For me (and, I suspect, for many preachers), 9/16 is a date inextricably linked to 9/11: it was the day we had the task of standing in the pulpit and presenting the gospel response to the terrorist attack on America. That day found me the guest preacher at the Church of the Good Shepherd, a congregation of my denomination (the Reformed Church in America) in Lynnwood, WA, on the north side of the Seattle area. They were between permanent pastors at that point, and I had agreed several weeks before to fill in for the Sunday between the departure of one interim pastor and the arrival of the next. To preach to a strange congregation five days after 9/11 was a daunting task, especially with one as inexperienced as I was, but it had one great benefit: it gave me something to focus on that helped me absorb and process the shock of what had happened.It’s interesting, seven years on, to go back to that sermon; it certainly shows my inexperience, but I think the thrust of it was right. If I needed to use it again, I would no doubt rewrite a fair bit of it, but I could keep the core as is. Indeed, when almost three years later, our community in Colorado was hit by what I think we can fairly call an act of local terrorism, that’s pretty much what I did. For all that it’s clearly the work of someone who hadn’t preached very much, I can stand by what I was doing my best to say. (For anyone who’s interested, the sermon follows after the jump.)***********The world changed this week. When terrorists flew airliners into the twin towers of the World Trade Center and into the Pentagon, the earth shook, and those towers, those great mountains raised up by human effort, fell; and the world changed. It was not just Manhattan or Washington, D.C. that shook, it was the earth under our feet; we were shaken, as these symbols of our country were attacked in a way that we have never been attacked before. We were shaken by the loss of life—the hundreds aboard those four airliners, the thousands more who died in the buildings which were hit; the firefighters and police officers who died trying to help those caught in the wreckage. Through the network of relationships that unites us across this country as family, friends, and colleagues, we have all been touched by the fear and pain of this last Tuesday. September 11, 2001: this day will live in infamy alongside December 7, 1941, and we will never be the same again; we mourn the loss of thousands of lives, but we also mourn the loss of a little more of our innocence. What words can possibly work to describe what happened? Unthinkable? Unbelievable? Horrific? This was a disaster movie produced and directed by Satan; it was designed to kill and to destroy, as our enemy so loves to do, but also to shatter the foundations of everything we hold true. The world has changed, the earth has moved, and we will never again trust it in quite the same way. Yet there is hope, even as the horror of last Tuesday echoes in our minds and hearts: in the midst of this upheaval, there is still a place to stand where we will not be shaken. With all that has changed, we need to remember what has not changed. We need to remember that God is, and what that means for us.Let’s look to the Psalms this morning, and hear God’s reassurance. Open your Bible with me to Psalm 46, and let’s read that together:God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging. Selah
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.
God is within her, she will not fall;
God will help her at break of day.
Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall;
he lifts his voice, the earth melts.
The LORD Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah
Come and see the works of the LORD,
the desolations he has brought on the earth.
He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth;
he breaks the bow and shatters the spear,
he burns the shields with fire.
“Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.”
