Sermons After Tuesday: A Postscript
September 11, 200l, is not the day that changed our world. The world,
the cosmos, what we call history, was changed in thirty-three A.D. Preaching
after September 11, 200l, requires that what happened on September 11,
2001, be narrated in the light of cross and resurrection. To be sure,
this is a task easier said than done. I do not relish the task these
preachers faced. Stilled and stunned, stunned to silence, it was their
duty to preach, to proclaim the Good News of the Gospel. It is not for
me, one who does not have the responsibility to preach the word of God,
to praise or criticize, to stand in judgment, on these sermons.
I cannot even say I am glad I have had to read these sermons. In the
face of September 11, I distrust words. I fear no matter how hard we
try to say what needs to be said, what we say may threaten to explain
when no explanation is possible. For me, a person seldom at a loss for
words, I find my continuing reaction to September 11, 200l, to be one
of silence. I simply do not know what to say. At least one of the reasons
I have nothing to say is because I am a pacifist. I am, whether I like
it or not, committed to Christian nonviolence. The horror, the terror,
the strange beauty of the violence on September ll, calls for a response,
a violent response. Being a pacifist does nothing to free me from the
desire to set things right by punishing those who perpetrated such an
outrage. Conflicted I remain silent, fearing any words I may say would
suggest a confidence I do not have.
Yet surely it is a good thing the church required those ordained to preach
the Gospel to stand before their congregations the Sunday after September
11, 200l. That they were able to do so draws on the hope made possible
by cross and resurrection. Of course what they said is important, but
at least as important is that they had no choice but to proclaim that
God is God and we are not. The difficult challenge, however, is to proclaim
the Gospel without the proclamation being captured by false comforts.
For example, I do not envy the challenge these preachers faced, determined
as it was by to whom they were preaching. Were they preaching to Americans
or Christians? The claim that September 11, 200l, forever changed the
world is a claim shaped by the narrative of being an American. As Americans
we feel violated, vulnerable, fearful. We hate those who have made us
recognize our fear. We hate those who have made it impossible for us
to trust our neighbors. We hate the loss of security, the loss of comfort
that comes from routine. We want normality. I think we are right to
want all this, but we must remember that these desires--if we are Christians--must
be shaped by our fear of God.
I often try to explain the work I have done in theology and ethics by
telling the joke about the Lone Ranger and Tonto. It seems that the Lone
Ranger and Tonto found themselves surrounded by twenty thousand Sioux
in South Dakota. The Lone Ranger turned to Tonto and said "This
looks like a pretty tough situation, Tonto, what do you think we ought
to do?" Tonto responded, "What do you mean by 'We,' white man?"
I use this joke to suggest why my work has been an attempt to help Christians
reclaim the Christian "we." For example when George Bush declared
at the beginning of the Gulf War, "We must oppose naked aggression
wherever it occurs," unfortunately too many Christians assumed they
were included in that "we."
My use of this joke, however, risks not only being out date (few college
students even know who the Lone Ranger was) but also may oversimplify.
The joke seems to suggest that we must choose between being Christian
or American. But our lives are too entangled with the stories that make
us American and Christian for easy separation. The sermons in this book
rightly reflect and struggle with the inseparability of those stories.
Inseparable though the stories may be, however, it is crucial if we are
to preach the Gospel that the stories that constitute America not be allowed
to determine what we as Christians must say and hear.
In his "Introduction," Willimon observes that churches that
lacked substantive liturgical habits had fewer resources to resist the
American flag becoming the central symbol for congregational worship.
I am sure Willimon is right to suggest that if our sanctuaries are empty
they will be filled with alien forms of life. Of course red, white, and
blue are Christian colors. Red is Pentecost, white is Easter, and blue
is Mary's color; but for Christians these colors are never sewn together.
Unfortunately when they are sewn together, they threaten to overwhelm
if not replace their role in reflecting as well as forming our vision
as God's people.
Willimon also suggests that in the absence of determinative liturgical
forms it is not surprising that some of the sermons after September 11,
200l, offer humanistic advice aimed at taking away or at least assuaging
the pain. Indeed some of these sermons seem to try to "get God off
the hook" or, failing that, to show that even though we cannot understand
how God could allow this to happen to people like us, believing in God
remains important if we are not to be crushed by the terror of September
11, 2001. As understandable, as human as these responses are, I think
they fail to be appropriately disciplined by the Gospel. Christians--at
least Christians who Sunday after Sunday read the Psalms--should know
the question "Why do bad things happen to good people?" is not
a question Christians should ask.
Which is but a reminder that more important than sermons preached after
September 11, 2001, is the kind of preaching that shaped the life of congregations
prior to September 11, 200l. For if Christians had no way of discerning
how their being Christian might involve tension with being American prior
to September 11, 2001, you can be sure that they or those that preached
to them after that date would be unable to say how the Christian response
can and must be distinguished from the American response. The sentimentality
and pietism that is so prominent in American sermonizing could not help
but grip our imaginations and speech when confronted by the horrible events
of this day.
For example, I have tried to think how Augustine might have responded
to September 11, 2001. After all he wrote The City of God at least
in part to make clear that it was not Christianity that made Rome vulnerable
to the barbarians. According to Augustine, Rome was only reaping what
Roman pride had sown. Augustine asks us to consider the somewhat surprising
fact that something in humility exalts the mind and something in exaltation
abases the mind.
