Today, September 11, 2016, is
obviously an important day in our country.
It’s the fifteenth anniversary of the attacks that destroyed the Twin
Towers in New York. About three thousand
people died on that day, and it still amazes me that the number was not
higher. What happened on this day
fifteen years ago is among the most significant events that have happened in my
lifetime. If it’s not the most
significant event, it’s certainly on the short list. After all, this was not just an attack on New
York City. This was an attack on all of
America.
In the aftermath of those attacks,
a lot of Christians struggled with what the proper Christian response should
be. I mean, we all knew that we should
do whatever we could to help the victims of the attack, but beyond that, what
should we do? Some Christians believed
we should immediately launch a counter-attack against the people who did this
to us. Other Christians said we should
pray for our attackers and offer them forgiveness. There were lots of other Christian opinions
as well, from viewpoints all along the spectrum. The proper Christian response to those
attacks was the source of a lot of conversation and debate at the time.
Fifteen years later, it still
is. A lot of Christians still struggle
with the proper Christian response to those attacks and to the whole issue of
terrorism. A lot of things have happened
in those fifteen years, of course. We’ve
seen acts of terrorism all of the world, including some in this country. Luckily they so far have not been on the same
scale, but there’s no guarantee that they won’t be. In fact, a lot of people say that not only is
another terrorist attack on that scale possible, it’s almost inevitable. And we now have additional issues regarding
immigration and refugees.
If another
large-scale terrorist attack does happen, we’ll probably have the same debates
and conversations again. Inevitably,
those debates and conversations get bound up in politics, even when there’s not
an election less than two months away.
And of course, that makes it even harder for us to find answers.
Our scriptures for today give a
couple of different responses for us to choose from. The first one is our reading from Exodus, the
story of the people of Israel crossing the Red Sea. If you remember the story, Israel had been
oppressed by the Egyptians for some time, and Moses was chosen to go to Pharaoh
and get him to let them go so they could go to the land God had promised
them. Pharaoh refused until he was
convinced by a series of plagues. Then,
after agreeing to let Israel go, Pharaoh changed his mind and sent the army to
bring them back again. The people of
Israel get to the Red Sea, have no way to cross it, and the Egyptian army is
hot on their trail.
You heard the rest of the
story. God acts through Moses, parts the
Red Sea, and allows the people of Israel to cross. God gives the Egyptian army problems, they
decide to run away, and God acts through Moses to wipe them out.
There’s not a lot of forgiveness
for the Egyptians in that story, is there?
Not much tolerance, not much understanding other viewpoints. The goal is not to try to make peace with
Egypt, the goal is to destroy the Egyptian army. In fact, even after the army has decided to
retreat and run away, God does not let up on them. God does not say, “Okay, you’ve learned your
lesson, so I’ll let you go and give you another chance.” God completely obliterates them. We’re told “not one of them remained.”
On the other hand, we have the
story from the gospel of Matthew. Peter
asks Jesus how many times he needs to forgive someone who’s wronged him,
suggesting what to him was a high number of seven times. Jesus responds with a much higher, almost
limitless number. He then tells a story
about someone who asked for forgiveness and received it, only to refuse to give
forgiveness to someone else. His refusal
meant that he was no longer forgiven, either.
This is a pretty common theme in the gospels: that the forgiveness we receive from God is
directly tied to the forgiveness we give to other people. Jesus does not tell us that when someone
attacks us, we should fight back with everything we’ve got. Jesus tells us to forgive.
So, where does that leave us? Are we supposed to try to wipe out our
enemies, the way God, acting through Moses, did to the Egyptians? Or are we supposed to forgive our enemies,
the way Jesus told us to?
It’s interesting that both of these
stories give us a way to avoid applying them, if that’s what we’re looking
for. In the story of the parting of the
Red Sea, one could make the argument that it was not the people of Israel who
attacked the Egyptians, it was God. All
the people of Israel did was run away; God did the fighting, not Israel. So, one could argue, when we’re attacked, we
should let God fight our battles for us, not fight them ourselves.
