism that makes it impossible for us to see the world as it was intended to be, or at least it would make it that way if it weren't for the light of Christ shining through the ominous darkness. This less-than-cheery view of human nature has its origins all the way back at the beginning of human history when the pristine nature of the Garden of Eden was sullied and stained by the sinfulness of Adam and Eve. Soon after their expulsion from paradise, their son Cain committed the first atrocity - against his brother Abel. And on it went, generation after generation, individual after individual. As we wander deep in our grief and pain over this senseless act of terrorism, we want to think that Osama bin Laden is some kind of evil Darwinian mutation, something twisted and corrupted beyond recognition as a human being, something that can appear only once or twice in a generation. But we know that's not the case. If it were, how could he persuade 18 or more people to commit suicide in a series of tragic terrorist attacks on innocent people - attacks which ignored the victims' basic humanity in order to make a perverse political statement of defiance? If bin Laden were such a inhuman monster, how could he readily find so many followers around the globe? If bin Laden were such an unusual monster, how do we explain a Timothy McVeigh, the author of a massive terrorist attack on his own people? Or the series of tragedies involving school children murdering other children? Or an Adolph Hitler whose genocidal policies resulted in so many deaths that it was as if Tuesday's death toll happened every day - day after mind-numbing day - from 1939 to 1945, the six years of active warfare declared by Nazi Germany. And that, of course, does not count the deaths of soldiers and civilians killed by that warfare. This total merely - if "merely" is the right word to use here - counts the victims of Hitler's so-called "Final Solution." In this country, we value life highly, so actions like those baffle us, enrage us, depress us. We just can't understand those who would make a political point at the expense of the innocent. We're simply unprepared for the sudden appearance of evil at our door. And therein lies our greatest temptation: to demonize those like bin Laden who would commit an atrocity, while we wrap ourselves up in a comforter of self-righteousness. A tragedy like this demands that we pause for self-reflection and repentance before we begin to think about punishing the evil-doers. Otherwise we can easily be tempted toward calling for vengeance rather than justice. Therefore, a diverse group of American religious leaders joined together this week to offer what they called a "word of sober restraint" as the nation discerns what its response should be. They said: "We share the anger toward those who so callously and massively destroy innocent lives, no matter what the grievances invoked. In the name of God, we too demand that those responsible for these utterly evil acts be found and brought to justice. Those culpable must not escape accountability. But we must not, out of anger and vengeance, indiscriminately retaliate in ways that bring on even more loss of innocent life...We can deny [the terrorists] their victory by refusing to submit to a world created in their image...We must not allow this terror to drive us away from being the people God has called us to be." And that brings us back to our opening question: Where is God in all of this? As we watched the horrific pictures on our televisions this week, many of us wondered why God would allow such a thing to happen. That is, of course, a question as old as time. And the simple answer is that God allows us free will - that is, God allows us to make bad choices as well as good, even if we make outrageously evil choices. If we couldn't make those choices, we wouldn't truly have the freedom to choose. I realize that that's a pretty cold comfort in a case like this when we are forced to face the dire consequences of someone else's sin. But that's not the end of the answer to our question. Some time ago, a man in Scotland who works as a full-time fire fighter and a part-time minister was called out to a fire in a fifth floor apartment in Edinburgh. It was the home of a young family. The mother had gone out to get milk, while the father was looking after five children. When the fire started, the father tried to get the kids out and failed. He jumped, breaking both legs and some ribs. When the two firemen got into the apartment all of the kids were dead. The colleague of the part-time minister, turned around and said to him, "Where's your f...ing God now?" It was a question born quite literally in the heat and anguish of the moment. The fireman/minister turned back to his friend and said. "He's right here; he's been with these kids, and he's here with us. Let's talk to him." And so he prayed. Isn't that what the birth at Bethlehem and, more importantly, the crucifixion at Jerusalem teach us - that God is present in our daily lives and in our sufferings? Several years ago, when a terrorist bomb blew up a airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, the Rev. James Whyte, then Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, was asked to preach at the memorial service. And in that sermon, he said: "The Christian answer to the age old question why a good God permits evil is a strange one, because the Christian faith is that God is there where we might least expect to find him - in the disaster, in the tragedy, in the suffering. "From Christmas to Easter, from Bethlehem to Calvary and the Emmaus road, that is the message of Christian faith. He is not outside of it all, absent, indifferent, untouched. He is in it. When Jesus hung upon the cross...