Buying Trouble

Once again, this is a sermon designed to offer a basic explanation for Christianity's appeal to so many people.  It offers talking points for further examination of the Faith.

Romans 6:23

In her book, Kingdom without Borders, Professor Miriam Adeney tells about the experiences of Christians in the non-western world.

Here is some of what she says about the experiences of Christians in Iran.

Reliable sources estimate that there are more than 800,000 followers of Jesus inside Iran.  But following Jesus is costly.  Some believers are fired from their jobs.  Others are imprisoned.  Even when they live in distant countries, some Iranians have been grabbed by masked men, shoved into cars and whisked away.  In recent years numerous prominent pastors have been killed…

Muslim regimes do not foster religious freedom.  Certain minorities like Jews, Baha’is and some ancient Christian groups are tolerated because these people have never been Muslim.  It is conversion out of Islam that is prohibited.[1]

   As Adeney says, the problem exists beyond Iran.  Back in 2006, the western news media was focused on the fate of Abdul Rahman.  Rahman was a 41-year-old Afghan who converted to Christianity while working in Pakistan.  He lost his family because of his conversion and was unable to return to his homeland where converting to Christianity is a crime.  Essentially homeless, he began to wander through Europe hoping to find asylum.  Because he lacked proper papers, he was deported back to Afghanistan in 2002.

Once there, he tried to see his daughters, but his wife’s family reported his conversion and he was arrested.

He was put on trial in Kabul where prosecutors sought the death penalty for his refusal to return to Islam.

The Afghan based Ariana TV reported on the trial.  From the story, we know the prosecutor asked Rahman, “Do you confess that you have apostatized from Islam?”  He answered, “No, I am not an apostate.  I believe in God.”

The prosecutor then asked, “Do you believe in the Quran?”   Rahman answered, “I believe in the New Testament and I love Jesus Christ.”

Western leaders, including Condoleezza Rice, put pressure on the Afghan government to release him.  Finally, the Italian government offered him asylum and he was allowed to move to Italy.

His story is a reminder that living for Christ in some places is buying trouble.  Still, men and women in Islamic countries are becoming Christians.  In some nations, where militant Hindus react violently to Christian converts, men and women continue to turn to Christ.  In communist nations, where being a Christian limits your opportunities and may put you in conflict with the law, men and women continue to put their faith in Christ.   And, in Western nations like ours, where conversion is not illegal, those who truly embrace faith in Christ may find themselves facing the ridicule and disdain of their friends.  Sometimes Christians face disapproval and rudeness by coworkers who have deep-seated prejudices against Christians.   Still, men and women quietly take their stand for Christ in the workplace. 

Why do these people buy trouble for themselves?

Apparently, they believe it is one situation in which buying trouble is worth the cost.

Those who trust Christ believe it’s worth the trouble because it links them to the most remarkable Man who ever lived.

 Remember Rahman’s statement in court:  “I believe in the New Testament and I love Jesus Christ.”

Christian missionaries and evangelists may debate philosophy with non-Christians, but missions and evangelism is not about debating ideas; they’re about presenting a Person.

In Jesus, you’ll find a Man of remarkable compassion.

--toward the outcasts.  Lepers were the outcasts of the outcasts;   other outcasts didn’t want to have anything to do with them.   A leper once asked Jesus for help.  “And His heart was moved with pity for him, so He stretched out His hand and touched him, and said, ‘I do want to heal you!  Be cured!’”  No one would touch a leper but Jesus did.

--toward those who’d made wrecks of their lives.  (John 8àA woman who had been caught in adultery learned Jesus was more interested in getting her life back together than in making an example of her.

In Jesus, you’ll find a Man who was continually challenging.

--what he said and what he did inspired curiosity because he was a Man who couldn’t be easily explained.  Consider the story Mark tells about what happened one dark and stormy night: 

Late that day he said to them, “Let’s go across to the other side.”
They took him in the boat as he was. Other boats came along.
A huge storm came up. Waves poured into the boat, threatening to sink it.
And Jesus was in the stern, head on a pillow, sleeping! They roused him, saying, “Teacher, is it nothing to you that we’re going down?”
Awake now, he told the wind to pipe down and said to the sea, “Quiet! Settle down!” The wind ran out of breath; the sea became smooth as glass.
Jesus reprimanded the disciples: “Why are you such cowards? Don’t you have any faith at all?”
They were in absolute awe, staggered. “Who is this, anyway?” they asked. “Wind and sea at his beck and call!”

