What Do We Remember?

Today is the 18th anniversary of 9/11, and so as one might expect Facebook is full of all the 'Never Forget' memes and the 'I remember where I was..." stories.  All of us old enough to remember this terrible day have our own stories, of course...but when I keep hearing people say how they will remember, I wonder what it is we are supposed to remember?  For some, it's the story of Muslim Radicalism.  For others it's the story of American Strength.  For still others it's the story of how we began an Endless War On Terrorism.

But I wonder if maybe we aren't remembering the wrong things.  As a Christian who reads his Bible, I am often struck by how much of the Biblical metanarrative is wrapped up in God trying to get our attention.  He has blessed his people, who slowly but surely turn away from him when they prosper, and so God seeks to call people back to him.  And in order to do this, he sometimes has to punish us to remind us where our true loyalties rest. 

I don't know if 9/11 was God trying to rebuke America.  But I do know that our response was anything but Godly.  Sure, a few people started thinking about faith in the weeks to follow, but this was quickly followed by a call to spend money that they didn't have to keep the economy running, a suspicion of people of color with strange names, and eventually speculative wars that continue to do this day and seem to have no resolution.  America's faith in itself grew over the next year, but in the 18 years since can we say that we are truly a more Godly nation?  I seriously doubt it.  Our dependence upon stuff, our self-pride and arrogance as a nation has exploded, and to this point it's culminated in electing a President who's a complete and utter numskull that daily gives more aid and comfort to the enemy than anything the terrorists could ever have done. 

When will we wake up?  I hope that today will be a humbling experience for us as a nation; I would even hope that we would ask the hard question of 'why do some cultures hate us so much' without most people stupidly answering 'Because they hate freedom!'  But I know that neither of these things will happen.  I will choose to remember 9/11 by trying to do what is right and good...maybe I'm delusional and self-righteous in thinking this, but Kingdom of God people always are to remember where our first loyalty rests. 

Death to preachers

This morning I preached from the story in Luke 4:16-30 about how Jesus was almost lynched before his ministry got going.  Even though in his itinerant ministry most of the synagogues glorified Jesus for what he had done, his hometown synagogue took on the attitude of 'the kingdom of God is going to them?'  Matthew 13:58 likewise says that Jesus could not do miracles in Nazareth because of their unbelief.  They seemed to like the idea of the good news coming into the world as a sign of the Kingdom, but they felt compelled to hoard that kingdom rather than let it grow and bring God glory.   

It always fascinates me how territorial we are as people.  As Americans we can't seem to stomach that others might want part of the American dream, and so there is a large segment that looks at people that are the Other with suspicion.  People who move to a different country in which most people speak different languages and then continue to find work doing things most Americans don't want to do, all the while with the sword of expulsion hanging over them, shouldn't be demonized...they ought to be praised.  But we continue to look at only Us as worthy of favor. 

Same thing happens in the church.  In my little fellowship of Churches of Christ we have routinely acted as if we were the only people doing what is right.  Because we have 'rightly divided the word of truth', we believe most earnestly, anybody else who claims to be doing God's work is looked at with suspicion.  Sure, we read their commentaries and sing their hymns and take part in their charitable institutions...but their music or their initiation ceremonies or their organizational structure is wrong, so we deem it proper to throw them over the cliff in anger. 

One of the things that I hope that I am becoming is more charitable to those in whom it seems objectively obvious that the work of the Spirit is going.  John 3:8 tells us that 'the Spirit goes where it pleases', and for years I have resisted this.  But the Spirit demands that I learn something of charity when it comes to others who aren't exactly like me.