[he]...set the seal upon his sharing with us all our human life, our human suffering and loss. "When we cry in our pain, we cry to the one who knows pain, who shares it with us. That is strange comfort, and it does not take away our pain, but it may give it meaning, as with a flash of light. When Paul speaks of God's comfort to those who are in trouble, he goes on immediately to talk about the sufferings of Christ - our sharing of his sufferings and his sharing of ours, for it is in the fellowship of suffering that we will find our God and know his comfort. If we could avoid the pain of being human, the pain of loving and losing, the pain of suffering with those who suffer, we would be choosing to stand aloof from humanity and apart from God. 'And our hope for you is well-grounded,' said Paul, 'for we know that if you have part in the suffering, you have part also in the divine consolation.' "But it is not only pain and grief that we feel at this catastrophe, it is also indignation. For this was not an unforeseeable natural disaster, such as earthquake, nor was it the result of human error or carelessness. "This...was an act of human wickedness. That such carnage of the... innocent should have a been willed by [people] in cold and calculated evil, is horror upon horror. "...[Yet] Christ's sufferings are the sufferings of the innocent at the hands of evil and unscrupulous men, and it is these we share when we suffer at the hands of the evil and the unscrupulous in our time. So if he is not here in [our suffering], he is not anywhere." We Americans have somehow come to think that the goal of life as to avoid suffering. But the cross stands in stark relief to teach us otherwise. Jesus' self-sacrifice shows us that the goal of life is to transform and redeem suffering, to bring healing and meaning to it. So where was God in all of this? Barbara Bundick answers that question in a poetic fashion when she says, "Jesus was crucified on the twin towers of the World Trade Center, with airplanes pounded through his hands and his feet. He crumpled to his knees and fell to ground zero in a cloud of smoke and cement. Dust and ashes, the Old Testament sign of mourning, cloak New York like a pall. "Jesus screamed with the helpless passengers as they were aimed, unerringly, toward their targets. Jesus grabbed a cell phone with the traders of Cantor Fitzgerald for one last word with those he loved. Jesus jumped from the highest floors to escape the jet-fueled flames. Jesus struggled down endless flights of black stairs, one plodding step after another. Jesus walks the streets of New York with dazed and tearstained eyes, bearing a picture of someone he loves. Jesus sits in a day-care center or a friend's living room, wondering why he can never see his mommy or daddy ever again. "But Jesus was more than a helpless victim, and so are we. Jesus was also a hero. Jesus waited to help others before he helped himself, voluntarily giving up his own chance to escape destruction. Jesus carried an injured person down seventy flights of stairs. Jesus ran into the doomed building, a fireman's pack on his back, a policeman's walkie talkie in his hands. Jesus rose with the hijacked passengers above Pennsylvania and gave his life to stop a still greater carnage. Even in the face of more crumbling towers, Jesus volunteers with the ironworkers and the medical personnel to save whom he can. Jesus stands in line with the blood donors. Jesus prays with God-fearing people of all races and all religions the whole world over. "Even as hope dies, Jesus searches through the rubble, sweeping through the dust, examining every jagged corner and opening, seeking, searching, never giving up, consecrated to finding the lost coin. "And if Jesus finds him, when Jesus finds him, he will call his friends and neighbors together and rejoice. And even as hope dies, Jesus searches through the rubble, rappelling into chasms, crawling between pancaked layers, seeking, searching, never giving up, consecrated to finding the lost sheep. And if Jesus finds her, when Jesus finds her, he will bear her on his shoulders and rejoice." On Tuesday, God was where God always is - intimately involved in the lives of his people: comforting them in their dying moments, upholding their families in their pain and grief, filling the rescuers with his Spirit and determination, and planting the seeds of hope and resurrection in all of us who mourn the loss of our fellow citizens and of our own sense of security, because Easter teaches us that there is always the hope of a resurrection to a new and wonderful creation in the greatest of our sufferings. Evil and death have already lost, even though their pain still remains. That's why Archbishop Desmond Tutu is able to say, "I am always hopeful. A Christian is a prisoner of hope. What could have looked more hopeless than Good Friday? ... There is no situation from which God cannot extract good. Evil, death, oppression, injustice - these can never again have the last word, despite all appearances to the contrary." Therefore, when we turn back to our televisions and see again for the hundredth time, the massive plumes of dust and debris rising over the Manhattan skyscrapers, let's imagine that that is the smoke of a sacrifice on which we have placed our doubts and despair, so that we may be unhindered in feeling the loving presence of God among us, bringing us new hope and a new mission of mercy to a hurting world. Amen. by Rev. Jim McCrea
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