--he challenged the way they thought about God.  One of the biggest ideas he tried to get across was the notion of God as Father.  “Our Father”—he taught them to pray.   In one of Jesus’ best-known stories God is depicted as a waiting father who yearns for nothing more than to embrace his wayward child.

  His teachings and his miracles were all hints which led his followers toward a remarkable conclusion:  Jesus was God incognito.  After the crucifixion and the resurrection, Jesus’ followers recognized the truth—this Man who had been challenging them for three years was God in the flesh.  God had lived among us to show us what he is like and to call us to himself.

Gandhi once asked E. Stanley Jones how he found God.  Jones said, “I didn’t find God—he found me.  Religions teach man’s search for God and the gospel teaches God’s search for man.”

So, the most amazing challenge to the way they thought about God was the fact that God himself came here to solve the problem we couldn’t solve for ourselves.  It’s the problem of our estrangement from God.

Those who trust Christ believe it’s worth the trouble because Christ offers the best hope for positive change in the world.

I just mentioned Gandhi.  You know him as the man who tirelessly worked to free India from British control.  He’s known for his policy of non-violence which he claimed was inspired by Jesus.  Though he was not a believer, he greatly admired Jesus and it’s said he always carried a copy of gospels with him.  We rightly admire his passion for liberty.

Yet, Bertrand Russell—an agnostic—pointed out that Gandhi was successful only because he was appealing to the sympathies of a nation that had been Christianized. 

In his inaugural address, Jesus revealed his mission went beyond what we usually consider spiritual issues.  In his hometown synagogue at Capernaum, he applied a passage from Isaiah to himself.

God’s Spirit is on me; he’s chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor, Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, To set the burdened and battered free,

Jesus healed sick souls and sick bodies.  He filled empty hearts and empty stomachs. Elton Trueblood said Christianity is the most materialistic religion in the world.  By that, he meant we have a concern for this world as well as the next.

Most religions have a concern for the poor; so does Christianity.  But Christians are to be concerned for the poor because they are made in God’s image, because they are men and women for whom Christ died.  That’s why we care for them, not because helping them helps us toward heaven.

Christianity is not about escapism, it is about engagement with the world to make the world different.  We may sing “this world is not my home,” but the thought of heaven doesn’t give us permission to ignore the world’s problems any more than the fact we’ll be only be there overnight gives us permission to trash our hotel room.

Bible translator J. B. Philipps explains the Christian’s attitude toward the world.

Christianity is an invitation to true living, and its truth is only endorsed by actual experience. When a man becomes a committed Christian, he sooner or later sees the falsity, the illusions, and the limitations of the humanist geocentric way of thinking. He becomes (sometimes suddenly, but more often gradually) aware of a greatly enhanced meaning in life and of a greatly heightened personal responsibility. Beneath the surface of things as they seem to be, he can discern a kind of cosmic conflict in which he is now personally and consciously involved. He has ceased to be a spectator or a commentator and a certain small part of the battlefield is his alone.

Jesus never allowed his followers to separate the love for God from the love for others. When his critics asked, “Which one commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus said, “Okay, here’s both of them.”  Of course, what he said was, “Love God…love your neighbor.”

Wherever Christianity has gone it has built schools, hospitals, and orphanages.  Christians were the first to build hospitals to care for all people, not just the wealthy. 

If we want to make a positive change in the world, we will continue to preach Christ.  We will do so even if we are called narrow-minded, bigots, unenlightened, ignorant.  We will buy that kind of trouble because Christ makes a difference.

Those who trust Christ believe it’s worth the trouble because Christ resolves the greatest problem we face.

About a year before my first knee surgery, Pat and I visited San Antonio.  You probably know it’s a beautiful city with a rich history.  Of course, we saw the Alamo which is forever etched in Texas and American folklore.  And we saw the river-walk, that section which allows you to shop, eat, or just walk along the river. 

There are several ways down to the river-walk, most of them involving stairs.  At that time I tried to avoid stairs as much as possible so we were happy when we discovered that, just a block or so from our hotel, there was an elevator which went down to the river level.  It promised to be such a blessing.

