Where Do We Place Our Trust?

While Huston continues to drown beneath record setting flood waters many parts of the western United States continue to burn with 82 wildfires threatening human, animal and plant life across 1.4 million acres so far. Meanwhile, not one but two hurricanes continue to barrel through the Atlantic already laying waste whole Caribbean islands and beginning to make landfall on the Florida peninsula, threatening to wreak havoc for millions of more people. All of which distracts us from the fact of what we consider a small, rogue state exploded a “test” hydrogen bomb this past week and is launching Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles on a near weekly basis. An interview with a Japanese woman who survived WWII as a young girl reveals people in Japan currently reviving duck and cover drills due to the unpredictability of what’s going on between North Korean and the US.

It is no wonder that I find myself singing and whistling this dark and satirical Sheldon Harnick tune (he who wrote lyrics for Fiddler On The Roof and other Broadway musicals), The Merry Minuet, popularized by the Kingston Trio back in what now seems the distant 1960’s:

They're rioting in Africa / They're starving in Spain

There's hurricanes in Florida / And Texas needs rain

The whole world is festering with unhappy souls

The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles

Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch

And I don't like anybody very much!!

But we can be tranquil and thankful and proud

For man's been endowed with a mushroom-shaped cloud

And we know for certain that some lovely day

Someone will set the spark off

And we will all be blown away!!

They're rioting in Africa / There's strife in Iran

What nature doesn't so to us / Will be done by our fellow man

     Written by Sheldon Harnick, Sheldon M. Harnick • Copyright © BMG Rights Management US, LLC

The song is meant to make us laugh at our hubris and mis-placed loyalties. Mutually Assured Deterrence may have made sense to some when only two world powers had nuclear capabilities. Once the genie is out of the bottle, however, and more and more countries develop nuclear weapons we find ourselves feeling anything but “secure.” And like the Egypt of Exodus chapter 12, portrayed as a monopolistic Empire that believes in un-checked acquisition, storing up of resources and conspicuous consumption, it seems that there can be no satisfaction with what we benignly refer to as “the economy,” a system that consolidates unfettered wealth among a tiny percent of the populace, a system that is defended as fiercely as any religious icon in ancient Egypt or Canaan, or the various idols that still recall and revere a system of slave labor and White Supremacy as pernicious as any found in Pharaoh’s Egypt.

In Exodus 12 what appear to be a well ordered set of ritual behaviors meant to protect the Hebrew slaves from the impending showdown with Pharaoh’s Empire cannot distract our noticing that the “I Am,” the God of Sarah and Abraham, Rebekah and Isaac, Rachel, Leah and Jacob “forever” is preparing to sacrifice all first-born Egyptians – human and animal – although after the series of plagues it is hard to imagine what is left in the animal kingdom, a dilemma we face as species disappear from the face of this fragile Earth our Island home daily due to unfettered human so-called development and destruction of the eco-sphere.

Yet, this God “I Am,” defined simply as a Deity that slaughters those first-born is to ignore the other attributes of “I Am” as portrayed through the entire sweep of Biblical literature: a God who seeks to demonstrate alternative loyalties to those of the oppressors; the God who loves all the peoples of the Earth; the God in Jesus who teaches us to love not only our neighbor but our enemies as well; a God who forgives Israel and all human kind over and over again.

As some commentators have observed, “That motif which stands forth as being of paramount significance in this regard is, of course, that of God as Redeemer. Thus, the symbol of the slaughtered lamb in this passage is crucial, as it gives substance to the New Testament image of Jesus as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! (John 1:29 )... Not only does Yahweh intend to save the Israelites in a physical sense, but Yahweh intends to redeem that special relationship which binds them to Yahweh and Yahweh to them. The struggle with Egypt is not only with its people and its government, but also with its gods (v. 12). Yahweh’s liberation of the Israelites is understood by the text to be a liberation of the people from the power of that which pretends to stand in God’s place…. The error in identifying God as the slayer of the wicked or, worse, as the slayer of those innocent people who are kin to the wicked, is that it is so easy for a nation or a group to put on God’s mantle and to begin to do God’s work for God. The weapons of mass destruction have brought home to the human race more forcefully than ever before the folly of such thought and behavior.” [Brueggemann, et. al., Texts for Preaching, 472]

The next time we hear of “collateral damage” we would do well to ponder just where we place our loyalties, whether as individuals, as a nation, and as the Church: in the powers of Empire? In the securities of monopoly and weapons of mass destruction? Or, in the powers of redemption, grace and mercy?

Our fascination with the hurricane, I believe, is that we see in it a metaphor for all that we cannot and dare not control. In his volume, Prayers Plainly Spoken, Stanley Hauerwas offers the following:

In The Aftermath of a Hurricane

OK, GOD, Job-like, we feel enough is enough. Is a hurricane Behemoth?

What are we to say to you: Are you in a hurricane?

We fear acknowledging that you may be.

We want to protect you.

We want to think you and your creation are benign.

The result, of course, is to rob you of your creation.

The hurricane becomes “just nature,”

 but “just nature” cannot be your creation.

Do we dare believe that Christ could still the winds?

We want our world regular, predictable,

not subject to disorder or chaos.

So if you are in the hurricane, please just butt out.

We confess we have lost the skill to see you in your creation.

We pray to you to care for the injured, those in shock,

those without housing, those in despair,

but how can you do so if you are not in the hurricane?

We confess we do not know how to put this together.

We want you to heal our hurts,

but we really do not want to think you can.

We want to think you make it possible for us to help one another,

but it is not clear why we think we need your help.

Help us to call for help. AMEN.