There is a poignant moment in the movie Steel Magnolias when Sally Field’s character is standing over the casket of her daughter.  The scene is surreal.  The remains of what was a promising and beautiful young life are about to be entombed in the Garden of Eden beauty of a south Louisiana cemetery.  A husband and infant son have been left behind.  The mother is lost as she fumbles awkwardly with her feelings, survivor’s guilt included.  It’s not right, she cries, for a mother to bury her daughter.  It’s supposed to be the other way around.  The grief is palpable.  The mother’s friends are standing at a distance and at all but a total loss for words.  Except for one.  The religious one.  Not knowing that, just as there is a time to speak, there is also a time to be silent she feels compelled to say something. 

She’s well meaning and sincere but her words still screech in the mother’s ears like fingernails on a blackboard.  Out of sync with the moment that demands nothing more than compassionate listening, they rub the mother’s already raw feelings like sandpaper on a burn.  She says something about how the mother should be comforted by the fact that her daughter is now with Jesus.  And, that’s a better place than here she says to a woman who is still trying to get her mind around the fact that she’ll never again touch the child she brought into this world.  The mother tries to respect friendship and sincerity and listens patiently.  But, only for a moment.  Then, she explodes!  “I’m so angry!” she screams.  “I’m so angry!  I just want to hit someone until they feel as bad as I do!” 

This week, I’ve found myself on both sides of the casket.  I’ve stood at a distance and watched the surreal scenes of jetliners crashing into skyscrapers unable still to believe that it could happen, that it really did happen.  I’m not holding a box of popcorn in a dark theater am I?  When will the reel end?  Or, is this the way this really ends?  When will I feel the rush of relief that comes when you awaken from you worst nightmare and, whew!, it was just a bad dream!  Or, is this the world I live in now?  How will they clean it all up?  Why I am so worried about clean?  How do you do five thousand funerals in one week?  Ten thousand body bags?  Will I ever again walk onto an airplane without suspecting who else is getting on with me?  What did those people feel when they realized they were going to die?  How are those people surviving who don’t know yet where their loved ones are?  How would I react if I found out in the next sixty minutes that I could either face the most horrible death imaginable or just take one step out the window from 110 stories up?  That’s what it’s been like on one side of the casket this week.

This morning, I find myself on the other side of the casket.  Now, I’m the religious one.  The hour has come.  I’m supposed to say words when, honestly, I prefer silence.  I’m supposed to say words when I’m quite certain that no matter what I say they will rub on someone’s already raw feelings like sandpaper on a burn.  So, what do I say? 

One famous Baptist leader has already figured out what to say.  He seems to agree with radical Middle Eastern extremists who believe they are serving God by killing us.  Just in the fact that he allowed it to happen God is punishing America, this religious one says from his side of the casket, for everything from abortion to homosexuality and radical feminism.  (Jerry Falwell as quoted by John Harris, “God Gave U.S. ‘What We Deserve,’ Falwell Says, The Washington Post, September 14, 2001)  Just seventy-two hours later he’s got it all figured out.  Of course, it’s easier to figure it out when it’s not your daughter calling from one hundred stories up to say her last goodbye.  I’ve decided to reserve my judgment on God’s judgment and let God speak for himself on that issue.

Especially in moments like these, God’s always had way too many people putting words in his mouth.  And, this prominent pastor’s words are no more welcome now than they are when someone from the church walks into the hospital room where your terminally ill loved one is suffering and pronounces, “It’s the will of God!”  Besides, we’re too close to the current event forest to see the purpose of God trees in all of it right now.  Maybe this is the best time to remember that the very best thing we Christians can give hurting people is a comforting presence and the gift of compassionate listening.  But, the writer of Ecclesiastes said it.  There is a time to be silent; there is also a time to speak.  (Ecclesiastes 3:7)  It’s my time to speak.  So, this is what I have come to say. 

I need a place to stand that is more stable than what I feel.  I’ve been shocked, honestly, at the range of emotion I’ve experienced this week.  Numb.  Depressed.  Unable to listen to music.  Not wanting to laugh.  Moved to tears at the sound of God Bless America Friday night at the ball game.  Yet, unable to focus.  Irritable.  Restless.  All of that mixed with a feeling of hostility I honestly didn’t know I could possess but one that could not find a target.  All of that mixed with fear and a sense of my own vulnerability.  Next time terror reaches out to touch someone it could be me or someone I love.  Those big oceans that were once our geographic bookends don’t mean anything anymore.  Now I know what some of you must have felt like the week of December 7, 1941.  In this very room, you sat and listened to the preacher say words while Pearl Harbor still smoldered not knowing that your sons, still only fifteen or sixteen, would live long enough only to die in a war someone else had just started.

A friend has to lead others to sing this morning.  I asked him what music he was leaning on.  He pointed me in the direction of Martin Luther.  A Mighty Fortress Is our God.  Still as relevant as the morning news even after five centuries. 