Well, as soon as we stepped into the elevator and the door closed, we realized we weren’t the first people to have used that elevator.  The stench of urine and stale vomit assaulted us.  I don’t know if the homeless or drunken tourists were responsible for the elevator’s condition, but we never used it again.

What the Bible calls sin has that kind of impact.  Talents, gifts, and abilities that might have been used to make the world a better place have been sullied and corrupted.  They’re not precisely unusable but they are forever marked as being something other than they were intended to be. 

This is how we explain those gifted people who use their God-given talents to harm or abuse people.  It explains how the people who gave the world Beethoven and Bach could flock after a beast like Hitler.  Chesterton thought those who denied the reality of sin were foolish since the notion of human sin is the only Christian doctrine which is empirically verifiable.

God created humankind so we might forever have fellowship with him.  Sin makes that impossible.  It’s a problem we can’t solve.

Yet, God deals with our sin by offering forgiveness, not on account of what we have done but because of what Christ has done. It’s an act of grace—God’s unmerited good will.

Paul wrote, “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” 

The religion which Abdul Rahman left behind imagines that after death we will stand before a great set of scales.  Each of us will watch as our good deeds are weighed against our sins.  If our good deeds outweigh the bad, we may enter heaven.  If they don’t, we face hell.  No one knows what the outcome will be until death; the only sure way to make it into heaven is to die as a martyr.

Too many around us believe Christianity teaches much the same thing.  They believe our hope of heaven rests in our good works.  That kind of thinking only leads to despair. 

The gospel offers a far different hope.  That person who rests on Christ’s work has God’s own word promising forgiveness.

Jesus provides what no amount of self-effort could ever provide.  No wonder so many who trust him are ready to buy trouble for themselves.

Those Christians who are willing to buy trouble for themselves know it’s worth the cost.  Do you?  Knowing its worth, they’re willing to take a stand for Christ.  Are you?

---

[1]  Miriam Adeney, Kingdom Without Borders:  the Untold Story of Global Christianity, Downers Grove:  InterVarsity Press, 2009, p. 145.

One Nation

The following message was preached this past Sunday at a special event for our church.  For the first time, the two groups using our facility met in a single service with our congregation.  One group includes several Filipino Christians and the other is made up of a group of Indian and Pakistani Christians. 

John 17:20-21

Sometimes we forget that peoples from outside the West have a whole history and tradition we know little about.  That may reflect a preoccupation with our own history or, worse, a tendency to be more interested it who’s going to win an Emmy than what happened more than ten years ago. 

Historian David McCullough reported to Congress on the state of history education in the US.  Among other things, he told of the results of a question asked of a group of high-school students.  The students were asked to name the commanding general of the American forces when the British surrendered at Yorktown.    More than half said it was Ulysses S Grant.  I suppose we should be happy they knew Grant was a general and not simply the name of a country band from New York.  Some six percent said it was General Douglas MacArthur.  Some of you will recognize MacArthur’s name and know he was a great general.  He had a long history in the army but not quite that long. 

So it’s no wonder we’ve forgotten some aspects of Christian history.

We read the Book of Acts and thrill at the stories of faith we find there.  For almost half the book we travel with Paul on his way toward Rome.  We admire him so much we may not notice that the gospel actually beat him to the Empire’s capital.  In fact, we may forget that as Paul was heading West with the gospel, others were heading north, south, and east with the story of Christ. 

We don’t know the names of all these missionary-evangelists but there were many of them. 

Tradition which isn’t necessarily true (but may have never been proven false), says Mark took the gospel to Egypt.  In any case, he is the patron saint of the Coptic Christians.

Another tradition says the Apostle Thomas took the gospel to India.  Again, we don’t know if that’s a fact, but we do know Christianity probably reached India before it reached Britain.  For many centuries there were thriving churches in the East, only after years of persecution did those churches fall into decline.  And Christianity never completely died in those areas. 

The rise of Islam greatly curtailed the spread of Christianity in western Asia.  So for centuries there were no missionary ventures into the areas.  Finally, Columbus found a new world which was neither new nor lost, proving the world was round, a fact many people had known for centuries.  With that discovery came a new desire to carry the gospel to new places.  Within thirty years of Columbus’ discovery, priests arrived in the Philippines.  In time, the islands would become the one Christian stronghold in sea of Muslim nations.   Today, some 94% of the population is Christian making it the largest Christian group from Korea and Japan to Lebanon and Jordan. 