But devout humility makes the mind subject to what is superior.
Nothing is superior to God; and that is why humility exalts the mind
by making it subject to God. Exaltation, in contrast, derives from
a fault in character, and spurns subjection for that reason. Hence
it falls away from him who has no superior, and falls lower in consequence.
That is why humility is highly prized in the City of God and especially
enjoined on the City of God during the time of its pilgrimage in this
world; and it receives particular emphasis in the character of Christ,
the king of the City. We are taught by the sacred Scriptures that the
fault of exaltation, the contrary of humility, exercises supreme dominion
in Christ's adversary, the Devil. This is assuredly the great difference
that sunders the two cities of which we are speaking: the one the community
of devout men, the other a company of the irreligious, and each has
its own angels attached to it. In one city love of God has been given
first place, in the other, love of self. (The City of God, l4,
l3)
Ask yourself when was the last time you preached or heard a sermon that
suggested that most of our lives are determined by pride? When was the
last time you preached or heard a sermon that named how we are possessed
because of our pride by the powers that take the form of institutions
we assume we "control"? When was the last time you heard or
preached a sermon that intimated that the pride in "Proud To Be An
American" might not be a "good thing," given what Christians
think about pride? Jerry Falwell was, of course, wrong to suggest that
what happened was a judgement on American divorce and abortion cultures.
He was not only wrong, but the god he assumed was doing the judgement
is not the Christian God. After all, God does not punish us for our sins
but our sins are punishment. Yet I cannot help but think that Augustine
might well have seen in those proud buildings, those elegant buildings,
manifestation of a pride that knows not the humility of Christ.
Let me be clear. I am not suggesting that the people that died on September
11, 2001, "deserved" their deaths. Nor am I suggesting that
we should see in that horrible destruction the direct hand of God. Rather
I am simply pointing out that as Christians we have been lazy in our speech
habits and, in particular, in our sermons just to the extent we have failed
to help one another name how our lives are caught in modes of life Augustine
identified with the City of Man. We have allowed God to be relegated
to the realm of the "personal" and as a result we have no way
to narrate America in the way Augustine narrated Rome.
Some of the sermons in this collection at least suggested that we could
not afford to think of what happened on September 11, 2001, without remembering
the abuses to the world perpetrated in the name of America as well as
the lives lost daily through starvation and poverty. Those that called
our attention to these abuses (if that is not too easy a word) did so
without in any way excusing or justifying the murders perpetrated on September
11, 2001. I think it is right and good to remind us that what happened
on September 11, 2001, did not cancel the many wrongs that have been and
continue to be done in the name of America. Yet we must be careful not
to let what happened on September 11 become an occasion for us to trot
out our views, views well formed before the eleventh, about what is wrong
with America.
I think there is much wrong with America. I think there is and continues
to be much wrong with American foreign policy. Yet I must be careful,
as those who have the courage to hold up those wrongs in sermons, to theologically
discipline my outrage. For example the sense of unity Americans seem
to feel after September 11, 2001, is surely a judgement on the church.
Unity is what we are about as Christians. Eucharist is the feast of unity.
That Christians find themselves captured by the unity offered by the flag
is surely a sign that the church has been less than God called us to be.
That unity is the same unity that makes us so hesitant to kill in the
name of loyalties less than our loyalty to Christ.
Which finally brings me back to silence. Silence inhabits the edges
of our words. If we are to preach truthfully after September 11, 200l,
we must not try to say too much. We must not pretend we have an answer
to explain what happened or know what response we--and who is the we?--might
make. I have no pacifist foreign policy. I believe the church is God's
foreign policy. Which makes it all the more important that we be able
truthfully to preach God's word. I wished I had a sermon I might share
as one attempt to preach God's word after September 11, 200l. I have
nothing so developed as a sermon, but I do have a prayer. It was a prayer
I wrote as a devotion to begin a Duke Divinity School Council meeting.
I was able to write the prayer because of a short article I had just read
in the Houston Catholic Worker (November 16, 200l) by Jean Vanier.
My only prayer is that my prayer is to the God who in the face of terror
miraculously calls forth lives like Jean Vanier who believes God has saved
us from violence by giving us the good work of living with those called
"retarded."
Great God of surprise, our lives continue to be haunted by
the specter of September 11, 2001. Life must go on and we go on keeping
on--even meeting again as the Divinity School Council. Is this what
Barth meant in l933 when he said we must go on "as though nothing
had happened"? To go on as though nothing has happened can sound
like a counsel of despair, of helplessness, of hopelessness. We want
to act, to do something to reclaim the way things were. Which, I guess,
is but a reminder that one of the reasons we are so shocked, so violated,
by September 11 is the challenge presented to our prideful presumption
that we are in control, that we are going to get out of life alive.
To go on "as though nothing had happened" surely requires
us to acknowledge you are God and we are not. It is hard to remember
that Jesus did not come to make us safe, but rather he came to make
us disciples, citizens of your new age, a kingdom of surprise. That
we live in the end times is surely the basis for our conviction that
you have given us all the time we need to respond to September 11 with
"small acts of beauty and tenderness," which Jean Vanier tells
us, if done with humility and confidence, "will bring unity to
the world and break the chain of violence." So we pray give us
humility that we may remember the work we do today, the work we do everyday,
is false and pretentious if it fails to serve those who day in and day
out are your small gestures of beauty and tenderness.
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