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The Hurricane: A Reflection. St. David's Church. 9/4/05 W. P. Mahedy

Clearly it would be remiss on the part of any preacher on this Sunday not to reflect upon what has happened during the past week. The terrible, tragic event unfolding in the Gulf has ripped aside long held assumptions and beliefs about ourselves. Hurricane Katrina and our response to it will be with us for years and it is very likely to be the major event of our time. We will never be the same again--nor should we. When the veneer of civilization is ripped away, when people are placed in horrible situations, we see more clearly what emerges from the human spirit: despair, hope, heroism, criminality, steadfastness, resilience. Ordinary people rise to incredible heights of courage and persistence–and a few descend into thuggery. You have seen it unfold before you this past week. You have also seen the levels of response. You have watched people overcome all odds just to get the job done. You have seen how political leaders act in a crisis. You have also seen how they evade accountability. All this will continue to unfold before your very eyes, for this is only the beginning.

Remember too that the preparation for and the responses to Hurricane Katrina are inseparable from the way we normally do business. Society consists of many threads woven into a single fabric. People like the medical personnel whose commitment to their patients in the face of hunger and dehydration led them to give each other i-v solutions so they could keep on working: people like that live all around us. There are people like that in our congregation this morning. Some in New Orleans took from stores the necessities to save their lives, a few others descended into criminal looting--but how does this differ from society at large? The executives of Enron and the like, as well as some elected officials are looters as well.

The federal government's refusal to fund adequately the strengthening of New Orleans' levees is not unlike San Diego's unwillingness to pay for adequate fire protection. The incredible bureaucratic tangles that impeded the delivery of aid are not unlike or separate from the bureaucratic snafues encountered in trying to get insurance companies to pay claims or to surmount the obstacle of getting past the choices in a telephone tree.

Nor is the past week unconnected to the ongoing health care crisis in this country. Recently the governor of Tennessee removed 200,000 poor people from Medicaid in order to save on costs. National priorities are also in question, as the Senate plans to consider eliminating the estate tax, an act which would both reduce federal coffers and remove incentives for the wealthy to make charitable contributions, thus removing vast amounts of funding for the next disaster.

Most difficult to face perhaps is the fact that the plight of the poor, largely black population of New Orleans and the plight of the Mississippi poor is really a reflection of the way our economic system actually works. Though we are unwilling to admit it, economic self interest drives the social engine. The result has been increasingly great financial gain for a few, economic stagnation for many and impoverishment for multitudes with an ever diminishing safety net for those who need it. Again many threads of a single fabric. The window is now open so we can see a great truth about ourselves. Perhaps the door is also open for great change.

All this is not just a human problem with political and economic consequences. It is a profound moral and religious event as well. Cities, states and religious congregations across the country are being asked to respond with help and financial assistance and some already have. We will be asked by our bishop to help, and so we should. But this cannot be the end of it. As our nation undergoes profound soul searching, the Christian community must reflect upon our life together in terms of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Let us begin with the central affirmation of our faith: "Jesus is Lord." Remember too that if Jesus is Lord, then Caesar is not. If Jesus is Lord then the self is not.

Last month Harper's Magazine published an article by Bill McKibben, entitled "The Christian Paradox: How a faithful nation gets Jesus wrong." His thesis is simple: If roughly 85% of Americans claim some form of Christian faith, how can we in our economic life depart so far from the biblical commands to love our neighbor as ourselves, to love those that hate us, to give justice to widows, orphans and the oppressed, to feed the hungry and clothe the naked? How can we forget the beatitudes so completely in our public life? How can we go so far in the opposite direction?

McKibben points out that three out of four Americans believe the Bible teaches: "God helps those who help themselves." Actually this bit of wisdom is not found in Scripture. It goes against everything we know of Scripture. It comes from Aesop's Fables and entered American life through Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack in 1736. It is this kind of thinking, not Scripture, that underlies and supports the economic and political institutions in which we live and work. We may try to live our personal lives as Christians--and we might be able to pull it off at church, in small groups, with family, friends and neighbors, but when we leave these small groups, we enter a world of totalitarian consumerism, relentless materialism, narcissistic individualism, unbridled greed and the fascination with power.