By the end of the sixteenth century, for the first time in the history of the world Christianity had been introduced to every continent—except, perhaps, Antarctica. 

What explains this passion to carry the gospel?  From the beginning, God wished to show his grace to all peoples.  Paul put it this way in I Timothy 2:4—“God wants all people to be saved and know the truth.” 

Because of texts like this Christians everywhere have felt compelled to send out missionaries to other nations.  Around the world many churches support missionaries sent to the United States to reach various peoples.

We speak of Christianity being made up of many nations and many peoples, but to some extent that is not true.  In one sense, the church is not made up of Christians from many nations, not made up of many peoples.  Christians are one new nation, one new people.  This was Paul’s point when he wrote the Ephesians that “you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.” (Eph 2:19)  It was what he had in mind  when he wrote the Galatians, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal.  3:28)

Last week we recalled the terrible attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11.  We saw those attacks as the sad evidence of how divided our world is.  Yet, if we truly lived in light of God’s vision for us, the gospel would be the greatest unifying factor in history.  

We face a rising tribalism.  We see more and more people stress the significance of their group over all others.  We’re told that Christianity is a means of holding people down.  Real Christianity sets people free.  This is why from the beginning despotic rulers have feared real Christianity.

Yet we sometimes forget we are to be one people, one nation.

On the night before the crucifixion, Jesus mind was on the unity of his people.  He wanted them to be one.  He made it a subject of prayer.  Let’s examine that prayer.

  We find a pattern for the unity Jesus wants in the relationship of Jesus and His Father.  (22)

of spiritual mystery.  The mystery involves the Trinity.  For most of the church’s history we’ve spent our time trying to understand the “how” of the Trinity;   we’ve sought ways to explain how the One God can exist as three Persons—the Father, the Son, the Spirit.    Some of our attempts have been better than others, but none of them have completely erased the mystery. 

Still, when we think about the Trinity we’re also reminded of how love is so much at the heart of the Trinity.  The African theologian Augustine argued that the Trinity gave substance to the biblical declaration “God is love.”  Love demands an object;   this is demonstrated in the Trinity through the Father’s love for the Son and the Son’s love for the Father. 

Okay, this is heavy stuff.  If I spent the rest of the morning talking about it I couldn’t fully explain it;   if I spent the rest of my life studying it, I couldn’t understand it.  What’s most important right now is to hear what Jesus implies about that love and intimacy in his prayer.  He tells us that the relationship of the Father and the Son is the model for the relationship of believers with one another.

 Just how this would work itself out is difficult to fathom.  So, let’s just focus on one aspect:  One of the things made clear about this Divine relationship is its unity of purpose.

The NT portrays the each Person of the Trinity as involved in redemption.

How does this apply to the unity we, as Christ’s  one people, are to express?

Our unity is primarily of a spiritual character.  While the New Testament does recognize that Christians are united through common belief and common experience, the fundamental source of our unity is a shared relationship with Christ.  Because we are “in Christ” we are in the communion of Christ.

Organizational structure cannot produce that unity.  In fact, it may hinder it. 

Unity among believers has never required uniformity.  Read the New Testament carefully and you’ll discover evidence of shared substance but different styles.  Christianity allows for diversity in our approaches to worship and ministry.  Jesus didn’t anticipate his followers being clones of one another. 

We may differ from one another in personality, gifts for ministry, vision of how we are to do God's work, but remain united in purpose.  Love—rooted in our relationship with Christ and reflected in our relationship with one another—creates a unity which transcends minor differences. 

We may come from different places, have different skin color, have different national histories.  Some would suggest we are hopelessly divided.  Some observers might suggest Jesus’ prayer could never be answered, we could never be one.  How can we hope to work together?  By recognizing that our unity is rooted in something greater history, culture, race.  It is rooted in our shared relationship with Christ. 

We are “in Christ,” to use Paul’s popular description of Christians.  That means we are not only in communion with Christ but that we are in the community of Christ.

That kind of unity validates our claims about Christ. (23)

Being in Christ  transcends differences—cultural, racial, economic, social, and ethnic.

Being in enables us to forgive and be reconciled with our enemies. 

John White suggests something of the impact this kind of love can make.

