Holy Cross Day (Transferred)

If, before this week, there were some Americans who did not realize it, then certainly it is clear to all of us now that we have enemies. There are some who do not like us, some so angry with us that they are willing to die to hit us, and hit us hard, at the most obvious symbols of our life and wealth and power.

Tuesday, September 11, will turn history. But which way will we turn? And how will we walk?

Today we walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

When the psalmist walked through the valley of the shadow of death, he feared no evil. "For God, my Shepherd, is with me," he said, "his rod and his staff, they comfort me."

When the prophet Isaiah walked through the valley of the shadow of death, he called upon that same Shepherd: "Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth,...and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those whose hope is in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint."

The psalmist and the prophet, both of whom walked through the valley of the shadow of death before us, offer us wisdom and hope here.

Sooner or later in life, all are "persons of sorrow, acquainted with grief." Loss and sorrow and grief have visited all of us this week. To some this loss and sorrow and grief are immediate and intense and clear; they know what they grieve for. They grieve for a wife or a son or a sister or a friend who died in a plane hijacked and deliberately crashed by angry men.

The grief of others, equally intense and personal, is clouded by uncertainty. Their loved ones are missing, and may never be found.

But for the rest of us, for those of us who did not lose a son or a grandmother or a friend this week, our grief, though not so personal or well-defined, is clearly real. It is real, on the one hand, because we know that Jesus speaks the truth: that "no one knows the day or the hour. When that day comes, two will be in the field, one will be taken, the other left." Sooner or later, all of us are "persons of sorrow, acquainted with grief," and all of us die.

The grief of the entire nation is also real, because we know that a strike against one of us is a strike against us all, and because we know, if only imperfectly, that a seismic change has occurred. History will turn. All of us have suffered the loss of the illusion of "business as usual." Life will change.

But will our thinking change?

After Hiroshima, that earlier seismic event of half a century ago, Einstein said, "Everything has changed, except the thinking of human beings."

Will our thinking change now, after the World Trade Center? Which way will history turn this time? How will we walk?

The prophet says that those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. I have no doubt that this is true. But we cannot expect to "soar on wings like eagles" again next week; we can't expect soon just to pick up where we left off before Tuesday. God does not work that fast. Things have to be done. The dead have to be buried. We have to grieve. We have to heal. Plans have to be made about where we go from here. Perhaps it is enough, for now, to hope that God will give us the strength just to walk and not faint. Running and not growing weary and soaring on the wings of eagles will have to wait.

But how will we walk? Which way will we go? How will we turn?

We can, it seems to me, choose to turn inward and to walk in fear. We can choose to lock the doors and arm to the teeth. We can choose the path of suspicion of all who, though innocent of any crime, are from another country or speak a different tongue or have a different color of skin or a different religion. We can choose to divide the world into "them" and "us" and to call upon a god that we believe walks with us, but not with them. We can choose to ask that god to strike out on our behalf at what we fear. If so, then we will reap the harvest of that god.

But hear, O Israel, the God of the psalmist and of the prophet, the God of Jesus, the God of Islam as well, the Lord, is One. He is our God, but he is also the God of those who struck us hard on Tuesday. So if we put our trust in this God, if the Lord is the God with whom we walk through this valley of the shadow of death, then he is Lord of all. And he is there for all, for our enemies as well, not just for us.

And that, it seems to me, should lead us to realize that the enemy who struck us is our brother. And the question is why? Why did he do it? Why is our brother so angry with us that he hits us so hard?

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is One. The Creator is the Creator of the whole world, and of all its peoples. The Shepherd is Shepherd of all. And the Redeemer is Redeemer of all. And if that is the case, then this is, spiritually speaking, a family problem. And the questions are: What is the problem? And what is the solution?

Tuesday, September 11, will turn history. But that event itself also has a history, a history at least 50 years long, actually longer, a history of which we are a part. So why is our brother angry with us? Why does our brother so want to hurt us? Is there anything we can do about it, not just to hit him back, but to help solve the problem?

These, it seems to me, are the kinds of questions our nation might profitably ask at the same time that we take steps to try find the ones responsible for hitting us and to try to prevent our being hit again. They are questions which might help us shape the kinds of steps we take in the coming weeks. And they are questions which will, most certainly, be necessary for the shaping of any livable future.

So where does this leave us in the weeks and months and years ahead? How will we walk, which way will we turn, where will we stand?

How will we walk, which way will we turn, where will we stand as Americans? How will we walk, which way will we turn, where will be stand when we consider that our most basic values call us not to vigilantism, either at home or abroad, but to a rule of law that respects all persons, regardless of religion or color or national origin?

Instead of threatening to burn down mosques where our fellow citizens pray, should we not ourselves stand in the doorway with the imam, as, I am proud to note, our mayor and three council members did on Friday, the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance, Holy Cross Day in the Christian Calendar?

Our forefathers were not afraid to measure the sin within as well as the sin without. As early as 1782, when he considered the commerce between master and slave, Thomas Jefferson saw the bitter conflict that history was shaping, a conflict as yet on a distant horizon, 80 years in the future. "I tremble for my country," he said, "when I reflect that God is just." Before we invite the "grapes of wrath" in 2001, before we invoke that Day of the Lord on which one will be taken and one left, should we not first dare to stand with Jefferson to consider just where God's justice is and just where God's wrath might fall?

For as the Scriptures make abundantly clear, God's justice will be secured by God's swift sword, not by ours. Last Tuesday will turn history, but last Tuesday also has a history. Do we dare plunge into the future in anger without sober consideration of the reasons for the anger of the past?

