September 11, 2005
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
September 11, 2001. Exactly four years ago.
It was the worst attack in American history, and it burned into our brains a series of heart-breaking images that will stay with us forever. The Twin Towers falling. The Pentagon exploding. Flight 93 crashing into the ground only a couple of hours drive from where we used to live. A firefighter carrying away a flag-draped victim. The twisted rubble of Ground Zero. For all of us, the tragedies that happened have now become a defining part of our worldview.
It didn’t take very long after the terrorist attacks that we began to dub what happened as simply, “9/11.” We all remember where we were and what we were doing. I just got up and Lauren called from Philadelphia to tell me to turn on the TV. I didn’t know to tell her to stay home or go to work. For some reason, I felt that I needed to come into church.
So here we are, living in a post-9/11 world. We have seen the evil that people can do, and we’ve seen the spirit of sacrifice in firefighters, police officers, and ordinary citizens. But the question remains, “Where is God in all this?”
Some say they saw God in the bravery of rescuers who rushed into the burning buildings after the airplanes hit. Others point to God’s power in the passengers who overcame the hijackers on Flight 93 over Pennsylvania. Still other claim that God was holding up the Twin Towers long enough for most of the people on the lower floors to escape.
But here we are four years after 9/11, still wondering about the place of God in these awful events. And as we look for answers, it makes sense to go back to the beginning, to the book of Genesis, and discover how our spiritual ancestors responded to attacks that were as unexpected and as evil as the suicide missions of 2001.
Joseph
The Scripture today is a summary of the story of Joseph, the favorite son of a man named Jacob. Joseph’s own personal 9/11 occurs when his brothers become overwhelmed with jealousy, and conspire to kill him. “Come now,” they say, “let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; then we shall say that a wild animal has devoured him” (Gen. 37:20). No doubt the anger of the terrorists who attacked the United States four years ago was fueled, at least in part, by this kind of resentment and jealousy.
Joseph, after all, was the brother who seemed to have everything, who seemed to always get his way, who seemed to have influence over their father, who told about dreams of greatness that comes at his brothers’ expense. Clearly, whatever his brothers would conspire to do against Joseph, he had it coming. So they thought.
Fortunately, one of the brothers intervenes, and convinces his siblings not to take Joseph’s life. Instead, they strip him, throw him into a pit, and sell him into slavery. They smear his robe with goat’s blood, and show it to their father, tricking him into believing that Joseph has been torn into pieces by wild beasts. Joseph is carted off to Egypt, where he becomes a slave of one of the Pharaoh’s officers.
Fast forward to the end of Genesis. Joesph has risen to power in Egypt, and has become second-in-command to Pharaoh himself. A famine hits his homeland and Joseph’s brothers travel down to Egypt to buy grain, not knowing that Joseph is now governor of the land.
After a series of tests and negotiations, Joseph discovers that his brothers have both regretted their actions toward him and reformed their behavior. In the climatic scene of the story, Judah, the oldest brother, offers his life as a ransom for Benjamin, the youngest, and it is this act of altruism that convinces Joseph to reveal his identity to his brothers. The brothers are relieved that he does not strike, stab or slay them for their previous offenses. They fall down before him and say, “We are here as your slaves” (50:18).
They did the crime, so they expect to do the time. It only seems fair.
But Joseph goes in an entirely different direction. “Do not be afraid!” he says to them. “Am I in the place of God? Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today. So have no fear; I myself will provide for you and your little ones” (vv. 19-20).
Where’s the revenge? Here is the man who had been betrayed by his brothers, tossed into a pit, and then sold into slavery. We might expect him to be angry, but he is not. We would sympathize with him if he was bitter, but he’s not. We would understand if he felt a need to pursue revenge with all the shock and awe of Egyptian military might…but he doesn’t go this way at all. Joseph focuses on reconciliation, not revenge.
Where is God in all of this? God was in God’s people like God was in Joseph when he showed compassion and forgiveness to his brothers. This is a powerful lesson in our post 9/11 world.
Playing God
Joseph knows that he is not God. Despite the fact that he has a position of power and prestige in a major superpower of the ancient Near East to play God, he realizes that his life is under the Lord’s judgment and control, just as his brothers are. Joseph says to his brothers when they realized that they have committed their crime, “Am I in the place of God?” Joseph and his brothers are all subject to the same divine authority, all accountable to the one Lord God for their words and deeds.
Unfortunately, we’ve forgotten our place in this divine-human power structure. We often put ourselves in the place of God rather than letting God put us in our place. Have we been playing God, or letting God play us?
We can say that researchers play God when they create clones in the laboratory. Food scientists play God when they develop genetically modified food. Judges and juries play God when they condemn criminals to death. Politicians play God when they use military might to remove a dictator, end a civil war, or eliminate a weapon of mass destruction. We play God when we judge and condemn a friend based on a rumor, a half-truth or a second-hand report.
In all of these activities, there is a real and present danger that we forget our proper place in the world. We are not in the place of God, but we should be in God’s place as servants, as ambassadors and as witnesses as we seek to bring forgiveness and reconciliation to the world.
That’s why we should be extremely cautious about making judgments that belong only to the Lord. Joseph could have crushed his brothers for their cruel and hateful crimes against him—he had the opportunity and the means—but he decided against it. He knew that he and his brothers together were standing under divine authority.
Only God is in the place of God. No Pharaoh, no president, no governor, no general stands in God’s place—only God. Only the Lord can be an impartial, just and eternal judge, one who “will judge the world with righteousness and the peoples with equity” (Ps. 98:9). This was true for Joseph and his brothers. And it’s true for us, for our friends, and for those who do violence against us.