 "The church that convinces people that there is a God is a church that manifests what only a God can do, that is, to unite human beings in love . . . There is nothing that convinces people that God exists or that awakens their craving for him like the discovery of Christian brothers and sisters who love one another . . . The sight of loving unity among Christians arrests the non-Christian. It crashes through his intellect, stirs up his conscience and creates a tumult of longing in his heart because he was created to enjoy the very thing that you are demonstrating.”

We will fail to be gracious in certain circumstances, we will fail to be clear and convincing in our arguments from time to time, but the long-term consistency of our love will give a disturbing authenticity to our claims, disturbing to a world which more than anything would like our message to be declared irrelevant and outdated.

Despite the fact Jesus prayed for our unity, we must labor to maintain it.  In Ephesians  4, Paul says we are to “struggle to maintain the unity of the Spirit, in the bond of peace.”  Paul is telling us that it can be hard work to hold on to the unity we ought to have as one people of God. 

Lots of forces would pull us apart.   How can we escape these threats to the unity Christ wants us to have?  How can we open ourselves to the riches of unity with other Christians?  How can we be one people of God?

      1.  Strive to develop a personality which promotes unity. (4:1-2)

      2.  Focus on those things we share in common rather than those things in which we differ.

      3.  Get to know one another. 

      4.  Learn to distinguish between what is important and what is incidental.

      5.  Practice taking leaps of faith about other people's motives.  Trust one another until you have a reason not to.

      6.  Be willing to go beyond being a peace-keeper to become a peace-maker.

      7.  Remember there will be different and that different is not bad.

When Christians begin to behave like Christians, we will catch the attention of even the most jaded secularist.  When we stop behaving like the old barriers are still in place, the world will take notice.    

Reflections on a Tuesday Ten Years Ago

I did not preach this morning.  I was attending a wedding where everyone was looking toward the future rather than the past.  That’s appropriate because looking ahead reminds us that life goes on.  But it is also appropriate to look back.  That’s what I have done in this rambling essay.

My mother died in early 2001.  She was eighty-seven.  I’ve often wondered what her response would have been had she lived to see the events of 11 September of that year.  Of course, she would have been angry.   A lifelong Democrat whose devotion to the party of FDR allowed no deviation, she might have argued that had Al Gore been elected president the attacks wouldn’t have happened.  Somewhat conspiracy-minded, she might have believed those who claim the government actually brought the towers down. 

Sometimes she embraced simple answers to explain the unexplainable.

Lots of simple answers have been proposed to explain what happened that Tuesday morning ten years ago.  Some voices immediately began to shout, “Muslims are evil.”  The attacks have led me and countless others to read more about Islam and I am convinced that blanket statement is wrong.  A young Muslim woman began attending the Friday Bible study we conduct in our home.  That she chose to meet with us rather than at her local mosque may suggest she wasn’t the most devout of Muslims but when we met her, she was observing the fasting that is part of Ramadan.  She seemed genuinely curious about Christianity and, so far as I could tell, had no inclination to set off a bomb as she enjoyed our hospitality and the fellowship of other students.  She has since returned to her homeland and I hope she went with a positive view of American Christians.

Yet, that experience  has not prompted me to embrace the mantra voiced by President Bush and so many others:  “Islam is a religion of peace.”  I know too much about history to accept that.  The roots of the 9/11 attacks run deep into Muslim soil (whether the seeds were planted by the Prophet or reflect a corruption of his teachings is for others to say).  Fortunately, most Muslims have refused to nurture the plant and desire simply to live according to the noblest elements of their heritage.

Others looked at the 9/11 attacks and declared, “God was punishing America.”  A well-known Southern Baptist leader began declaring this within twenty-four hours after the attack.  Again, this is a simplistic answer.  Apart from implying the speaker has insights into the Divine mind the average Christian does not have, it fails to recognize that during most periods of American history behavior went on that might have inspired God’s wrath.  During the fabled Great Awakening, slavery was widely practiced and accepted, often being defended by the most orthodox of Christians.   Jonathan Edwards, whose preaching kindled the revival in Northampton, Massachusetts, owned slaves.  Of course, Indians were pushed off their lands and treaties were ignored.  God could have ample justification to punish America.

