Remembering 9/11

Twenty years ago, September 11, 2001, 3,229 people lost their lives to terrorism. Most of us remember exactly where we were we heard the news or tuned into the newscasts. It was a national tragedy like Pearl Harbor, JFK’s assassination, the Challenger explosion, and other seismic events that have rocked our lives. At first it seemed like an awful accident that a plane had hit one tower of the World Trade Center. That notion quickly evaporated as another plane hit the remaining tower. Then there was news out of Washington that the Pentagon had been hit, and next was the word that Flight 93 had been hijacked, put on autopilot and was headed for D.C. Possible targets were the Capitol or White House.

We recall with poignant pride that Flight 93 passenger Todd Beamer said, “Let’s roll!” He and the other passengers assaulted the terrorists holed up in the cockpit, and selflessly gave their lives in a Pennsylvania field just 20 minutes flying time away from Washington. Forty-four souls died on Flight 93. One hundred eighty-nine souls died at the Pentagon, and two thousand nine hundred and ninety-six died at the World Trade Center. Of those, three hundred forty-three were firefighters, twenty-three were NYPD, and thirty-seven more were police with the NY Port Authority.

Some of you, like me, have been to one or more of these historic sites. At Trinity Church, two short blocks away from where the twin towers once stood, I saw the photo-copied faces of the missing on the makeshift barriers as the nearby buildings were held together by wire, rebar, and blue tarp. This was just a few months after 9/11, and the graveyard at Trinity was still covered in the gray ash of the dead mixed with debris. None of us will forget the scenes: fire departments and police from all over the country doing their part to sift through the rubble; President Bush with bullhorn in hand at perhaps his finest hour standing on the twisted metal; enlistment lines at local military recruitment stations; churches that were full. We were one nation pulling together.

NFL star Pat Tillman turned down a multi-million-dollar contract to keep playing for the Arizona Cardinals so he could enlist. It was 8 months after 9/11. Pat Tillman became a US Army Ranger and served several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He died in combat from “friendly fire” in the mountains of Afghanistan. He gave the supreme sacrifice like all those first-responders who ran toward the destruction, not from it. We can honor them by continuing to stand in the breach, and declare, “Not on my watch!” We will honor them by filling churches once again like the Sundays after 9/11. We can promise to stand tall and support civility and civilization. We will depend on our faith in our struggle against injustice, tyranny, and the destruction of morality.

Foreign adversaries laugh now at how our fissures have exposed our weaknesses. We have given them fodder for their attacks. We have become what Jesus and Lincoln both described as a “house divided against itself.” It is our turn to say, “Let’s roll!” We cannot let our freedoms divide us. Can we not do what was done in 2001? Can we not pull together and honor one another though we might disagree? Can’t we embrace the Golden Rule by doing unto others as we would have them do unto us?

Jesus came to foster freedom, but it was not a freedom from responsibility. It was a freedom to embrace responsibility: to love God and neighbor because we want to, not because some totalitarian government threatens us. We can all be American, and live and let live if there is a common cause worth the greater fight or larger battle. We can all do our part to save America from another 9/11. The fabric and soul of our country depends on more than the few and the brave. Each one of us has a part to play.  God bless every 9/11 family, and God bless America.

Reopening after COVID is HARD!

Do you have any frenemies? You know what I mean, family members, friends, or others that just get under your skin? You are friends, but they are just as easily classified as enemies. Passive-aggressive behavior is their specialty. They say things like, “Do you think that color looks good on you?” or “Do you like your hair that way?” Both comments sound innocuous, even helpful, but you know they are really trying to get in a jab under the guise of “speaking the truth in love.”

I like Nathanael-types as in John 2:43-51. Nathanael thought out loud like many of us do and said about Jesus’ hometown, “Nazareth! Can anything good come from Nazareth?” When Nathanael finally meets Jesus, the Lord says of him, “Here is a true Israelite, one in whom there is no guile.” Some Bible translations say, “deceit” instead of “guile.” Either way, Jesus pegs Nathanael’s basic character trait as a straight-shooter, one who isn’t a passive-aggressive flatterer who is a well-intentioned dragon, or a devil in disguise.

Can our world take the truth, or have we created a world where truth gets so massaged that it is hardly recognizable? COVID-fatigue has severely hampered our abilities to be honest with each other. Our lack of Nathanael-like clarity for fear of being labeled or chastised in our hyper-sensitive world has caused us to keep quiet and repress our true feelings. Unfortunately, those repressed feelings come boiling to the surface at some point, and one of the easiest places for that to happen is the church. At first glance, this is a good thing. The church is where we should be able to voice our thoughts without impunity, but, let me tell you, loosening our restrictions has been TOUGH on everybody who works in and with the church! It has become quite apparent that it was easier to shut things down than to open them back up. I had hoped that we wouldn’t have to get back to “normal” in stages or in a piece-meal fashion, but thanks to the powers that be, “Here we go!”

This is all on my mind because we’re so tired as a culture, and our feelings are on our sleeves. Some people haven’t been vaccinated. Some have. Some people can’t get vaccinated due to health issues. In other words, there cannot be a one-size-fits-all plan or strategy for reopening, so can’t we be patient and quit being so “what about me” in our selfish desire to get back to what WE think is normal? Worse is that COVID and reopening our shut-down world has given a megaphone to everyone’s opinions. We live in an age where the squeaky wheels get the grease, and with all that we have been through this year it seems that everybody’s wheels are way louder than a mere squeak. We have taken the autonomy of the individual to an extreme. Everyone’s truth is declared to be THE truth, and if everyone’s truth is THE truth, then there is no truth. It’s really all just opinions and everybody’s got one, and a lot of people have had theirs on full display.

