Sermon

September 4, 2005

A Sermon Preached at St. Stephen’s on September 4, 2005, by the Rev. Cork Tarplee

            A few days after Hurricane Andrew struck in 1992, a 7-year-old girl asked her father why God let it happen.  Andrew’s 160-mph winds had ripped the roof from the family’s home while they huddled in a stairwell.  Edgar, the girl’s father found himself wanting to defend God.  “I didn’t want her to think badly of God,” he said, but he was angry with God himself and so could find no words to tell her.  “I finally said, ‘I don’t understand why this happened.  But sometimes you have to lose the roof to see the sky.’”

            “Why?” is a natural and even deeply faithful question in the face of disaster.  Our deepest religious impulse in life is to try to find meaning in life.  But sometimes the chaos, brutality and senselessness of things are too much to make sense of.  We are in danger of coming up with foolish answers. My email box is full of awful stuff from the religious right proclaiming Hurricane Katrina as God’s judgment on the revelries of New Orleans .  Such viciousness might well remind us that no one understands the tragedies and sorrows that come our way. As natural as it is to wonder, “Why?” somehow the question is off base. The Hebrew book of Job continually raises the question.  Job is a good man whose home, family, business, and health are ravaged by a series of disasters. And Job asks God, “Why?”  Finally in the climax of the book, God answers Job out of the whirlwind, and the answer is anything but comforting.  God points out to Job the immensity and complexity of creation and shows him how unlikely it is that he will ever really understand any of it.  Sometimes the question “Why?” reveals just how self-centered we are.  Maybe there are some things in this life we just are not able to understand.

            Jesus faced these questions from his followers. In the 13th Chapter of Luke, the disciples bring him the news of a recent disaster and wonder, “Why?’ Jesus adds to this account of disaster another recent disaster and says in no uncertain terms that these were in no way to be considered punishments.  And then he adds the chilling message: No, these disasters weren’t punishments, “but,” he tells his faithful followers, “but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.”  The message in the disasters is not a message intended for the victims, but for Jesus’ own followers.  The same may be said about Hurricane Katrina.  There may be a great deal for us to learn from that storm.  We might remember, for example, that we are all responsible for the condition of the levies in places like New Orleans and that we have a responsibility to see that our tax dollars go to the prevention of disaster.  We might remember the hubris involved in conducting a foreign war with our National Guard, and might remember that we have important choices to make in our ballot boxes.  When cities close to home are threatened, we might well remember that it is cheaper to evacuate the poor BEFORE the disaster.  There are a lot of implications in Hurricane Katrina for our own future behavior.  “But unless you repent,” said Jesus, “you will all likewise perish.”

            More important than the implications about how we MIGHT live our lives better in the future, the message of Hurricane Katrina is about what we CAN do right now.  Our reading from the book of Romans this morning offers us all the meaning we really need.  St. Paul charges us: “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord.  Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer.  Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.”  Irish business consultant Charles Handy has two photographs on his desk, both taken by his wife in South Africa .  He describes them this way: “The first is the head of a small black boy.  He is smiling; everything about his eyes and his face radiates intelligence, enthusiasm, excitement.  It is a happy face, full of promise.  The second photograph is of the same boy, but this time the photographer has moved back, so that you now see him full length.  You see the shanty behind him, his bare feet and the excrement in which he is standing.  The two photographs may be a symbol of our challenge today, not only in South Africa .  The intelligence and the promise is there if we can only release it from the chains of its surroundings.”[1][1]

            The pictures coming out of the Gulf Coast are like that. The devastation and despair is only part of the picture. The promise is there as well.  There are lives to be transformed.  The responsibility is ours.  For now, other recent disasters have taught us that the first response should probably be monetary.  Because the church pays the organizational overhead, your entire contribution to Episcopal Relief and Development will go to food, shelter, water and medical care if you designate it for Hurricane Katrina relief.  Later, there may be even more that we can do, and I would be happy to meet at coffee hour with any of you who would like to work out a long-range community response.

            God’s presence, I think, is most clearly felt when we “love one another with mutual affection.” A force greater than a hurricane is released in a single act of kindness.  If hurricane Katrina gives us the opportunity to unleash that power, maybe that little girl’s father was right back in the aftermath of Andrew: “I don’t understand why this happened, but sometimes you have to lose the roof to see the sky.”                                                                       AMEN

 



[1][1] Charles Handy, The Age of Paradox, p. 285