The Old Testament prophets confirm that God sometimes punished nations for their sins.  But the shape of that punishment was predicted with amazing clarity.  So far as I know, there was no prophet sanding on a street corner on 9/10/01 predicting great silver birds would fly into the towers of commerce and into the fortress with five sides.

A few voices, just after 9/11, predicted the attacks would awaken the nation to return to God.  People would repent, return to the churches, and demonstrate a renewed commitment to Christianity.  It didn’t happen.  Whatever bump in attendance there may have been following 9/11 was short-lived.  In fact, the general decline in church attendance continued; specifically, that the number of people who are “unchurched” increased from 24% in 1991 to 37% in 2011.

Moreover, as we mark a decade since 9/11, there is a new hostility toward religion in general and Christianity in particular.  Without religion, the campaign claims, the world would be a harmonious place, free from oppression, devoid of fear; you know, like the old Soviet Union.

Does religion—Christianity, in particular—make sense after 9/11?  It must to many people.  While church attendance is declining in the West, Christianity is actually growing in the global South.  Then, too, some researchers believe they see a resurgence of interest in Christianity among young Britons—especially in London. 

Still, where was God on 9/11?  I’ve often thought he must have been in the cockpits of those planes shouting, “Don’t do this!  Whoever you’re listening to, it’s not Me.”  He was in the stairwells of the towers whispering “You can do it” to those men carrying a wheelchair-bound co-worker to safety.  He was inspiring a handful of heroes as they guided strangers and friends down eighty-eight floors. 

Fanciful?  Sure.  But is it any more fanciful than resolving the question of God’s existence because he didn’t stop the hijackings or the attacks?  Why is the question of God’s existence never raised when he allows us to exercise our freedom to commit adultery, to ignore the poor, to gouge a customer, or engage in other behavior his love prohibits?  The catalog of behaviors we would have God stop probably doesn’t include behaviors we cherish.

Of course, those who wouldn’t use 9/11 to argue against the existence of God, per se, might use the event to defame religion in general.  One writer suggests the sacred writings of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all contain passages that could be construed to endorse some version of jihad or holy war.  True, some Old Testament passages, if ripped from their contexts and transformed into general policy instead of commands limited to a specific time and place, could be used to justify attacks on those with differing worldviews.  But it has been centuries since Christians have used God's command to eliminate the Canaanites as precedent for dealing with non-Christians.

While Christians generally recognize the Old Testament as a venue of God’s revelation, most Christians believe the New Testament gives that revelation a greater clarity.  And nothing in the New Testament can be used to justify war to further the Kingdom of God.  In fact, a careful reading of the New Testament seems to affirm an approach to non-Christians marked by respect and graciousness.

This is not to say we Christians don’t believe our message is true in a final sense.   Pointing to Jesus’ own claim—“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life”—we argue that all other religions, philosophies, and ideologies must be measured against the Christian worldview.  Despite the unpopularity of talking about the truth in this post-modern age, we still make that claim.  And we do so in the face of charges that any religion claiming to possess the Truth (true truth) inevitably becomes oppressive and indifferent to the rights of others to dissent.  However, we also refuse to become so pessimistic.

We Christians know how easy it is to succumb to the temptation to suppress alternative viewpoints, especially when the church is illegitimately wed to the state.  Still, we insist our Founder’s way of presenting the Truth with clarity and conviction, backed by carefully reasoned arguments and, above all, with a life of integrity has always been our characteristic way to advance the message.  Any approach that uses coercion is an anomaly.  In fact, we invite advocates of any other worldview to join us on a level playing field where we each may present our claims without fear of oppression or retaliation.  In our world, such a climate exists only in those nations that have a Christian heritage.

We are so confident of the ultimate appeal of Jesus that we are willing to allow him to be defamed and criticized.  Indeed, he modeled such humble patience.  Through the centuries we have observed how every new mocker is outnumbered by new devotees to Christ.  In fact, the mockers discover their way is dangerous, not because it leads to stoning or beheading, but because it so often prompts those who aren’t satisfied with secondhand answers to take their own look at Jesus.  This is the fulfillment of the cryptic promise Jesus made regarding his crucifixion—the event his enemies believed the final insult that would put an end to him:  “If I am lifted up, I will draw all people to me.”

Another simple explanation for 9/11 might be described as the “ugly America” explanation.  According to this theory America’s foreign policy and economic practices generated hatred that finally exploded on 9/11.