Based on this word from God’s word, “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.  We will not fear.  The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.”  That kind of faith is a strong place to stand.  Because it doesn’t demand being able to figure anything out.  We don’t have to know that God is more for us than he is anyone else.  Or, that he is for us and against anyone else.  We only have to trust that he is just with us.  And, we can be with him.  We can run to him when need a place to hide and the most stable structures we can build are falling all around us.  We can be little children in his arms.  He can handle our anger and our fear and our inability to know what to believe.  Our feelings may not find a stable home again for a long time.  Until they do, even after they do, is there any better to place to stand than in simple faith in a God who chooses to be our refuge, our ever-present help? 

I’ve said things this week I never dreamed I’d let myself say this far into my journey with grace and mercy.  But, God can handle that.  If you read the Psalms, there are times when David just explodes about his enemies.  “Kill ‘em all!” he screams at God.  Thank God, God doesn’t just take dictation and then answer our prayers blindly to the letter.  He knows better than we do that there are times you just need to let people spew the raw sewage of emotional nausea.  Even then, “The LORD Almighty is with us.”  I need some place to stand that is stronger than what I feel.  I don’t even know what I feel this morning.  I only know who I choose to trust despite how I feel.

Speaking of answered prayer, I need a hope that transcends the headlines.  We are all trying to make sense of the insensible this morning.  Please try to remember that reporters don’t speak for God and headlines are not the word of God.  When loved ones greeted the first plane load of passengers to arrive at DFW after the ban on air travel was lifted, the reporter said, “their prayers were answered.”  I wanted to ask her, through the television, about the prayers of all those who died while they were praying.  Did God answer their prayers?  Reporters don’t tend to make good theologians.  Obviously, neither do some preachers.  You can’t reduce the mysterious ways of God to a sound bite and you cannot read the purposes of God in headlines.  But, you can read them in the word he has given us.  Here is hope that has transcended centuries of headlines.  “Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts.  The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.  “‘Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.’"

Man can certainly make a mess of things.  Only God can make of this world what he intended all along.  He will be exalted, which means, when it’s all said and done no one will question who God is or that he is ultimately in control and that he alone knows best how to balance love and justice.  His purposes will be revealed.  Mainly, his purpose to redeem and make the family of man his family once again. 

We may get in an uproar and bring kingdoms to their knees.  But, God spoke this world into existence.  And, only he can speak it out of existence.  This world will not come to an end because some cowardly sociopath slithering in the mountains of Afghanistan speaks a word and his maniacal followers crash jetliners into skyscrapers.  This world will come to the end for which it was purposed all along when the God of heaven decides to bring it to that conclusion in his own good and redemptive time and not one moment before and not one moment later.  That’s why Catherine Elizabeth Leftwich means so very much to all of us this morning.  We dedicate her back to God as an act of thanksgiving.  Her very presence is the promise of God to keep bringing life where man dictates death.  For us, she is the tulip blooming in the flower box on the coldest day of a dark emotional winter.  There is a hope that transcends the headlines. 

I need a place to stand that is stronger than my feelings, a hope that transcends the headlines.  I also need something to do that is better than hate.  The apostle Paul, a Middle Eastern Jew, if you will, wrote words that encapsulate the essence of everything the Bible tells us about God’s eternal kingdom.  God’s eternal kingdom is not America.  It is the rule of God in the hearts of people and it has no man-made boundaries.  It is a kingdom of faith, hope and love (1 Corinthians 13).  Nothing that happened this week has changed that.  And, nothing has changed the fact that our highest loyalty must always be to the Lord who loved us enough to die for our sins then commanded us to be people of faith, hope and love.  Nothing has changed that. 

There is one other image from this week that troubles me.  It was not one of carnage.  It was of a preacher in a pulpit.  Behind him was an American flag large enough to drape the massive wall of his sanctuary.  And, what troubled me about the image was the fact that the flag was bigger than the cross.  Am I the only one who saw that, the only one troubled by it?  The American flag larger than the cross of Jesus?  A physician who knows me to be a Baptist minister asked me this week if we are going to do the Crusades all over again.  It sent a chill through me that he even had to ask.  And, this is the only answer I know to give.  Far more people have been killed in the name of God since recorded history began than for all the other reasons man ever found for being his brother’s killer instead of his keeper.  But, nothing has changed the fact that only the love of God ultimately redeems and transforms.  We must seek out those who prey on innocents in the name of God or country or ideology and deal justly with them.  But, if we march with a large flag and a little cross, then we are no better than those who believe they are serving God by killing us. 

God has given us a place to stand that is stronger than our feelings.  He has given us hope that transcends the headlines.  He has given us something more to do than hate.  It’s just that, right now, we don’t know how to believe beyond what we feel, how to hope beyond what we see, how to love when love is the last thing that makes sense.  So, what do we do?  Maybe, just maybe, we should remember that there is a time to speak and a time to be silent.  Silent enough to hear these words just one more time.  “‘Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.’"

So, we don’t have to know what we cannot know right now.  What is God up to?  Why, how, could he have let this happen?  What should I believe?  What should I do?  When you don’t have answers to those questions, then there’s never a better time to simply kneel.  Just time to bow the knee and trust.  What else can we do?  It’s time to kneel.  Just bow the knee.