16th Sunday after Pentecost

The merchants in ancient Israel couldn't wait to start selling again. Open the stores, restore the markets, trade lives for money and money for spoiled food. The merchants that Amos was talking about were just wanting to get the holy days over with so they could get back to "business as usual". You see, they weren't allowed to buy, sell and trade on the Sabbath or on the days celebrating the new moon every month. Those were holy times set aside to do God's work, not man's, and commerce was interrupted for the sake of God.

Business as usual. It's a phrase we've all heard a few times this past week, some saying we need to get back to it, others that we never will. My own experience tells me that we never will. It's not that it would take a long time or a lot of effort to get back to business as usual. In reality, it would take neither. In fact, all it would take to get back to business as usual is complacence and forgetfulness. All it would take is to pretend, just as we were doing in the days before September 11, that we are invulnerable and that everyone likes us.

The business as usual that the merchants of Amos' time were crying to get back to was the business of cheating God's people for personal gain, the business of getting fat off of making others starve and the business of using God as an excuse for taking over the lives of others. While we, in this century and this country, are not talking about getting back to business as usual in those terms, we are in danger of talking about getting back to a place where we don't have to face the reality of what has happened.

Amos wanted the nation of Israel to face the reality of what was going on around them. The leaders of the nation of Israel wanted to bury their heads in the sand and pretend that they were invulnerable to the nations surrounding them and that they could buy their freedom from being taken over by the superpowers by enslaving their own people. There are many differences between the nation of Israel then and our situation now.

For starters, we are the superpower, and we are not enslaving our people to pay off those who would harm us. Our leaders are hardly burying their heads in the sand right now. And our nation is not built on loyalty to a ruling family and its wealth, but on loyalty to the ideals of liberty and justice for all people in this land. All people. Muslims, Jews, Christians, atheists, men, women, children, people of any color or creed.

But it is not these differences that make it almost impossible for us to get back to business as usual. It is what has happened to us as a nation. It was not really the buildings or the airplanes that were attacked; it was our families and our friends. And that is why my personal experience tells me that we will never get back to business as it was the day before September 11.

Many of us have endured some kind of personal tragedy like a death in the family and we know that life just doesn't look the same after the tragedy. Life is more precious and the things that matter most change overnight. In fact, "things", per se, seem to matter less as people and relationships matter more. We find that we are willing to spend a great deal of time and money just to see a smile on a baby's face, or listen to the last words and breaths of someone whom we've spent a lifetime learning from and laughing with.

We find that what matters the most is not what we have, - but who we are - and how we love. And so we find ourselves as a nation unable to get back to business as usual because we have been brought up short by the perception of others that what we have is more important to us than who we are and what we hold to be of ultimate value. Through some cosmic under sight we have been judged as a people who do not value life, or who value life only if it is producing some tangible economic benefit.

We have been reminded of what is of ultimate importance in our lives as individuals and as a nation. President Bush said the other night that we are a nation who will fight for our principles, but not lose sight of those principles in the battle. I hope not. To do so would be to deny the very thing that many of our ancestors have fought and died for. We cannot allow the fears of the moment to make us into people we would not want to see in the mirror next week. We would not want, as a nation, to commit acts that would bring shame to the memory of those who have given their lives while securing our freedom to live by the principles of justice and liberty.

That brings us to the strange Gospel we hear today. Because it appears, if we aren't listening very carefully, and perhaps reading the text five or six times, that Jesus is giving permission to do something unprincipled in order to get what we want or need in a particular situation. Let me assure you, that is not the case!

What Jesus is doing is remarkable enough in itself, and it speaks to us as clearly as it did to those in his own time. Jesus is commenting on the cleverness of someone whose concern is merely in this realm of earthly matters. Jesus is trying to point out that the manager is energetic, cunning, hard working and quick thinking as he goes about the work of everyday life and securing only momentary gain. Why can't the people of the light be as energetic, cunning, hard working and quick thinking as the people who are concerned only with things that will not last?

Why can't we be as patient, hard working, energetic, willing to give whatever it takes, cunning and quick thinking as the terrorists are? How about showing the world how to live without terrorism and how to bring about change without taking innocent lives? Is it possible for us to put that much energy into something that may not bring us any provable and tangible benefit? Saving for the moment the idea that lack of terrorism is a tangible and provable event.

Could we put our incredible resources to bear in producing wealth for others as well as ourselves so that President Roosevelt's wish might be fulfilled that we would become a nation that sees to it that no one is in want, that not anyone in our country or any other country will put children to bed crying in hunger? Is there really enough food to go around? Enough love? Could we possibly use the incredible gifts we have been given by God for God's purposes as well as our own?

I believe we can. In fact, I believe that we can use all of our cunning and expertise, all of our energy and hard work and quick thinking to the glory of God. Does that mean we have to allow more terrorists to blow up more of our children and friends? No. Absolutely not. It means that we will use everything in our power to prevent such tragedies, in our land or anywhere else. That means that we cannot cause such tragedies either, or sit by while others do. We are to use our vast cunning and resources to prevent tragedy, not be part of it.

We must be as energetic, cunning, hard working and quick thinking when we go about God's work as we are when we go about the work of the world. That's the only way that we can hope to accomplish our task of bringing God's justice more clearly into view for all the world to see. We are a nation that allows people to deny the existence of God, but even while we allow them that freedom we must remember that it is God who has given us the freedom to deny Him and has paid the price for that freedom. It is an irony that many do not understand that God gave us principles to live by in this nation which allow us to deny the very God on whom those principles are based.

But that is God. And that is what we must remember and help our nation to remember about our ultimate truth and principles. We seek justice because we seek to show God to the world, not because we seek to destroy God's creation. We must be as shrewd as the people who work only for temporary gain and false glory, but we must not use their methods or we risk becoming as false to God as they are. We must remember the words of the Epistle of 1 John. "Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another."

We cannot serve two masters. We cannot serve hatred and prejudice and the destruction of innocent life (that is what the terrorists have served) and at the same time say that we serve God and God's ways. We stand with our Muslim and Jewish brothers and sisters as we reconfirm that it is impossible to serve the destruction of innocent human life while saying that God is served. God is surely not served when God is made to suffer.

We must be as energetic, cunning, hard working and quick thinking as we can possibly be as we go about the task of ridding the world of terrorists and terrorism as a way of doing business. And we must remember why we do it. Yes, it is to make our children safe in this world, but it is also to bring God's kingdom a little closer, to make God's light shine a little brighter and to make our own hearts glad that we are His children.

We cannot go back to business as usual. We cannot be complacent and pretend that 6000 to 7000 lives do not cry out for justice. But we can redouble our efforts to do business with each other in a new way, a better way. We can choose to seek God's justice and peace as best we know how. Not business as usual in this world, but business as unusual for the world - God's business.