Spiritual Hiccups - 9-11 Agitation and the Cross's Foolishness

We did not significantly alter our worship service yesterday on the ten year anniversary of the 9-11 attacks.  Those events did, however, figure prominently in the day, especially in the sermon.   I tend to prepare my sermons well ahead of time, and while this sermon gave me more trouble than most, it was still finished many days before.  Given that, I was somewhat surprised at how yesterday's worship impacted me.

I found myself ill at ease in worship yesterday, and I don't think that came from the day itself.  I think it was my sermon that bothered me.  My own sermons often bother me in the sense that I'm not happy with them or think they are not very good.  But this one unnerved and agitated me a bit.  This had nothing to do with it being a powerful sermon or such, but somehow the sermon, the service, and the day combined to make be realize how much 9-11 drew us into the world's brokenness.

Last night I got to thinking about this, and it struck me that I have become as oblivious to the deaths of people in Afghanistan and Iraq as the 9-11 terrorists were about killing people in the World Trade Center Towers.  The tens (perhaps hundreds) of thousands of combatants and civilians who have died scarcely register with me.  They are simply numbers.  That many, many more innocent civilians have died in our war on terror than died on 9-11 has bothered me intellectually, but for some reason it hit me emotionally yesterday.

One of the questions right after the 9-11 attacks was how anyone could do such a thing.  How can anyone think their cause makes it acceptable to kill completely innocent people who are just going about their daily lives?  Some have even suggested that one definition of evil is the loss of the capacity to see some other human beings as mattering, as being others like me.  The 9-11 terrorists clearly had lost that capacity.  Their cause had blinded them to the humanity they killed.  But has the same happened to me?  Do the lives of Iraqis and Afghans not matter in the battle to keep terror beyond our shores?

Yesterday I preached about how dealing with the world's brokenness often draws us into it ourselves, and I also talked about how God deals ultimately with the world's brokenness through love.  And as I read Paul's words to the Corinthian church in this morning's epistle reading, I became fixated on the phrase, "For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God."

The cross is foolishness.  It is no way to battle evil.  It makes no sense.  How can turning the other cheek, praying for enemies, and going to the cross without even a struggle, do any good?  No wonder we reduce Christian faith to getting our tickets punched to heaven.  It doesn't make sense in our real world.  It is pure foolishness.  And somehow yesterday made it clear to me how much trouble I have embracing that foolishness.

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