"But these are enemies!" you hear it said. "Enemies must be destroyed." Yes. But I am reminded of the way another of our forefathers destroyed his enemies. I am reminded that after the Civil War, after that bloodiest war in the whole world in the 19th century, after that gruesome conflict which Jefferson feared, there were those in the northern states who were angry with Abraham Lincoln because he insisted on restoring and rebuilding the southern states instead of occupying and plundering them. "Mr. President," they argued, "one is supposed to destroy his enemies." "Do I not destroy my enemies," replied Lincoln "when I make them my friends?" Should we not stand for a while with Lincoln to explore whether there are ways we might be able to make our enemies our friends?

As Leonard Pitts said in response to last Tuesday, in these difficult days following the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, it is important that we do the work necessary to save Americans, but it is at least equally important that we do the work to save America. To save the America of the Declaration of Independence, the America of the Constitution, the America we pledge our allegiance to, one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.

I know that Tuesday's events were atrocities of the first magnitude. I know, as well, that those events require a response. But before invoking the grapes of wrath of the God of justice, should we not remember, as Martin Luther King reminded us, that the moral arc of history is long, and that God's justice will be secured by God's swift sword, not by ours?

Finally, how are we to walk, which way are we to turn, where are we to stand as Christians? How are we to walk, which way are we to turn, where are we to stand as we remember today that earlier seismic event that turned history, the crucifixion of our patron and Savior, Jesus? How are we to walk in the Church of Our Saviour on this Holy Cross Day in the Year of Our Lord 2001? How are we to walk, which way are we to turn, where are we to stand as we baptize six children of God into the Name and Way of Jesus?

Talk about a slaughter of innocents! When we nailed Jesus to the Cross, he was guilty of no offense. There were no words of remorse as we nailed his hands and feet to the wood. Not from Pilate, not from Caiaphas, not from the soldiers who had mocked him and spat upon him, not from the crowds who jeered, not from any of the disciples who had walked with him for years but had betrayed and denied him.

But Jesus answered not with the grapes of wrath, but with this prayer: "Pater, aphes autois." Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.

And it is here that we find good news. It is here that we find good news for this week, and good news for the future. For if Jesus had not spoken these words, not only with his lips but from his heart, if Jesus had not begged his Father to forgive us for what we were doing to him, there would have been no resurrection.

Resurrection is not a kind of magic fashioned by God from on high. Resurrection is a reality that God makes possible to us here on earth. Resurrection, life, as Jesus makes clear in story after story in the Gospels, is forgiving others as we have been forgiven, because if one does not let go of the evil committed against him, then he simply finds himself tied to that evil, bound to it as if bound to a corpse that slowly putrefies and kills you. If, in other words, we do not let go of the evil committed against us, we find ourselves in hell.

"But I know a way out of hell," said Gandhi to a fellow Hindu, who came to confess to Gandhi in tears because he had been so angry with what he had considered Muslim injustice that he had grabbed a small Muslim boy and killed him by bashing his head against a wall. "I am in hell," the man cried. "I know a way out of hell," Gandhi quietly replied. "Find a young boy who is orphaned, a Muslim boy, and take him into your home and rear him as your own. Only be sure to rear him as a Muslim."

Forgiveness is not surrender. Forgiveness is not denying that an offense took place. Forgiveness is not a matter of denying that it hurt. Forgiveness is taking control. Forgiveness is a matter of refusing to allow the person who has committed evil against you to set the agenda for the future.

That's what vengeance does. Vengeance is allowing the perpetrator of evil to set the agenda for the future. Vengeance is what happens when the person who has suffered evil allows the perpetrator of evil to set the terms of his response. And, inevitably, evil is perpetrated yet again, to the injury and misery of all.

Forgiveness is the way in which the one who suffers evil takes control of the situation. He refuses to allow the one who has done him evil to be in charge.

When Jesus said, "Father, forgive them," what he was saying was this: "You can arrest me and mock me and spit on me. You can hijack my airplanes and bomb my buildings and kill my countrymen. You can even nail me to a cross. You can kill my body. But you cannot kill me. You cannot, under any circumstance, make me someone I refuse to be, a person of hatred and bitterness and revenge. I am still free to be who I am. I am still free to love, regardless of circumstance. Therefore..." (There's that big word in the Bible again: therefore....) "Therefore, Father, let it go, because they don't know what they do."

We will have to respond to Tuesday. The question is: How will we do it? With what tone of voice and heart and spirit will we respond? As William Temple reminds us, "It is possible to be right repugnantly." Will we respond in a way that draws the world toward us, or in a way that repels the world from us? Will we respond in a way that denies the most basic things we say we believe in, or in a way that confirms who we are and most want to be? Will we respond arrogantly, seeking some kind of satisfaction and self-righteousness, or will we respond firmly, but humbly and with grim necessity, all the time saying with Lincoln, "We want to be your friends. Is there something that we can do, together, to make that happen? But, my brother, we're not going to let you hit us again."?

On Friday, President Bush noted that adversity introduces us to ourselves, and that this is true of nations as well. The question is: Who are we? And who will we choose to be in the future?

Jesus knew -- perhaps it was Jesus who taught Lincoln -- that the mystery of evil can be responded to effectively only with the mystery of love. So Jesus spoke as Pastor Maclean spoke, long before Pastor Maclean himself said it, insisting that because we will not give up our own true selves, because we will not live in fear, we leave vengeance to God. Therefore.... Therefore, we are free. We are free to love. Free to love even those we do not understand and free to love even those who do us harm, even our enemies. And, regardless of circumstance, we are free to love completely, without complete understanding.

This is the way and this is the Name into which we baptize these children of God this morning. As Christians, is this not the way we must turn? Is it not where we must stand? Is it not the way in which we must walk?

Perhaps today, so soon after the event, we are unable to do this as if soaring on eagles' wings. Perhaps today, we are able to do this only by walking and not fainting. But this strength, too, is grace. And perhaps, for today, it is sufficient.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.