Sermon for the 15 th Sunday after Trinity – August 31, 2008
“ Be not anxious for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than the food, and the body than the raiment? ”
THE FUTURE is out there, lurking. It hides behind the next corner, ready to pounce: the surprise that is going to take away what you have and stomp you into the ground is inevitable. Just look at what's already gone. Your retirement is being eaten by inflation. Your dreams of leisure are being stolen by debt and calamity. Just when you think you might make ends meet, someone moves the ends. Just when you get your computer running fine, some menace sends a virus through the internet and fries your hard drive. Peace? It's a fond dream, but there truly is no peace.
People are anxious, distressed, approaching burnout all the time. Christianity, which would seem the antidote to all the world's troubles, cares and woes can be an unexpected battlefield. Two of my fellow pastors in Chico, during my 17 years here, have had serious breakdowns while in the ministry. At our pace of life, it's surprising that more people don't go postal. And when we get home, sit down to a glass of wine and dinner, we plop ourselves in front of the television and either watch the bad news, or else some simulated police story shootout. We run to violence. We rent horror films. We are entertained by seeing other people scared to death. We eat sugar, grease and white flour pastries to stress the body more, then “enjoy” disc jockeys shouting on radios turned up too high, talking and texting on cell phones while driving, and cussing out the drivers who get in our way.
American life is wild, isn't it? The world looks at us and wonders how we survive. Europeans, who take at least a month's vacation every year, and eat real food while visiting friends in cafes, think we're working ourselves to death. People in Iran—I'm serious, I've been there—wonder how we are brave enough to go outside into our American streets because they've seen the amount of violence and frequent bloodshed depicted in our TV shows. Americans eat stress and diets of fast food, then demand tax-paid heart bypasses and chemotherapy. Can we stop and look around? Do an assessment?
9/11 did not take our peace away from us. Islamic terrorism was as predictable as hurricanes in Louisiana and high gas prices. Islam is not new, Jihad not a new idea. Let's just sit quietly and calmly and figure this out.
Islam was the product of Mohammed who claims to have heard the words of the Quran given him by an angel in a cave. The thrust of the Moslem faith is submission to Allah, the one and only God, who had sent prophets such as Abraham, Moses and Jesus, and now finally Mohammed. He would unite the factional tribes of Arabia and take this faith to the world with a curved sword. Islam did away with Arab idolatry still prevalent in the 6 th century AD. This holy war against the infidels was shockingly successful and within a century Islam had conquered from India to all of North Africa, and another 500 years saw it take in Asia Minor and Byzantium, parts of Eastern Europe, Spain to Indonesia. The later Ottoman Empire lasted 600 years.
The 20 th century in the West unsettled more than just the maps of Europe, Africa and South America. The Ottomans were finished after WWI. In this destabilized world, new forces brewed underneath settled cultures, thousands of years old. A return to glory in the name of Allah fanned the embers of Jihad in the souls of a few Moslems, from the heart of Arabia. The Munich Olympic Massacre of 1972 ushered in a legacy of surprise evil attacks on unsuspecting people. 11 years later, the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. 2 years later, the hijacking of the Achille Lauro ocean liner and TWA flight 847 . 5 years later, Pan Am 103 over Scotland. Another 5 years would bring the first attempt on the World Trade Center. That was 1993. The Cold War had just ended and we thought we had world peace. 5 more years would see embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya with 224 dead, over 4000 injured. The USS Cole 2 years after that only set the stage for September 11.
What am I painting here? A group of hate-filled jihadists know they can amass no army, obtain no country to fight for them—not since the Taliban and Sadam fell. Small, outnumbered, yet highly funded and completely ruthless, they go about in hiding to do the unthinkable and seek a reaction of fear, terror and vengeance. The West came back predictably, inevitably, seeking them out and battling it out on ancient Middle Eastern streets. Half of their victory is pushing others out to fight and die. The other is watching most of the Moslem world cower in homes and mosques, fearing that any stranger might be carrying a bomb. The point is: terrorism is employed to keep Moslems under the control of a small, relatively disempowered minority of cowardly men, and to make the West think that all of Islam is shooting at us.