The truth is that only God is TRUTH. I am not the absolute truth, and you are not the absolute truth, so why can’t we all just keep trying to do the very best we can under whatever our circumstances, let God be God, and we all do the right thing as consistently as possible. It could be said that the Golden Rule is an excellent example to follow. However, in our autonomy-worshipping society, even the Golden Rule has been co-opted by free-thinkers and self-absorbed survivalists who don’t give a whit about what’s good for everybody. Our self-interests and so-called “rights” have made us little kings and queens of our own domains. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” has been flipped, reversed, and turned into “What’s good for me better be good enough for you, end of story!”

It is reminiscent of the passages in the Book of Judges (17:6 and 21:25) that are so indicative of our world right now, “Everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” Everybody can’t be right, right? So, how do we determine the best course of action in any given situation? Do we go with our gut, what our friends say, what the media suggests, the advice of sage counselors, or as in the words of the main song in the popular animated film, Frozen, do we just let all boundaries go? Unfortunately, I can hear the echoes of my youngish granddaughters singing “Let It Go!” in perfect pitch. Great, except the self-proclaimed independence it promotes is rubbish. Read this snippet:

It’s funny how some distance makes everything seem small

And the fears that once controlled me can’t get to me at all

It’s time to see what I can do

To test the limits and break through

No right, no wrong, no rules for me

I’m free

To be sure, things turn out better as Elsa mitigates her newfound acceptance of her own autonomy by remembering her family and the community of friends that she has. She realizes that “me being me” isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. I sure wish our world and everyone in it, including me, and a boatload of church members would figure that out. We, like Elsa, may discover that our own worst frenemy is ourselves.

Individual autonomy can be helpful for traumatized ice princesses, but not if our independence sinks us deeper into selfishness. That is the prison that our culture is embracing. Isn’t that the root of a lot that’s going on? It can be called such things as sheer selfishness, my way or the highway, or the living out of the words in William Ernest Henley’s Invictus, “I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.” NO, WE ARE NOT! Jesus is, and His two great commandments, not one without the other, are, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength; and love your neighbor as yourself.”

The Cowboy Code Speaks to the Church and Culture

I’ve seen bulls duke it out and butt heads. Goats, too, and it doesn’t take a genius to spot a goat in a flock of sheep, and neither species is very high on the smartness scale. Growing up with a Daddy who had enough auction barns that he ran around 4,000 head a week, plus working in those barns may not have made me a full-fledged cowboy, but it sure made me appreciate good old wild west wisdom. There are lessons to be learned from the things my Daddy used to say whether you are a city slicker or somebody from Africa.

Wisdom is wisdom even when the idiom or words change from one setting to another. What’s going on among some United Methodists who are arguing about progressive and traditional theology is a lot like watching two bulls charge each other trying to establish who’s in charge. You know, trying to establish the pecking order. Isn’t that what’s going on at a lot of levels in our world? It’s like watching a bunch of big-rig trucks play chicken, and waiting to see who blinks first. In many ways, most of this head-butting is quite comical because Jesus is already in charge no matter how poorly we use our free-will, and while we play the game of “My lawyer’s better than your lawyer,” God is either chuckling or crying over our stupidity. The end result isn’t a game of chicken, it’s a demolition derby.

Let me suggest to a COVID-weary, divided, and frustrated world that we could learn a thing or two from cowboy wisdom. For instance, I think I can hear my Daddy say about some of the people who think they know everything, that they are, “All hat, and no cattle.” They can look the part, but can’t back it up. I think there’s a bishop or two in that bunch, and more than a few CEOs, preachers and parishioners, too. A leader without followers is somebody out taking a walk by themselves. In western terms, if you’re riding ahead of the herd, you better look back every now and then to make sure it’s still there.

Only cows know why they stampede, and I know at least one bishop who has poked a bear called the laity, and the stampede is fixing to start. Talk about thinning out a crowd real quick. A lot of preachers with their highfalutin thinking are more liberal than the average parishioner, so those folks in high positions or pulpits better know and appreciate what the herd thinks before things get out of hand. Common sense goes a long way, and people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

It takes leaders, bishops, pastors and laity of every ilk to work together and do one another’s part to fulfil Jesus’ rescue mission to planet earth, but the first thing you need to do when you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging. Take a breath! If you think you’re so big and bad, try ordering somebody else’s dog around. You’ll quickly find out that you’re not as big as you think you are, so chill. In many a church’s case, most of the flock knows that they need to listen to Jesus before they listen to somebody who ain’t from there, doesn’t know the lay of the land, and has no clue what really matters to the common folk. That’s been the problem with Washington, D.C. for a long time, and too many other places. The people in charge don’t serve their constituency anymore. They are serving their own agenda, much less the Lord.

One of the primary jobs of the cowboy, shepherd or leader of any kind is to protect the herd or flock. It seems to me that the Bible has plenty of safe boundaries on what’s right and wrong. As they say out west and on the farm, “Never approach a bull from the front, a horse from the rear, or a fool from any direction.” There’s an addendum that’s just as true, “A wink is as good as a nod to a blind mule.” Because it’s a blind mule, it doesn’t matter whether you wink or nod. You have got to be clear in what you communicate, so we need clarity in this upside down world. Fences need to be horse high, pig tight, and bull strong. And, finally, remember to never squat with your spurs on, or any kind of movement is going to be awfully painful. Let’s take our spurs off, and quit hurting ourselves. Let’s honor God and the Cowboy Code.