Ross Moughtin's sermon at CHRIST CHURCH, AUGHTON

Sunday, 16 September, 2001

Theme: God's care in our distress

Bible reading: Luke 13:31-35

The tragedies in N.Y. and Washington show we live in a broken, very broken world.

It is not simply that something terrible went wrong but there was a deliberate and sophisticated determination to kill people, innocent, all types. People at their place of work or while shopping or simply visiting.

But this was a unique event, one the world has never seen the like before. In what way?

Firstly, the terror was immediate to millions of people around the world as it was happening. In fact, here in Aughton I knew more about what was happening than the people trapped in the buildings. There was one person trapped in the WTC who phoned his office in London to find out what was happening below him!

There was a terrible poignancy too in that people were able to use cell-phones to say farewell to their loved ones.

Such is the extent of modern communication.

However, what made this atrocity truly terrible was that it was motivated by a false understanding of God. Those who decided to kill and destroy did so through the deliberate sacrificing of their own lives – and they did so in order to do God's will.

Sin is bad enough but when allied with religion, any religion, its effects are compounded. This needs to be said in our pluralistic society in which all religious expressions are given equal validity.

No wonder that Jesus wept when saw Jerusalem, the visible symbol of God's being with his people. Jerusalem represented a whole understanding of who God is and the way he works in his world. A peculiarly privileged place, yet Jesus saw what was about to happen. He could see what its inhabitants could not see – that within a generation there would be a sophisticated and brutal determination to bury Jerusalem once and for all.

Literally, as the Romans systemically dismantled Jerusalem huge stone by huge stone and ploughed it under. They aimed to wipe it off the face of the earth – for what it represented. (It took the Jews 19 centuries to return).

Jesus’ response? To weep. His tears were God's tears for the people of God, his people, who were refusing his guidance and had chosen to reject his offer of help. Their religion had made them blind to what God was showing them!

"Jerusalem, Jerusalem! You kill the prophets, you stone the messengers God has sent you! How many times have I wanted to put my arms round all your people, just as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you would not let me!

Luke 13:34

Now the people of N.Y. and U.S. are in trauma, in deep mourning. As in all mourning they show signs of shock: denial, anger, depression, resignation – and resolve. It is for us to support and understand this, as we pray for President Bush and the American leadership.

(In my ministry when I speak to bereaved, I advise that they do not make any big decisions for 6 months.)

But something else came out of the ashes of the WTC.

Often during tragedy or any major changes in life we begin to see life clearly – we glimpse our true priorities. We realise that we have been putting last things first and first things last.

This may be especially so of those who work in the finance sector, the community most hit by the devastation from the skies. Where are our priorities?

So when we face certain death, who do we phone? Our stockbroker? Our employer? Obviously not - we phone our loved ones, our families. Families come first in tragedy – and we need to live this in our everyday lives: to give them the priority they deserve.

So what happened following the aftermath?

First, there was a real sense of our reliance on God. When our foundations are being rocked, we realise that he is our ever-present help. We realise our vulnerability, our mortality.

You can see this in the instinctive need for all kinds of people to attend church service. Here is not just a social and religious need but also a spiritual need – it is how God has made us. We are made to rely on God.

Second, there soon appeared the need to rely on each other.

N.Y. is the most American of cities, the best and worst of American culture writ large.

At its worst we see the dangers of excessive individualism, of unbridled consumerism. Following my study leave I believe the main danger facing our church here at Christ Church and the wider church, Christ’s Church, is Christian consumerism -

I will do what suits me and my family, regardless of my commitment to others. So I belong to my church on my terms, attending the services I prefer at my convenience, singing the hymns I like and giving what I think best.

But this is spiritually bankrupt and psychologically very dangerous.

Such tragedy has shown that we need a sense of community:

we know instinctively we need each other, in good times and bad.

So we have seen on television the growth of community in N.Y.: the cheering the fire-fighters going past, making coffee and serving cakes for complete strangers. But this needs to go beyond the local neighbourhood to the wider community.

If anything this was the major discovery of the outrage – that need each other. It is how we are made: it is what God is about in our lives.

As it happens the most popular television programme of the of 90’s was set in N.Y., Friends. We have become too individualistic, uprooted from our families. There is now a poverty of friendship in our society, especially for men.

In all this, what is God about?

Not just to fix this mess but to richly bless his creation.

How? Through the cross of Jesus, his free decision to offer his life on a mission to save guilty people, us.

How the cross works is simply beyond our understand. That the cross works resonates with something within us, our very core in which God is present.

That is why the N.Y. atrocity is especially terrible. It is an evil mockery of cross. Here we have a number of men deciding to sacrifice their lives on a suicide mission. It was not just that innocent people were killed as a sad but inevitable consequence of their deed. The very opposite - at heart of mission was a resolve to kill the innocent.

This is the opposite of cross of Jesus.

"The thief comes only in order to steal, kill, and destroy. I have come in order that you might have life - life in all its fullness." John 10:10

The goal of the cross is peace, shalom. Primarily to restore our relationship with God ("who longs to care for us under the shelter of her wings") but also to restore relationship with each other. Not just within families but between families, not just within nations but between nations.

Clearly New York is going to be rebuilt but it will face the same problems. However, there is a picture of God's glorious future which shows what he aiming at, the very purpose of the cross. The New Jerusalem. God's renewed creation is a renewed community, a new kind of city.

I will write on them the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which will come down out of heaven from my God. I will also write on them my new name.

Revelation 3:12

That’s where we are heading. However, in the meantime, the Holy Spirit longs to make God's glorious future accessible now, something he longs to do amongst us. What we are talking about here is the church - a community made possible by Holy Spirit working in the relationships of men and women. Our relationships are to be a sign of what God is going to do tomorrow – today.

AMEN