Standardized Testing
September 11 , 2005
Luke 6:39-42
James 3:1-4
On this historic day September 11 we come together to worship. On this day we remember the terror and pain of planes and buildings crashing to the ground, lives ending, ash billowing through the streets, and endless streams of people running and running and running. When I close my eyes I can still feel the terror I felt that day when we didn’t know where, when or what next. We clogged the phone systems trying to reach those we loved. We arrive today for worship, the second week in the midst of the worst flood in US history destroying entire cities along our Gulf coast, with vivid pictures of boats piled up like toys, the poor drowning in waste and water seemingly forgotten and ignored, heroic displays of compassion and rescue by many people, neighbors and family members who risked it all to rescue. And, with a grassroots rescue and relocation effort like MoveOn is doing. We come together to celebrate and worship a God who loses no one and a faith story that reminds us we are a Covenant people.
A covenant is a promise between a person and God, God and a person or people. Our Biblical stories of faith are filled with covenantal promises: the rainbow promise that God will never again flood the entire earth, we have the empty tomb, the Passover, we have the exodus story. These are all times when the people of God felt and shared how God was keeping God’s promises. When people are in crisis and they are crying out to God, “Where are you?” It is God who answers, “Crying with you, standing behind you so if you fall I’ll be there.” It is God whose peaceful presence calms the soul to make the waiting bearable. God knows every hair on our heads, we are not alone, not even in the face of tragedy, crisis or death. God will not lose even the smallest and weakest of us all.
This Christian Education Sunday we are reminded that we are the people of God. We are the people of God. No matter where we live or what our circumstances we are not forgotten. And, on this Sunday when we remind ourselves and recommit to the learning and growing of our faith, we also acknowledge our responsibility for keeping up our end of the covenantal promises: to love one another, to show mercy to the poor, compassion to the weak, to free the oppressed, to show justice and kindness and to love our neighbors as ourselves. I believe God always keeps God’s promises in spite of who we are or when we disappoint. And, although I don’t believe that we are called to do works to create a purity or holiness code, I do believe that being a Christian and in relationship with God changes a person, calls a person to be different from those who are not called Christian. It’s a lifestyle this faith. We are supposed to honor our gifts and nurture all of those things that feed our faith. But we are to orient ourselves to the least of these. We are to be people giving out compassion and mercy. We are to be unified and experts in conflict resolution. We are to be driven by an awareness of when God is Speaking and calling and moving in our lives and a dedication to that call to respond. We are a radical new way of being in this world that is actually quite old. When we know our neighbors, when we see those we love around town, when we work to make our systems work for all people, when we’re willing to step in when there is a dispute. This is all part of our end of our covenant with God.
As the community of faith we must teach one another how to be the community of faith. This is where Christian Education stems from. I find it a bit ironic that our celebration of learning, questioning and growth has landed on this day of crisis and death. I hope the metaphor is not lost on you. Playing the blame game does not help us to learn. Naming truths about any situation helps us to locate where we are so that we might begin finding movement to a new location, and, as people of faith, that movement is to be guided not by power, jealousy, hypocrisy or judgment. We are to guide our movements as they are centered in the call and response of the unconditionally loving God. We are to be teachers of this God. We are to be the ones who never judge and condemn but give and forgive. Yes, both situations of crisis could have been avoided with open dialogue, a stronger and healthier respect for our earth and where our existence meets machinery. But, our acts of aggression in the blame game which spend countless hours of energy talking about “woulda”, “shoulda”, “coulda” will do nothing but teach that we are hypocrites when it comes to upholding our covenant. For instead of creating a situation of learning and growing we will only create situations that make someone take the blame and hold still until we feel they “understand” our pain and how it was for us. Our covenant and our lesson from James today are filled with giving and forgiving. Let’s use this crisis and turn it into our first actions of compassionate response guided by our Spirit’s call, our faithful covenant with God. Let’s get signed up to take people into our homes on MoveOn.org in those spare rooms in our homes. Let’s fill out this paperwork and get down to the TCC to fold, do laundry, scrub toilets, whatever it is they need doing. Let’s use our speech and these mouths to explain our covenant, our guidance by the relationship we have with God and the mercy we have for all on this journey we call life.
James today comes out of his scholarly Jewish midrash of the Torah and moves into a Hellenist Greek Morality to be good speechmakers. But, James reframes it within his faith saying it is not enough to have words. The words we have must come from God, they must be gifts that will create, sustain and nurture life. We are the people teaching this world how to love one another from the one who loves without condition. Yes, crisis will come to test us. Conflict will come to test us. The living and dying will come to us. But we live as a covenanted people, never alone, always the God within, always a guide in times of trouble. Let us soak these words in on this day that we might adopt the lifestyle of giving and forgiving teachers loving all they meet on the journey and never short of compassionate actions. Let us pray…