On Sunday - Past Sermon

Sermon Title: "9/11 & Katrina:  God's Place In All of This "
Date: September 11, 2005
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  Genesis 50:15-21

Four years ago today, the morning of September 11 opened as usual in the Ensley household.  The alarm went off at 6, and I instinctively reached for the TV remote and clicked it on.  Even before a picture came to the screen, we could hear the voice of Katie Couric.  This at once seemed odd, as the Today show doesn’t begin until 7 a.m.  “Did we oversleep?” Peggy asked.  When the picture came on TV, we could see smoke coming from the World Trade Center.  ‘Must be a fire,’ I thought.  Within a minute we were informed of the true situation, and were watching at 6:03 Pacific time as the second plane crashed into the south tower.

September 11, 2001, exactly four years ago today, was the worst attack in American history, and it burned into our brains a series of heartbreaking images that will stay with us forever.  The Twin Towers falling.  The Pentagon exploding.  Flight 93 crashing into the ground.  A firefighter carrying away a flag-draped victim.  The twisted rubble of Ground Zero.

It wasn’t long before the terrorist attacks became known by the shorthand expression “9/11.”  Then, when terrorists planted bombs on commuter trains in Madrid, killing 191 and injuring more than 1,500, the attack was dubbed “Spain’s 9/11.”  And a San Francisco columnist who switched from liberal to conservative in the aftermath of the attack on America called himself a “9/11 Republican.”

So here we are, living in a post-9/11 world.  We’ve seen the evil that people can do.  We’ve seen the devastation that natural disasters can do, both in the Southeast Asian tsunami last December and in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  We’ve seen the spirit of sacrifice and service in firefighters, police officers both after 9/11, bravely giving up their own lives in the line of duty to save others, and in bringing order and recovery to New Orleans.  We’ve seen an outpouring of generosity in ordinary citizens after all three of these tragedies, both in terms of gifts of monetary relief and in selfless acts of compassion towards the homeless, the shocked, the grieving.  But something in the human psyche continues to raise the question, “Where is God in all this?”

Some say they saw God in the bravery of rescuers who rushed into burning buildings after the airplanes hit.  Others point to God’s power in the passengers who overcame the hijackers on Flight 93 over Pennsylvania.  In the past week in Houston, clergy of every denomination and religion—Episcopalians next to Pentecostals, Muslims serving with Catholics, Baptists alongside Buddhists—have teamed to render compassionate aid and counseling to those displaced by Katrina.  Surely God is present in their work.

Yet we sit here today, four years after 9/11, nine months after the tsunami, and two weeks after a hurricane whose recovery is predicted to take years—still wondering about the place of God in these awful events.  And as we look for answers, it makes sense to go back to the beginning, to the book of Genesis, and discover how our ancestors responded to attacks that were as unexpected and as evil as the suicide missions of 2001 or as devastating as the results of Katrina.

In particular, let’s look at the story of Joseph, the favorite son of a man named Jacob.  If I had been using the Old Testament lectionary readings for the past six weeks, you’d be well acquainted with Joseph’s own personal 9/11, which occurred when his brothers become overwhelmed with jealousy, and conspire to kill him.  “Come now,” they said fourteen chapters before today’s climax, “let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; then we shall say that a wild animal has devoured him” (Genesis 37:20).  No doubt the anger of the terrorists who attacked the United States four years ago was fueled, at least in part, by this kind of resentment and jealousy.

Joseph, after all, was the brother who seemed to have everything, who seemed to always get his way, who seemed to have influence over their father.  Clearly, whatever the brothers would conspire to do against Joseph—he had it coming.  So they thought.

Fortunately, one of the brothers intervenes, and convinces his siblings not to take Joseph’s life.  Instead, they strip him, throw him into a pit, and sell him into slavery.  They smear his robe with goat’s blood, and show it to their father, tricking him into believing that Joseph has been torn to pieces by wild animals.  Joseph is carted off to Egypt, where he becomes a slave of one of Pharaoh’s officers.

Fast forward to the end of Genesis and today’s climax to the story of Joseph and his brothers.  Joseph has risen to power in Egypt, and has become second-in-command to Pharaoh himself.  A famine hits his homeland, and his brothers travel down to Egypt to buy grain, not knowing that Joseph is now the governor of the land.  After a series of tests and negotiations, Joseph reveals his identity to his brothers, and they are relieved that he does not strike, stab or slay them for their previous offenses.  They fall down before him and say, “We are here as your slaves” (50:18).

They did the crime, so they expect to do the time.  It only seems fair.  But Joseph goes in an entirely different direction.  “Do not be afraid!” he says to them.  “Am I in the place of God?  Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today.  So have no fear; I myself will provide for you and your little ones” (vv. 19-21).