Fear is our greatest enemy. It takes away our reasoning. When we fear, we lose options, close our eyes, do battle with shadows and defeat ourselves. Terror's greatest weapon is hate, and we must exert great effort not to succumb to it. Our own media has been completely overtaken, for its own ends, and only reports the horror of suicide bombings, not new schools and streets, and the previously unknown peace returning to war-torn Iraq and Afghanistan. Terror exaggerates its power—that is what it's name means: an overpowering terror and fear that controls a population and drives it underfoot or out to war for its own ends. If we act toward Islam out of fear, the terrorists have won. If we fail to act against barbarism and criminality, the terrorists have won. We walk a knife's blade, and we can only do it successfully in prayer.
For 1400 years Islam has been there, untouched by the Gospel, unavailable to the truth of which it is a heresy. Christians have feared rather than loved the Moslems. While sitting there quietly, the Islamic world was difficult to reach into. Now, in this terror-driven world conflict, a power that cannot win exposes the world of Islam to its greatest vulnerability: a real exchange of ideas and truth with the Christian West. We have never had this opportunity. We may never have it again. The greatest unrequited love on earth, the single most passionate desire restrained by circumstances, is the longing to reunite the great peoples of America and Persia. Governments and media hype distort and obscure that truth, but the people feel it. We can't leave each other alone. It's the farthest thing from indifference. It will result in one end or another.
If we are not praying for that end to be a loving expression of Christians toward the people of the Middle East, with swift and loving help to rebuild their world after the ravages of the terrorists are quelled, we will miss this greatest of opportunities to rescue the souls of a billion people.
Tomorrow is the beginning of Ramadan, one of the five pillars of faithful Moslems. They fast from dawn to dusk for a month, and pray for God to reveal Himself to them. The entire month of September this year, the whole Moslem world will fast and pray. If we retire to our bacon burgers and reality shows, and occasionally think hateful and fearful thoughts about the vague threat of Islamic terror, we lose. If we use this month truly to learn about and pray for the East—will God not act in some meaningful way?
Jesus saw the worry on the faces of His Middle Eastern countrymen while speaking to them on the Mount, saying: “ Be not anxious for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than the food, and the body than the raiment?” Mt 6 He shows them birds that feed, and lilies of the field that grow and are naturally clothed, then compares their value to human life. God made them all, and will He not take care of them all? If we commit ourselves to Him by prayer and faith, will He not give us a good result?
St. Paul told the Philippians : “ The Lord is near. Have no cares; but in everything with prayer and praise put your requests before God. And the peace of God, which is deeper than all knowledge, will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” Phil 4:5-7 Solomon wrote: “It is of no use for you to get up early, and to go late to your rest, with the bread of sorrow for your food; for the Lord gives to his loved ones in sleep.” Psalm 127:2 St. Peter said, “[Put] all your troubles on him, for he takes care of you.” 1 Peter 5:7 David sings: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me, Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. ” Ps 23:3 “The Lord is my light and my salvation; who is then a cause of fear to me? the Lord is the strength of my life; who is a danger to me? When evil-doers, even my haters, came on me to put an end to me, they were broken and put to shame. Even if an army came against me with its tents, my heart would have no fear: if war was made on me, my faith would not be moved.” Psalm 27:1-3
Peace? Is there peace in a world with such violence and hatred, mistrust and disinformation? Shalom , says the Jew; and exactly the same, Salam says the Arabian: Peace , when they meet anyone. Not everyone wants peace. But if the peace of Christ can rule our hearts and cause us to pray for, not prey upon, the people who are held in the fearful grip of terror, a terror we yet don't feel or understand, our love and faith may create a path for them out of their darkness. What did Jesus say?
“ Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Be not therefore anxious for the morrow: for the morrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Mt 6 God knows what we need, from food to shelter to public safety and security from enemies. We need not worry ourselves sick about them: God knows already. Before you even give these things a thought, and before you knock yourself out trying to chase the elusive dollar: what? Seek first the kingdom of God —not America, not the West, not even a fabled Christian world, but that reality where God is the king and you are His subject. And His righteousness —living the life God intended for you, in thought, word and deed. Come under that kingdom, within that Covenant, and see what He will do for you, and moreover, what He will do for the ones you pray for—pray for, not against.
If Jesus could admonish us to love and pray for our enemies, tell me: just whom does that leave out of our prayers this coming month?
PFH+