The LORD Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.” “Trouble” seems far too mild a word for what the psalmist has in mind—“disaster” would be more to the point. First, there is natural disaster, and the language is vivid, evoking the earthquake to end all earthquakes: the earth heaves so fiercely that the very mountains crack and collapse; their rubble falls into the ocean and causes great waves, great enough to shake the remaining mountains all over again. It is a scene of incredible physical terror—but the psalmist says, “We will not be afraid, because God is our refuge, our strength and our help.” Second, there is potential national disaster, the threat of the nations against the city of God; but the city will not fall, because God is there. No matter what disaster may come, God is very near to us, and he is our refuge.In the midst of disaster, God is our refuge. We can rest in him and he will protect and comfort us, body and soul. If you look at your outline you’ll see the opening of another psalm, one of my favorites, Psalm 91: “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty,” as the NIV has it. The psalm gives us the image of a bird comforting its chicks, protecting them from the traps left by the hunter and from diseases which could kill them; under God’s wings, in his shadow, we are safe from diseases of the spirit and those who would attack our souls. We may not be free from pain, but we are comforted.But as we look out at the world this week, we still see the suffering. Who can forget the images of a 110-story building collapsing into so much twisted, broken wreckage? Who can forget the nightmare thought of secretaries, janitors, and receptionists who actually found jumping out of windows 90+ stories up their best hope of survival? And it doesn’t end there. The television still shows us shattered buildings, rubble everywhere, people in grief and shock; how could this happen? Is the Devil bigger than God after all?The Psalmist’s answer is firm: No. Even in the midst of suffering, destruction and war, God is in control. In Isaiah 45, the prophet puts this even more strongly, as God declares, “I am the LORD, and there is no other. I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things.” In other words, what happened on Tuesday didn’t take God by surprise; he isn’t pacing around his throne room pulling out his hair trying to figure out what to do about this situation. In all the circumstances of life, in all the trials we face both huge and smaller, the one who is our refuge and our help is in control of the situation. As your congregation looks for a new pastor, and as you suffer setbacks in your search, God is in control. As you struggle with difficult relationships, whether in your family, at work, or elsewhere, God is in control. As you or someone you care about fights serious illness, God is in control. As those of us who are unemployed look for jobs, God is in control. And yes, as men with evil in their hearts turn our airlines into weapons of inconceivable mass destruction, God is in control. He has not been outwitted; he has not lost the battle, much less the war. The God who is our fortress and our help is still the one writing the story, and evil will not have the last word.But this raises a hard question: if God is in control, if he is the one writing the story, then why do we get chapters like this week? Why does he allow such evil and suffering?I don’t have any easy answers; and if I did, I don’t imagine you’d trust them. There aren’t any easy answers. In part, we know that when God created us, he gave us the dignity of freedom, to choose to follow him or not; and he respects us and leaves us free to choose, even though so often our choices pierce his heart. At the end, God will tell all the nations, “Be still, and know that I am God,” and all evil will be banished, but until then he gives us the dignity of being able to say no to him. But that’s only part of the answer; it doesn’t tell us why evil succeeds, why things don’t go right the first time. How much of a change, really, would it have taken for the men who carried out this attack on our country to fail rather than succeed in their efforts? A few alert, suspicious security guards, perhaps, and none of those planes are hijacked.I don’t know; but if I have learned anything in my life, it is the lesson C. S. Lewis put so well: that “God whispers in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain.” God is shouting to us in this time—it may just be a coincidence, but did you notice that the date of this attack was 9/11? 911. Perhaps this is an emergency call to a nation that is in desparate need of God. And people are picking up the phone. On CNN, a newscaster admitted that “Even if you don’t believe in God, at times like this you want to reach out to a higher being for salvation.” As horrific as this attack was, even this God can turn to his purposes, even this he can use to rescue people who are lost and need him; even from these black, evil, poisonous roots, God can grow beautiful flowers.God whispers in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain. And so, as the great Catholic mystic Julian of Norwich once wrote, God did not promise us, “You will not be troubled, you will not be belabored, you will not be disquieted”; but he did promise us this: “You will not be overcome.” Therefore we will not fear, though the earth shake, the mountains fall, and our cities be attacked; we will not fear, though we struggle financially, or with our families, or with our past; for God is our fortress and our help, and he is still in control, whatever may come.And we will not fear because in the midst of our weakness, God is our shepherd. Let’s turn to our second psalm, Psalm 23:The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
he restores my soul.