What a jaw-dropping response this is, from a man who had been betrayed by his brothers, tossed into a pit, and then sold into slavery.  We might expect him to be angry, but he’s not.  We would sympathize if he was bitter, but he’s not.  We would understand if he felt a need to pursue revenge with all the shock and awe of Egyptian military might ... but he doesn’t go this way at all.  Joseph focuses on reconciliation, not revenge.

So to answer the question, Where is God in all of this?—God is in God’s people, and when the world sees this, it’s a powerful lesson in our post-9/11 world.

Not that Joseph considers himself to be God, or to be playing God.  Notice how Joseph begins his statement to his brothers:  “Am I in the place of God?”  Of course not!  Joseph knows that he is not God, despite the fact that he has a position of power and prestige in a major superpower of the ancient Near East.  He realizes that he is under the Lord’s judgment and control, just as his brothers are.  They are all subject to the same divine authority, all accountable to the one Lord God for their words and for their deeds.

Unfortunately, we’ve forgotten our place in this divine-human power structure.  We often put ourselves in the place of God rather than letting God put us in our place.  Have we been playing God, or letting God play us?

Researchers play God when they create clones in the laboratory, and some very complicated ethical and moral issues arise.  Judges and juries play God—or are called to act at least as wisely as Solomon—when they must render a verdict of life or death.  Some Christians play God when they judge the depth of other Christians’ faith and devotion based on the church or denomination to which they belong.  And any of us play God when we judge and condemn a friend based on a rumor, a half-truth or a second-hand report.

In all of these activities, there is a real and present danger that we will forget our proper place in the world.  We are not–repeat not—in the place of God, but we should be in God’s place as servants, as ambassadors and as witnesses as we seek to bring forgiveness, reconciliation and compassionate aid to the world’s peoples.

I am utterly grateful that I have not heard in the past two weeks some fundamental Christian preacher from his pulpit or on television proclaiming that Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding were God’s revenge on the wicked city of New Orleans.  Such things were said after the tsunami:  that the victims who lost their lives were largely not Christians and it was God’s punishment and wake-up call to the survivors.

Only God is in the place of God.  No Pharaoh, no president, no governor and no general stands in his place—only God.  Only the Lord can be an impartial, just and eternal judge, one who “will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity” (Psalm 98:9).  This was true for Joseph and his brothers.  And it’s true for us, for our friends, for those who do violence against us, and for all those affected either by acts of terrorism or by capricious acts of nature.

It’s important to know our place in the universe, and to trust that God will fulfill his proper place as Creator, Judge and Redeemer.

The challenge for us is to know our proper place in the world, and to know the place of God in human history as well.  Our place is to be active followers of Jesus, and God’s place is to transform evil into good.  Just how God does this is always unpredictable, because God’s ways are not our ways.  But we have irrefutable evidence that God is always working to do this—we see it in the story of Joseph, when God takes the evil of the brothers and turns it into good, “in order to preserve a numerous people” (v. 20).  And we see it in the story of Jesus on the cross—Christ’s own personal 9/11—when God takes the evil of the crucifixion and transforms it into forgiveness, new life and everlasting salvation, in whose light we continue to live as Christians twenty centuries later.

God’s plans will certainly prevail, despite our tendency to toss people into pits and even crucify the Son of God.  We humans may sometimes be dreaming up evil, but God is always dreaming up good—coming up with wild and wonderful transformations, and surprising us with the ways that love can conquer hatred, reconciliation can overpower revenge, compassion can heal humanity’s hurts.  Look at the unbelievable response in giving after Katrina.  The figures in the middle of last week indicated that the American people had given $500 million.  The American Red Cross alone has received that much in cash and pledges.  Pages of the newspapers, television and internet news are all full of stories of unharmed persons reaching out to help those rendered homeless, jobless, and in some cases suffering the loss of family members.

When the Christian author Philip Yancey was asked, after 9/11, the question of where God is when it hurts, he thought for a moment and then said, “I guess the answer to that question is another question.  Where is the church when it hurts?  If the church is doing its job—binding wounds, comforting the grieving, offering food to the hungry— I don’t think people will wonder so much where God is when it hurts.  They’ll know where God is:  in the presence of his people on earth.”

This is our place:  to bind up wounds, comfort the grieving, feed the hungry, provide for the homeless, and work for reconciliation.  We can do this as individuals, as families, as a community of faith and as a nation.  We saw that after 9/11, after the tsunami, and we’ve seen that again in the past two weeks.  If we know our place, then we’ll discover God’s place, and we’ll see God’s hand at work in even the most horrifying of human events.

Our God is with us, working for good.  On 9/11, and every day.

 

(Portions of this sermon adapted from resources for the fourth anniversary

of 9/11, found in Homiletics, September-October 2005, pp. 16-20, entitled

“9/11:  In Place of God, or In God’s Place?”)