There is afoot a total surrender to the dreams of efficiency and productivity now measured in computer time and not in the more human scale of an earlier era. Here Jesus is not Lord. Here the market forces have ascended the throne of Caesar and are worshiped as avidly as was any ancient emperor god. This American idolatry was proven to be patently false on the Gulf Coast this past week.

The statement, "Jesus is Lord," got the early Christians in much trouble during the first three centuries of our history. For them it was not just a statement they made or a song they sang, but it was a real commitment to an alternate way of life. If Jesus is Lord, then Caesar is not. If Jesus is Lord, then the self is not. If Jesus is Lord, then the political and economic systems upon which Caesar depends are not worthy of ultimate allegiance. Our early ancestors in the faith marched to a different drummer and that was the reason they were considered such a threat to the Roman authorities. In the aftermath of the events of this past week, American Christians must reexamine what we really believe. We must recommit ourselves to living out the biblical faith, not just in words, but in action.

The New Testament itself provides the antidote to the notion that God helps those who help themselves. Consider this passage from Acts 2: 44-46.

"All who believed were together and had all things in common; 45 they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having the goodwill of all the people."

This is what Scripture holds up for us as the model of our life together. Ben Franklin's aphorism may be sadly true in the way the world works much of the time, but that is precisely the problem. When most of our activity is driven by that belief, then we ultimately come to the point we reached last week in New Orleans.

The ongoing response to the needs of the hurricane victims is a national, even an international problem. The political and economic dimensions of this or any situation cannot be separated from the religious and moral assumptions upon which human activity is based. As we remember the images of heroic response by the Coast Guard crews and the medical personnel, as we watch again the pictures of ordinary people caring for each other under unspeakable conditions in the Superdome and the Convention Center, let us remember that this is what Scripture calls us to. This must be our ideal always and in all situations. We must attempt to live this way in the ordinary affairs of daily life. But we cannot do this as individuals alone. We must strive to embed these beliefs in the economic and political systems that provide our social sustenance.

From a Christian perspective, we could be at the threshold of real repentance and renewal. We should allow for and even cultivate a sense of unease about what has happened and what will take place in the future. We may now shed our illusions of omnipotent national efficiency. We can react to the offers of assistance from nations around the world--even some we don’t much like--with a touch of humility, abandoning our bellicose and grandiose national posture. We can relinquish our dreams of empire and national preemption. We can see too that illusions, lies and deception work no better in internal crises than they do on the international scene. They are no more effective in peace than they are in war. This is a wake up call. It is a call for repentance and renewal. It can be the beginning of a new life together. Americans can look to the second verse of "America The Beautiful:" America, America, God mend thine every flaw. Confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law."

This requires both individual and collective response. We must commit ourselves, not just to helping the hurricane survivors (we must do that), but also to functioning as real Christians individually at work and in our neighborhoods. We must resolve to live not according to Aesop and Ben Franklin but according to the Gospel. Every one of us can make a difference all the way from small things like smiling and thanking a supermarket checkout person to leadership in business and corporations. At work any of us can do our best to assure that customers and fellow employees are treated like people and not like mere consumers or units of production. New ways of seeing, believing and acting are now open to us during this period of national soul searching.

The Church too might benefit from such a time. Perhaps we can look afresh at our little enclaves of the self-righteous and the smug: liberals and conservatives alike. Even this is possible with the grace of God.

Perhaps this parish too can use the coming months to discover whether we really want to live the Gospel with real commitment, for we must decide whether the mission center will be really that or just another parish hall. How deep are we willing to go ourselves? So where do we go from here as a nation and within the global community? Where do we go from here as a church and as a parish? How will this change us as individuals? We shall find out in the months to come. With a firm reliance on God's grace, with prayerful reflection and with a renewed commitment we must embody within ourselves what was expressed in that first and greatest Christian Hymn, which Paul either discovered or wrote himself. We must have

"that mind in us which was in Christ Jesus. who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death--even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Amen. (Phil 2: 5-11)