Sermons and Reflections:

Thursday After 3 Lent
March 27, 2003
Lutheran Theological Seminary Chapel
Dr. Pamela Cooper-White

I Cor. 3:10-23

Well, we’re back on "Code Orange" again! Tom Ridge, the Director of the Department of Homeland Security has decided that with the announcement of the official beginning of the invasion of Iraq, we here in the "homeland" must prepare ourselves once again for the heightened possibility of a terrorist attack here, where we live. No doubt the duct tape stock went up again.

But even as we take reasonable measures to prepare ourselves and our families in the (still quite unlikely) event of a biological, chemical, or even nuclear weapon attack here at home—I have no resentment toward those security workers who searched Macrina’s and my bags at the airport last week—we, as Christians, it seems to me, are all the more called to ask the question: On what do we find our security? And how do we put some perspective—a Christian perspective—on the fear that "Code Orange" and the nightly live images of war that our news stations bring into our homes every night? We might even ask, what is our true "homeland," and is it the same "homeland" that Tom Ridge is trying to secure with color-coded memoranda about duct tape and plastic sheeting and citizens keeping surveillance over one another?

We have a very different memorandum from St. Paul this morning—color coded for us in the purple and sackcloth colors of Lent, we hear this assurance: "No one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ." But we hear this eternal warning as well, "Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work has been done." Once again, we hear the counter-cultural, even subversive message of the Gospel, as interpreted by Paul: on what are we putting our trust? Gold, silver, precious stones, the baubles and media of exchange of wealth? On the things that "moth and rust consume"? As much as I enjoyed the Academy Awards Sunday night, and appreciated that at least there was no absolute taboo against speaking about the reality of the war, what does such a spectacle, along with the commercials, say about us as a culture? Both good things and bad, I would say, truthfully. An appreciation for culture, for beauty, and for the artistry of drama which goes back to the most ancient philosophical and ritual practices of humankind; but also the "shadow side" of Hollywood celebrity—the unabashed celebration of wealth, Harry Winston jewel bedecked bodies of people whose security too often depends largely on their 15 minutes, or days, or years of popular fame; and the corporate sponsorships built all too often upon the unseen labor, poverty, and exploitation of workers in other parts of the world who do not share our riches and glamour but carry it on their backs.

Where do we, as Christians, find our security? Ultimately, we find our security neither in the comforts and rituals of wealth and the accumulation of petroleum-based products (from gasoline to Barbie dolls to fashionable synthetic fibers), nor in duct tape and plastic sheeting and surveillance of our neighbors. Our security is, finally, not to be found at all in saving our physical lives, although we cherish the bodies we have been given and rightly seek to heal and protect ourselves and our children and ideally all humans and other creatures from harm. But as Christians we do not save our lives by seeking more and more physical comfort and safety. It’s all an illusion anyway—as the somber and poignant truth of Ash Wednesday reminded us at the beginning of our Lenten journey: "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." We do not get out of this life alive, any of us, no matter how thick our bunkers, nor how glittering our possessions.

No, our security is found in the one foundation, Jesus Christ, the Lord of Life and the Prince of Peace. The way of Jesus, the little one who was born not into wealth or privilege but in a manger, naked, vulnerable flesh; the way of Jesus, the young passionate prophet who dared to overturn the money-lenders’ tables in the temple and bear witness to the emptiness of spiritless ritual codes and the idolatry of material exchange; the way of Jesus, who did not raise an army to establish his kingdom but rather walked the way of the cross, trusting in the power of Love and Life to raise him and all people from death and sin: "Destroy this temple [speaking of the temple of his body] and in three days I will raise it up"…

We do live in terrifying times. But can we not put some perspective—a Christian perspective—on the fear that "Code Orange" and the nightly live images of war that our news stations bring into our homes every night? We know through our baptisms that we have already passed through the waters of death into new life in Jesus Christ. We may not understand rationally the mechanics and the physics of what happens to us beyond our physical deaths, and we mourn all loss of life because we are wrenched by such losses, because we have given ourselves richly to love and connection and relationship. But we are given the promise, ultimately, that these temporal losses do not have the final word, and that even the loss of our own physical life is finally a part of the cycle of life: ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Ultimately, we die into new life in Christ, and nothing of this world can truly harm us: "For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God." Or, from Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, "If God is for us, who is against us? … Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?…No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For Iam convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Rom. 8:31b, 35, 37-39)

Our calling is not to worry, not to become preoccupied, with our own physical safety or even comfort to the point where these becomes idols in themselves. Our calling is to live every day, remembering that we are sealed not only by a cross of ashes, that humbling memento mori of Lent, but before all else, we are sealed, with water and chrism oil, "sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own, forever." We are anointed thus with a quiet, holy confidence, to move through our world and through our days, not seeking the ephemeral wealth and power of this world, but rather seeking to live as a holy people, safe in the promises of God, and called by Love to share the Good News of God’s love and liberation for all people—family, friends, neighbors, strangers, even those who hate us, and those whom we have been told to fear and hate. We are called to be nothing more or less than creatures, loved and created beings of the living, loving God who made and is making and continually strengthening and renewing us and all life on "this fragile earth, our island home." (BCP)

And so, finally, what is our true "homeland"? Surely not the same "homeland" that Tom Ridge is trying to secure with his color-coded memoranda. Our home is not about the places we live, as dear as they are to us, not just our little fortified castles—whether houses or apartments or dorms—that we build of wood and stone and brick, in which we live (all too often of late) cocooned in front of our television sets. Nor is our home merely our "home-land," the country of our birth, which for many but not all of us here this morning means the United States. Our home is not any one nation, as much as we may love the beauty and the particular culture of the place from which we come. As a people who believe in a God of love and abundance and care, our home is no less than the whole world, all of which, waters, lands, air, plants, and animals, were created by God, loved equally by God no matter how small nor how strange and different from us, and all, all given into our human care not as masters of exploitation but as gardeners and stewards.

And as human beings all around the world, we are given mutually into one another’s care, with the commandment of compassion that is common to all the major world religions, and the great commandment of our own Judaeo-Christian tradition: to love our neighbor, and Christ adds, even our enemy, even as we love ourselves.

"Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple." Let us not be consumed by fear, then, but as Christians, let us equally cherish the sacredness of our own bodies, and the bodies of all living beings, in every part of this world. Let us go back into the world in quiet confidence, that our God who came into human flesh as a naked child in a manger, and who suffered the worst that human beings can do to one another, rose again from the dead, and is still and always with us, Emanu-el! May the God of our ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael, the God of Jesus of Nazareth, the God of the whole created world, continue to strengthen us to proclaim, without fear, the true security that rests at last in the Good News: of liberation, justice, and peace for all.

Amen.