It is important to know our place in the universe, and to trust that God will play his proper role as creator, judge, and redeemer. But to let God be God does not mean that we, as people, do nothing. Instead, we are challenged to follow Joseph in working for reconciliation instead of revenge.
Forgive First
During World War II, the Russian philosopher Semyon Frank wrote in his notebook, “In this terrifying war, in the inhuman chaos which reigns in the world, the one who first starts to forgive will in the end be victorious.” This seemed incredibly idealistic at the time, with bombs flying and millions dying, but in the end his words came true.
At the close of the war, some members of the Allied camp wanted to pursue revenge against Germany, but others remembered how the punitive nature of the Versailles treaty after World War I had created bitterness, and led to the rise of the Nazi party. Instead of revenge, the Allies worked for reconciliation.
France and Germany worked together on the coal and steel industries. A center was established in Switzerland to work for European reconciliation. On top of this, a generosity of spirit was at work in the United States, and a massive amount of money flowed into Europe through the Marshall Plan. Because the focus was on reconciliation instead of revenge, age-old enemies quickly became friends. I sometime wonder how many friends the United States has in the world today.
The one who first starts to forgive will, in the end, be victorious. It’s true today as it was after World War II, and in the time of Joseph.
Our Place
The challenge for us is to know our proper place in the world, and to know the place of God in human history as well. Our place is to be active followers of Jesus, and God’s place is to transform evil into good. Just how God does this is always unpredictable, because God’s ways are not our ways. But we have this irrefutable evidence that God is always working to do this—we see it in the story of Joseph, when God takes the evil of the brothers and turns it into good, “in order to preserve a numerous people.”
And we see it in the story of Jesus on the cross—Christ’s own personal 9/11—when God takes the evil of the crucifixion and transforms it into forgiveness, new life and everlasting salvation.
The Lord’s plan will always prevail, despite our tendency to toss people into pits and even crucify the Son of God. We humans may always be dreaming up evil, but God is always dreaming up good. God comes to us with surprising ways that love can conquer hatred and reconciliation can overcome revenge.
Ten days after September 11, 2001, a minister boarded a plane that could carry hundreds but there were only a couple of dozens with the need to travel. He went through tight security like what we are doing today. Since there were so few of them, they all sat in the front rows.
One of the passengers was a man who was of Middle Eastern descent. The minister was ashamed to admit it but after seeing a solid week of pictures of Osama bin Laden and other terrorists who were responsible for the attacks, he was a little wary of this passenger. And this man looked nervous, so nervous that as he opened his bag of pretzels, he dropped all of them onto the floor and the aisle around the seat, Then his drink spilled all over him. As we turned to him, we saw the tears in his eyes.
The other passengers and the minister looked at each other, and then they began helping the man pick up the pretzels. The flight attendant brought a garbage bag and a towel, and the man looked at them gratefully.
The man said, “I came to the United States to study. I would never hurt this country. But since September 11th, everyone has treated me like I was a terrorist.”
During the rest of the flight he told them about how people had come and spit on him, how a teenage boy shoved him and called him a traitor, and how people in his workplace had stopped talking to him because he looked like some of the men whose pictures were shown on the news.
Despite the tendency for us to throw people into pits and dream of evil things to do to others, God is dreaming up good. After four years later, we pray that this plane passenger has found it in his heart to forgive those who were so rude and so horrible to him.
50:20 World
Honestly, I don’t like the short-hand expression, “9/11.” When I see bumper stickers that read, “9/11 We will Never Forget,” it really means that we will remain perpetually angry. When we seek for revenge, we will erode our ability to love.
When we as a country are so obsessed with 9/11, we are no longer a country that used to symbolize hope in the world but only fear. What we need to do is to restore September 11th in its proper place in the calendar—as the day after September 10 and before September 12. We need to resist the tendency to allow that day to define who we are because ultimately September 11 is about the terrorists not about us.
We’re about the fourth of July. We are about November 9th when the Berlin Wall was dismantled. We’re about October 7-9 when we celebrate our 125th year of Christian witness in Chinatown. We are December 25th the day that our Lord Jesus was born.
Where is God in our post 9/11 world? We are people who believe in the Genesis 50:20 world. “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people.” Like Joseph, we may have all the justification for revenge, our place is to seek reconciliation and to do good.
For the past two weeks, the front page news has been the destruction of Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast states. While we watch with shock and disbelief, we whisper to ourselves, “Where is God in all of this?” Even in the most horrific disasters of nature, we as followers of Jesus Christ believe that God’s ways are always unpredictable but they are always working to transform evil into good. We may be dreaming up all kinds of reasons why the hurricane hit, but with irrefutable evidence, we know that God is dreaming up good.
Our place is not to play God. Our place is to bind the wounds, comfort the grieving, feed the hungry, and work for reconciliation. Our place is to respond as much as we can to the suffering in the Gulf Coast states. We can do this as individuals, as families, as a community of faith and as a nation. If we know our place, then we’ll discover God’s place, and we’ll see the Lord’s hand at work in even the most horrifying of human and natural events.
God is with us, working for good. On 9/11 and every day.
Let us pray.
Dear God, we pray that in our hearts, we might be able to forgive others when great harm has come to us. Teach us to seek for reconciliation as you have done in Jesus Christ, our Savior and Redeemer. Help us to trust in your plan for the world as you intend it for good and that your children can be numerous around the world. In Christ, we pray. Amen.