On the other hand, in the story of
forgiveness from Matthew, the question Peter asked Jesus was “if another member
of the church sins against me, how many time should I forgive?” One could make the argument, then, that in
the case of terrorist attacks, we are not sinned against by members of the
church. So, one could argue, what Jesus
said about forgiveness does not apply.
I also don’t think we can just
solve the dilemma by saying, “Well, the story of the Red Sea is the Old
Testament, and the story of forgiveness is the New Testament, so we have to
follow the New Testament and forget the Old.”
It’s not that simple. As
Christians, and as United Methodist Christians, we say that we believe in both
testaments, the new and the old. We say
that both of them are the inspired word of God.
It’s not a good answer to say that we’re going to ignore certain parts
of God’s word just because we don’t happen to like them or because they
complicate things for us.
Another thing that complicates this
is that we can find sincere, committed Christians on all sides of this. There are sincere, committed Christians who
believe in a strong military, so strong that we are not just able to prevent
attacks but so strong that no one would dare attack us. There are sincere, committed Christians who
believe that war is never justified, and that we need to make deep cuts in our
military. There are also, of course,
sincere, committed Christians at many other points along the line.
Because of that, I’m not going to
stand here and tell you what I think the Christian position is. I don’t think I have the authority to do
that. If I say, “here’s the Christian
position”, I’m implying that anyone who disagrees, is not really a Christian,
or at least not a very good one. Not
only don’t I believe that, I don’t think I have the right to decide who’s a
Christian and who’s not. God decides
that, not me.
What I will do is tell you some
things we all need to consider as we think about this and similar issues. This is not a full list, but I think doing
these things will help us as we try to sort it all out.
For one thing, we should not assume
that we already know it all. In the
fifteen years since the World Trade Center attacks, and as we’ve seen other
acts of terrorism, a lot of us have pretty well decided what we believe. That’s okay, but we should also not be afraid
to re-examine what we believe. We’re all
allowed to change our minds.
Also, we should never believe
something just because someone else believes it. That’s the case even if that someone else is
someone we really respect. We need to make our own decisions, not just trust
the opinions of others.
One thing we should definitely do
is pray. You probably knew that one was
coming, but it’s necessary. We should
pray in all circumstances, of course, but we should especially pray when we
need guidance, and this is an area in which we need guidance. God will probably not just pop an answer into
our heads, but the more time we spend in prayer, the closer we will be to God,
and the closer we are to God, the more likely we are to live our lives the way
God wants us to live them
We should also read and study the
Bible. After all, the Bible is God’s
message to us. There are lots more
scriptures that talk about these issues than just the ones we looked at this
morning. We need to read them and study
them.
We need to be willing to struggle
with these issues. It’s okay for us to
not have an answer right away.
Sometimes, things take time to work through. We need to think about this to the point that
we know not just what we believe, but why we believe it. We need to be able to have solid reasoning
and scripture behind what we believe, not just a vague feeling that we’re
right.
Finally, we need to accept those
who disagree with us. That’s not to say
we need to agree with them, but we need to realize that some of those who
disagree with us have struggled with the issues just as much as we have. They’ve prayed, and they’ve studied, and
they’ve come up with different answers.
They may not be right, but they are still sincere Christians who love
the Lord just as much as we do. The fact
that we may disagree with someone, even if we have a pretty strong
disagreement, does not change that.
Jesus never promised that being a
Christian would be easy. When Jesus was
on the earth, his disciples struggled with a lot of issues. Today, two thousand years later, we continue
to struggle. That’s okay. It’s not our job to have all the
answers. It’s our job to be faithful, to
love others, and to leave the answers to God.
The one thing we know is that, no
matter what happens, God is always in control, and God will win in the
end. If we trust that and do our best,
God will take care of the rest.
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