Global Community Issues

Articles

September 11: Messages for the Church and the Nation

Sermon by Rev. Dr. James T. Laney
Faith And The City
Community Seminary Worship, Central Congregational United Church of Christ, Atlanta, Georgia
October 29, 2001

It is hard for any of us to speak a public word these days that is not influenced by September 11. Like you, I am sure, I cannot awaken in the morning without thinking about that situation -- trying to gain some additional insight or understanding. Like you, I read articles, essays, and editorials in the newspapers. Like you, I listen to sermons. But still, it is so difficult to realize that we truly have such enemies in this world -- enemies prepared to die, indeed, to go coolly to their deaths as martyrs do, motivated by their hatred of us. We have also come to realize just how vulnerable we are, how fragile our securities are, how difficult it is to deal with shadows.

What makes it so difficult for us to accept is that we -- as Americans and as the Church -- had painted in our own minds a picture of the world. This picture saw us riding a prosperous economy to ever-new heights through globalization and world trade, abetted by ever-unfolding developments in technology and communication and travel. We envisioned an economy that would eventually benefit all, but which already was benefiting us many times over.

It is important to note that this picture of ours was based on the comforting thought that everyone wanted to live like we do -- that, at heart, they really wanted to be like us. We had developed a discourse of Judeo-Christian liberalism that we believed would eventually triumph and hold sway in the world. So, we are shocked now to realize that many people -- millions, in fact -- did not buy into this vision of ours. They rejected it. They despised it. It was as though we baked the world a cake, the grandest cake in history, and the churches were putting the icing on the cake. Never mind, of course, that only crumbs fell to billions of people. And now some are intent on hurling that grand cake back in our faces.

So, September 11 was a wakeup call -- a harsh, discordant, rude, tragic wakeup call. It awakened us to the fact that there is a big world out there beyond our city -- and we're only now beginning to appreciate the implications of that message, of what we now confront. Those implications can be sensed in the fact that the events of September 11 were not just acts of terror. They are far more significant. It is no coincidence that September 11 was the very date that European Christendom turned back the Ottoman Empire outside the gates of Vienna in 1683. Clearly, September 11 is an anniversary date, the significance of which is not lost on the Islamic world.

I want to say that I have at this point no basic quarrel with our government and its response to the attack. Certainly, our government must be determined to protect our citizens. And I agree completely with Mary Robinson, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, who pointed out that this attack was not just a terrorist act, but a crime against humanity. I also agree -- and this is important -- that we must distinguish between the terrorists and the rest of the Islamic world, the vast majority of which rejects terrorism.

I also support our government's efforts to forge alliances around the world since September 11 -- including participating in the United Nations. I concur with the development of a new understanding with Russia and China, countries with whom we had testy relations before.

Like you, I pray every day that our president and our government may be given not only courage, but also wisdom and prudence, in leading our nation and the free world.

The role of our government and our nation as described above is clear to me. But, it is equally clear that the Church's response must be of a different kind. Jesus tells us in Matthew 5, "You are the salt of the earth." Of course, we know the earth is a big place. Jesus also tells us, "You are the light of the world." We know the world is a big place. So, as the Church, we're not just icing on the cake of American culture. We, in the Church, need to reassess our role in this society and understand what we're called to do in relation to that larger world.

As followers of Christ, we have too often gone along easily, even mindlessly in many cases, with the dominant mood of affluence around us. We have bought into the idea that the pursuit of self-interest would benefit the world -- the gospel of Adam Smith, not the gospel of Jesus Christ. Instead, we must recall that this country was built on other foundations. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams believed that freedom could flourish only continue if it were based on virtue, not merely the pursuit of self-interest. They believed that virtue included integrity and honesty, industry, frugality, and humanity -- that it embraces beneficence, kindness, and public-spiritedness.

Our founding parents knew the critical importance of faith and character and did not endorse the mindless pursuit of riches. They believed that they were establishing the noblest experiment in the history of the world for purposes that were beyond their own interest, that this was a great and noble calling for freedom and democracy based on those very virtues.

The national face that the United States showed to the world before September 11 was too often seen as individualistic, unilateralist, hedonistic. It suggested too often that we believed power alone was sufficient, that we could go it alone as the world's only superpower, that we didn't need moral suasion and moral authority.

Consider, for example, that a recent poll indicated that three quarters of our recent college graduates had as their goal to become millionaires. Consider also that we pump trillions of dollars into the Middle East in an orgy of oil consumption. We were hooked on an affluence that is dependent on cheap oil -- an addiction that has driven our foreign policy and underpinned our standard of living.

September 11 has helped us to see afresh. Shocked and chastened though we were, we were heartened that the face we showed the world in that terrible hour was one of remarkable courage and compassion -- of civic-mindedness and selflessness. Tellingly, the heroes we embraced were not millionaire executives or athletes or entertainers. Our heroes, when it really mattered, were the underpaid firefighters, police officers, emergency medical workers, and ordinary citizens -- people who placed the safety of others ahead of their own in a time of need. It was also a new thing for us to realize how much we needed our government -- we who had become so dismissive of that government.

Now, the Church's task is to pick up on these civic virtues. It is to help our nation to once again demonstrate a "decent respect for the opinions of mankind," as Jefferson penned in the Declaration of Independence -- not the unilateralist position that too often has characterized the face we have shown the world. The Church is called not to see the world merely through our own self-centered spectacles -- not to project an image of unattainable riches that excites envy and resentment. Rather, we -- the Church -- must do as we did centuries ago. We must project to the world the bright hope and promise that there's a place at the table for all of God's children.