Certainly, America has sometimes run roughshod over smaller nations, though never matching the record of Spain, France, Germany, Belgium, or England.  Though this is a sad part of our history, it isn’t the sum of our relations with other nations.  At the same time, it seems disingenuous to suggest that Americans alone benefited from our presence and activity in a nation.  Ironically, the Bin Laden family accrued its great wealth, in part, through its access to the Saudi royal family, access that allowed Osama’s father to gain special favors for his family and business.  At the same time, the Bin Ladens benefited from their involvement with Western corporations, including, according to some sources, the Bush family oil-business.

Pat and I were in London on 21 July 2005, two weeks after the 7/7 bombings that left 52 dead (excluding the four bombers).   On the 21^st we were shopping at Harrods when we noticed clerks huddled together and whispering.  The background music became more soothing.  I asked a turbaned young Sikh what had happened.  In the best tradition of store clerks defying the wisdom of superiors who hadn’t walked the floors in years, he said, “I’m not supposed to mention this but there has been another bombing attempt.”  The attempt to recreate the events from two weeks before failed only because the bombs didn’t detonate, they simply smoked. 

Knowing they might be caught and held by their potential victims, the would-be bombers ran.  One of London’s omnipresent CCTV cameras captured one of the men as he hurried away.   I was in a sporting goods store when the pictures were shown on the store’s TV.  It showed a twenty-something man dressed in a jacket with New York on the front, jeans, and tennis shoes.  A clerk remarked, “Look at those Nike trainers, right, we hate the west.”  America has no monopoly on hypocrisy.

The evening of 9/11 the members of Congress gathered on the capitol steps and sang, “God Bless America.”  The image of Democrats and Republicans joining together in that act of unity inspired hope the rancor that had gripped the nation since the election would be overcome.

If anything, within months the nation was even more divided.  Ultra-liberals hinted that Bush may have known about the planned attacks and did nothing to stop them to have an excuse to invade Iraq (some even queried if Bush might have planted explosives in the tower).  Ultra-conservatives charged liberals with hoping America would lose the war and with seeing each American death as an opportunity to gain votes during the next election.

In time, such conservatives transformed the war into a crusade for American values and Christian hegemony.   Liberals came to see the singing of “God Bless America” or even its use to end a speech as just so much jingoism.  Some even charged Christians with being so provincial they thought God was interested only in America and would exclude other nations from his benevolence.  

With all the fuss over God Bless America, I suppose we ought to ask if God has blessed the nation since 9/11.  No amount of evidence will convince the atheist or agnostic but surely most Christians will agree he has.

We are blessed with a remarkable political freedom.  Prior to 9/11, the press pilloried President Bush.  After 9/11, the press pilloried President Bush.   No journalist has been imprisoned for  voicing negative opinions of the former President, despite the claims of some that the Patriot Act would fill the prisons with journalists, political science professors, and library patrons.

We have been blessed with remarkable religious freedom.  I may, if I should so choose, stand on any street corner in American and distribute copies of the Quran.  Try passing out New Testaments on a corner in Tehran or Damascus.

As tough as the times are, it’s hard to deny God’s blessing on the nation.  Some 9% of us are unemployed, yet many of the jobless are looking for work online and eagerly hoping to be contacted on their smart phones.  We are involved in two wars yet experiencing none of the shortages our parents or grandparents recall from WWII. 

As the President has said, America is a stronger nation since 9/11.  But not in every way.  There remain some blessings we need.

·         We need to be blessed with insight into our need for God.  We need to discover we are not self-sufficient, that a trusting relationship with God is a greater treasure than a cache of the newest electronics or gold coins in the safe.

·         We need to be blessed with Christians whose faith is demonstrated in their lives as well as their words.  Two thousand years ago, a small band of Christians lived with such joy and integrity before a watching world that they turned that world upside down.  Statistically we Christians may be a minority, but statistics don’t tell the whole story when God blesses his people.

·         We need to be blessed with a vision that keeps us going in the tough times.  Such a common vision will unite Christians though they may not share the same political affiliation, the same skin color, the same educational background, or the same social class.  

This weekend has reminded us that the nation is still feeling the wound of that Tuesday morning ten years ago.  We need God-blessed people to help heal those wounds.

So, may we continue to sincerely pray “God Bless America.”