Sermon Text - Brokenness, Love, and Hope

Exodus14:19-31 (Matthew 18:21-35)

Brokenness,Love, and Hope

JamesSledge                                              September11, 2011

Manyof us here today can remember where we were 10 years ago when we first heardabout the attack on the World Trade Centers. I was in the church lounge as people arrived for the first meeting of aFall, weekday Bible study.  I heardreports of a plane hitting the first building from some of those people as theyarrived. 

Mostall of us later saw the images of the towers with smoke pouring from them,followed by the sickening sight of them collapsing down on themselves.  Those horrible images of the buildingsfalling and dust swallowing up that part of Manhattan are forever seared intomy brain, as I imagine they are for many of you.

Andnot only did those events imprint themselves onto our memories, but they havegreatly altered our lives.  Flying on an airlinechanged dramatically.  Relationships withMuslim neighbors are still a point of conflict and division.  We have been more than willing to exchangesome of our freedoms for a bit more security. And we are still embroiled in seemingly endless war in Iraq andAfghanistan, wars costing trillions, but whose true costs are impossible tofully measure.

WhenI began thinking about what I should say or do on this Sunday, I was a bittaken aback to discover the Old Testament reading for this morning.  Our verses from Exodus bring to a closeIsrael’s escape from slavery in Egypt, a story filled with more than its shareof carnage and terror. 

A series ofhorrible plagues, including the death of every first born in Egypt, human andanimal alike, finally convinced Pharaoh to recognize God’s power. 

ThePassover and escape from Egypt are the events that form Israel into a people,and our reading marks the end of those Passover events as Israel now leavesEgypt and heads to Mount Sinai, the mountain of Yahweh. 

Israelhas come out of Egypt, but Pharaoh has had a change of heart and pursuedthem.  When the Israelites saw theEgyptians, in fear they cried to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves inEgypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness?  What have you done to us, bringing us out ofEgypt?  Is this not the very thing wetold you in Egypt, ‘Let us alone and let us serve the Egyptians’?  For it would have been better for us to servethe Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.” It seems that the Israelites were no more certain about God orMoses than was Pharaoh.

Whathappens next is well known, if only from the movies.  Moses stretches our his hand and the watersare dried up.  I can picture it easily,with Charlton Heston playing the part of Moses and Cecil B. DeMille specialeffects creating a dry path through the sea. Crossing the sea on dry ground is part of the imagery of our scripture,but it ends with a more troubling one.  Israelsaw the Egyptians dead on the seashore.

Thesongs of Moses and Miriam that celebrate this event in the verses immediatelyfollowing today’s reading speak repeatedly of horse and rider thrown into thesea.  And Israel saw the Egyptians deadon the seashore.  I wonder ifthat image was seared into those Israelites minds the way 9/11 is for many ofus.  To be certain, it is a much happierevent for them, but it is not a pretty picture. 

Inthe Exodus story, God’s intervention in the world’s brokenness on the side ofthe oppressed seems to drag God into that brokenness.  Dealing with evil produces greatcarnage.  Thousands of first born liedead, and Israel now gazes on Egyptian bodies lying on the shore.  The Passover events state powerfully God’scommitment to Israel, which includes a promise made to Abraham that all thefamilies of the earth shall be blessed through him.  But the problem of the world’s brokenness, ofevil, of oppression and violence and slavery remain.

Itturns out that God deals with this more fundamental problem of the world’s brokennessin a very different manner, not with violence or plagues, but with Jesus’suffering and self- sacrifice.  I thinkthe gospel reading this morning is jarring next to the story of slaughter inthe sea.  Forgive over and over, and notbegrudgingly but from the heart. Otherwise you will be counted among the wicked, a part of the world’sbrokenness.  Granted the forgivenessspoken of here is within the community of faith, but Jesus is more than happyto extend this requirement beyond the Church, telling us to pray for ourenemies and do good to those who persecute us. 

Notmany wanted to hear Jesus say such things in the aftermath of 9-11.  Not that people didn’t come to Church; worshipattendance swelled, but it quickly waned. The religious impulse inspired by 9-11 evaporated in much the same waythat the good will of the world shortly turned to animosity and the sense ofunity we felt as a nation degenerated into one of the most divisive andpartisan times our nation has known. It’s strange in a way.  For amoment, the horrors of 9-11 pushed us toward one another and away from thebrokenness of the world.  But then wemoved back toward brokenness.  We wantedvengeance.  We were afraid and we wantedsecurity.  We distrusted anyone whowasn’t “with us.”

Theawful events of 9-11 stand as a terrible monument to the world’s brokenness, tothe reality of evil and inhumanity in the world.  The firefighters and police who rushed intothe Twin Towers stand as an enduring reminder of the human capacity for selflessness,the willingness to risk everything, to give one’s life for another.  But what will the enduring legacy of 9-11be? 

Thatis still a work in progress, but I fear the work is not going well, at leastnot from a Christian perspective.  Infact, it seems to me that a truly Christian perspective is largely absent fromthat work.  The Church has too rarelyspoken on Jesus’ behalf in discussions about how to respond and move forward inthe aftermath of  9-11.  We have checked our faith at the door whenentering the arena of patriotism, politics, and war.

Myown faith has never led me to become a pacifist, though I sometimes wonder ifthat is more a lack of nerve than good theology.  But I am tentatively convinced that theworld’s brokenness at times requires the use of force to protect the innocentand vulnerable.  But this always involvesbodies on the shore.  It is alwaystragedy.  Yet we Americans have carefullynumbered our men and women who bravely gave their lives in Afghanistan and Iraqwhile hiding from view all those Afghan and Iraqi bodies on the shore, numbersestimated anywhere from 100,000 to over a million.

Butif the occasional use of force is at times warranted this side of God’sKingdom, it is a provisional, stop-gap measure that draws us into the world’sbrokenness, a brokenness that God finally overcomes not by force, but by love.  As Christians we are, perhaps, sometimescalled to take part begrudgingly in the use of force.  But as the body of Christ, our identity isrooted in love and mercy and hope and forgiveness.  And I still recall the words of the preacherat the National Cathedral in the days just after 9-11 when he cautioned usabout how we would respond to the great evil of 9-11, “lest we become the evilwe deplore.” 

Tenyears later, as we remember those who died, as we look back at how the worldhas become a very different place, we who are people of faith need carefully toconsider where we have placed our hope and trust.  And as I consider the strange contrastbetween Old and New Testament readings this morning, I find myself clinging toseveral truths.  In a broken world, Godsides with the weak, the vulnerable, and the oppressed; and against thepowerful and mighty.  God’s ultimatevictory over evil and brokenness comes not by might, but by mercy, grace, andlove.  And in Christ, we are invited tobecome part of that victory even now.