He guides me in paths of righteousness
for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and love will follow me
all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.Our God is no impersonal God—he knows each of us by name, and he watches closely over each of us; he cares for us and takes care of us as a shepherd watches over and takes care of his sheep. He wants us to know and love him as he knows and loves us, and he wants us to call on him when we are uncertain, when we are in need, when we are in pain, when we are in danger. That, after all, is what a sheep does: when it realizes that it is lost in the wilderness and has no idea where its flock and shepherds are, it will lie down and begin to bleat at the top of its lungs so that the shepherd can come and find it and bring it back to the flock. The sheep knows it’s in a bad situation, but it trusts the shepherd to take care of it, and God wants us to trust him in the same way.We can trust him for a couple of reasons. First, in our uncertainty, God is our guide; he leads us as a shepherd leads his sheep. He leads us in the paths of righteousness—not crooked paths which will wear us out uselessly and waste our efforts, but the right paths, those which will take us where he has called us to be; the paths which will lead us to growth in righteousness. When we wander from the path, he leads us back, even when that means lifting us up and carrying us. But the straight path is often not the easy one; in Israel, the best way from one pasture to the next often led through deep, narrow canyons and ravines where the steep, high slopes kept out the light, where the sheep could only trust and follow the sound of their shepherd’s voice. In the same way, the path for us often leads us through pain and suffering, through valleys like this week when the road is too dark for us to see beyond the next step. In times like these for our nation, when the weight of suffering and loss seems too great to bear, God is our shepherd. In this time of uncertainty for you in this church, God is your shepherd. We are in this place, we are in this time, dark as it is, because God has led us here, because this is the right path, the path that will bring each of us where he wants us to be; but he has led us into the valley of the shadow of death in order to lead us through it and out into the light once more, and he is here to comfort and protect us in the darkness. “God did not say, ‘You will not be troubled, you will not be belabored, you will not be disquieted’; but God said: ‘You will not be overcome.’” That is a promise for us this morning, here in the valley of the shadow.The promise, too, is that God will meet our needs, because he is our shepherd; in our need, he is our provider. That, after all, is how Psalm 23 begins: “The Lord is my shepherd, I will not be in need.” He provides us with green pastures and quiet streams, not merely meeting our physical needs but doing so in a way which refreshes us and gives us rest. He restores my soul, the Psalmist says.Do any of you feel the need to have your souls restored this morning? I know I do; there have been times in the last few days when it seemed wrong and unfair somehow that we had blue skies and sunshine and could still see the beauty of the day when at the World Trade Center the sun had not shone since Tuesday for all the smoke. Others I know felt violated by this attack; my brother’s comment, after a long conversation, was, “I want my country back.” Another friend of mine said he has been walking around in shock since hearing the news, that part of him is frozen up inside. The promise to us this morning is that God meets us at this place of our need, that he will restore our souls.God is our strength in the midst of disaster, and our shepherd in the midst of our weakness; he provides for us in our need and guides us through the darkness. Through everything we face, God is with us. That is why we need fear no evil as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death—because God isn’t leading us from up ahead somewhere, he isn’t sending us on from behind, he is walking through the valley with us, carrying his staff to keep us on the right path and his rod to drive away enemies. That’s why he is able to restore our souls, because he is with us in our hurts and losses and fears. That’s why he is our refuge and strength when we are under attack. And it’s why we can trust him when we don’t know how we’ll pay the bills . . . when we fear what the future holds for us . . . when we don’t know what to do next . . . when someone we love is sick . . . and even when we watch the news and hear the death toll from Tuesday’s attack: because he is with us. He was there with those people who lost their lives in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, he was there with the passengers who died on the airliners, he was there with the firefighters who rushed in when the first tower was hit and died when it fell on them, he is there with those who have lost sons, daughters, husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters; he is here with us this morning as we struggle to come to grips with what has happened, as we think of those we know who escaped or are among the missing, and as we deal with all the other problems and struggles that fill our lives. He is here with us in his Spirit, and his Son came and walked the very same earth we walk. He knows us, he knows us inside and out, he loves us more than we will ever understand, and he is here with us to care for us as a shepherd cares for his sheep. We worship a God whose name is Immanuel, God with us, and if we are too weak to stand that is just fine with him; he wants us to lean on him as he leads us through—and out of—the valley of the shadow of death and into his glorious light.