To do so, we must be agents of reconciliation. And there is an urgency here -- an urgency driven by the fact that extremists in the world want to precipitate a cataclysm and turn all Muslims against all Christians. Jesus says again in Matthew 5, that it is not enough to come to the altar and pray. If some have grievances against us, we should leave the altar, Jesus says, and we are to go and make peace with them. In seeking reconciliation, we must ask ourselves why others have grievances against us. We have to acknowledge Palestinian grievances, Islamic resentments. We all know that the Israeli-Palestinian situation is a very complex one, but it must be resolved -- and the Church must find a voice to help facilitate resolution and reconciliation in a just and equitable fashion for all.

We need to understand also that many Muslims resent our arrogance in dealing with their sacred places, Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia, where we have troops. Why do we have troops in Saudi Arabia? The Church needs to ask that question. We need to remember that many in the world have the sense that we exploit them -- that our culture's presentation of itself to the world often has been "in-your-face," as well as "crass materialism." In short, many see us as decadent. Now I'm not justifying this perspective of America, but simply saying that this is what they have against us.

Again we recall that Jesus said that, when your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift at the altar and go and be reconciled and make peace. We are in the business of nurturing reconciliation and making peace -- peace in the city and peace in the world. We are finding more and more that those two are indistinguishable.

Some of us have been involved with the Holy Land Institute for Church Renewal, a program to send pastors to the Holy Land for renewal. Before September 11, this had a very personal dimension. We saw it as communal, but personal. We realized that what the pastors were facing was a sense not just of burnout but of marginalization, of feeling trivialized.

Since September 11, this has taken on real urgency. We have come to realize that it is terribly important to go ahead with these visits despite current problems in the Holy Land. We have decided that, now, sending young pastors over there is not only a matter of their renewal, but includes the ministry of reconciliation. If we are to pursue what makes for peace, as Paul admonishes us, we must pursue it with justice and we must witness to justice.

Our church must speak to say that there must be massive aid to other parts of the world to assist them in their struggle to attain dignity and self-reliance. We cannot continue to pile up wealth in this country while so much of the world is in poverty. Jimmy Carter speaks a bold word here when he says: "Never before have there been so many wealthy and so many poor."

Many are calling for a new Marshall Plan for the world today -- a commitment to helping developing nations to improve the standard of living for their people -- just as our original Marshall Plan did for European nations devastated by World War II. For example, Andrew Young, my co-chair of Faith And The City, speaks tellingly of the need to develop oil in Africa -- from Nigeria to Angola. Imagine what this could do for the continent of Africa -- and what it could do to pull us away from our over-dependence on oil from the Near East. When it comes to such outreach to the word, we need to speak boldly about the role of the Church in today's global community and about the role of the young people of the Church in making peace and justice. We need to call them to this new task.

Yes, there is a great work to be done in our world today. And the time to do that work is upon us. At the height of the Cold War, President John F. Kennedy proposed the Peace Corps. In those days, we were locked in what seemed to be a struggle to the death with the Soviet Union; yet Kennedy proposed the Peace Corps. His proposal was not naive. It was based on the conviction that the greatness of America is grounded in democracy, in a sense of service, and in its young people who are willing to share their lives with other people everywhere. Of course, some countries saw the Peace Corps as a kind of a latent colonialism, but it wasn't. No one went out any freer than the members of the Peace Corps did. Our daughter and her husband went out. It was remarkable what they and others like them were able to make happen. Equally remarkable was what happened to them. We need today a new infusion of power like that of the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps.

The Church is called to facilitate reconciliation today -- at a time when the potential for catastrophe has never been greater. This is serious business. It is not religious business as usual. We're talking about life and death. But not life and death in the sense that we want to kill other people. It is life and death because those are the stakes. Our role is not to exercise dominion, but to offer hope to all.

Once again America must appeal in Lincoln's words to the better angels of our nature. We don't need to appeal to the baser aspects of our nature. That's what self-interest is. Of course, many say that self-interest will always prevail. Well, it is always present but it doesn't have to prevail. We are talking about enlarging the common good -- bringing a vision of hope to the global community. As Americans, our pursuit of prosperity has made us the envy of the world, but only our quest for justice for all can make us the hope of the world.

Our role is to be the hope of the world, but not in an arrogant and self-congratulatory way. No, our role is to witness that we would leave the altar and go and make peace and be reconciled with our brothers and sisters. Our role is to make peace and be reconciled with our brothers and sisters across town and across cultures.

Our role is to speak boldly for a world of justice and fairness, a world where wealth is shared so that people don't live and die in abject poverty, a world where countless mothers do not hold dying children in their arms because even the basic medical care to make them well is not available. Such is the role of the Church -- to speak and act boldly to realize such a world. The Church -- you and me and other Christians throughout the world -- is called to be " the salt of the earth" and "the light of the world." We are called to be peacemakers and reconcilers. We are called to be agents of justice to awaken our nation to its great calling under God, the purpose for which this great nation was founded and for which we continue to strive -- and which -- by God's grace -- will come to pass. Amen.

Dr. James T. Laney is co-chair and co-founder of Faith And The City. He is a former U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of South Korea, president emeritus of Emory University, former dean of the Candler School of Theology at Emory, and an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church.