When To Push The Panic Button
Luke 13:31-35
March 4, 2007

You’ve heard the expression that says “sometimes life imitates art.” Well, sometimes life imitates preaching as well. My topic this week is When to Push the Panic Button. Some weeks when I actually sit down with my bible and a pad of paper, I look at the sermon topic I chose weeks before and I say to myself: What in God’s name did I have in mind when I chose that topic? But this past week the panic button was right at hand and my topic feels timely.

There was, of course, the stock market. I don’t personally own any stocks and bonds – my wealth, as they say, is in my children – but even I can see that when the stock market in China takes a downtick and the US market panics, there’s a lesson here. It sounds to me like investment strategy is as much psychology as economics. Like most of us, investors like to think well of their own strategies when the market is up. Like most of us, investors panic when reality pops its ugly head up. Like most of us, investors wring their hands at the warning signs they should have paid attention to leading up to the panic. Like most of us, investors promise they will do better next time, a promise that lasts – like most of us – about twelve to eighteen months, if that.

So the question arises: When to push the panic button? When is too late?

On Friday, the panic got personal. Friday morning I got my family off in the ice and slush, took my daughter to school, and returned home to sit down and write this sermon about the panic button. I drove up the hill toward our road and was about to turn the corner onto Blandford Road where we live, when I saw the state police and utility vans, lights flashing, blocking the road. I pulled over, got out of my car, my anxiety level already a little high, and asked what was up. The officer told me that a big tree had come down on a house, had taken down power lines, the power lines were live and they were waiting for the big utility vehicles to come turn the power off. Nobody but nobody was allowed down Blandford Road . Weakly, I asked if the officer knew how far down the road we’re talking about. About a mile, he said.

That’s when I pushed the panic button. About a mile is about my house. Ash tree, I thought. Ash tree in our front yard. Ash tree right above the house. Big, tall ash tree – sixty feet tall. Ash tree with a big hole at its heart, empty and slowly dying. Ash tree I have been thinking of taking down for five years. Ash tree the tree companies want $1000 plus to take down, so I have been procrastinating, not having $1000 jingling around free in my pockets. Ash tree I can see in my mind’s eye now resting in the attic and dripping down into the living room.

Well, I had a lot of time to repent. It six hours before I was allowed into Blandford Road . Six hours of buzzing around thinking woulda coulda shoulda. And then, finally allowed in, I drove, zigging and zagging around fallen trees and branches, and discovered that beautiful, that hearty, that glorious ash tree still standing and the house in one piece. My neighbor has a mess to clean up, but in fact the tree that came down on his house did no great damage and simply rests against the chimney where it still is this morning.

Praise God and pass the gratitude! It wasn’t too late to repent my procrastination!

So – life sometimes imitates preaching. When is it too late to take care of business? When is it too late to heed warning signs?

If you’re with me so far, you’ve got the drift of chapter 13 in Luke’s Gospel. The nation is headed for a political crisis and a bloodbath. Jesus is headed for Jerusalem and the cross. It could have been otherwise, Jesus says. He knows. Jesus recognizes the drift of events. It didn’t have to be this way, he says. Even now, he says, using a poignant image from the life of the farmyard – even now when the crisis comes like a barn fire, I would shelter you like a mother hen, spread my wings over you, and even though I die, you can survive under my wings. But no – you don’t even have the mother wit to save your own skins!

The mood of the passage is one of sadness and anger. I know it’s hard to come to church and hear about Jesus’ sadness and anger. And it’s trickier still to consider how to apply his words to our own time. And yet, if we are willing to face what Jesus is up to in this passage – if we are willing to ask when is a good time to push the panic button – there is hope in Jesus’ words – a warning that says it’s not too late.

Jesus, you see, is God’s peace envoy, sent into the midst of a political firestorm to show a way of repentance and obedience not to party or ideology, but to God’s politics. That’s right – God’s politics – a preference for the concerns of the poor over those of the powerful – a welcoming of the stranger – forgiveness for the sinner – dismantling of the machinery of empire – healing for those without resources – a politics, if you will, that knows when society has pushed too fast, too far and left God’s justice and God’s peace far behind.

I remember a moment in 2004 when I met a couple from Iraq at a conference on dealing with the social trauma of war following 9/11. There were people from all ove r the world, but I was especially struck by this couple from Iran . You have heard me mention them before. The husband, Al-harith Hassan, was gunned down in Baghdad in December.

I remember the first afternoon of the conference. I met Maysa, the wife, as we gathered for our first conference session. She was wearing western clothes, and it was clear she was enjoying being out of Baghdad and meeting Americans other than soldiers at check-points. She was small in stature, but she has flashing eyes and a passion behind her words. She didn’t waste any time getting into her subject. Her subject was 9/11 and its aftermath. Tell me, she said, from an American point of view, what happened on 9/11. So I told her what I know, pretty much what you know also, about that terrible day.

How many people were killed, she asked? Just about 3,000, I said. Hmmm, she said. That’s very sad. And what did you make of it, she asked? I wasn’t sure what she meant. Then she launched. It’s very sad, she said, that so many people died. It’s not right. I feel badly. But Americans need to get over it.

I may not have been ready for this onslaught, but Maysa was 48 hours off the streets of Baghdad , and she had given a lot of thought to her words. She told me something like this:

America cannot play victim and empire at the same time. Either you are victim and you join the family of nations and work with us fighting suffering, or you are an empire doing whatever you want for your benefit. You can’t do both. America came to Iraq saying it was a victim and acting like an empire.You didn’t know what you were doing. And now it’s too late. You will stay in Iraq as an occupier or you will leave us to drown in blood. Your 3,000 will become our tens of thousands.

Whew. Last I heard, a couple of weeks ago, Maysa is desperately trying to leave Baghdad on her own to start a new life, somehow, somewhere else. I pray she is able.

Now, this is not a sermon about Iraq . It is simply a sermon about how to listen for God in our own times. Our passage from Luke this morning says: Be warned!

So what are we to make of this warning? Luke clearly has more in mind than simply remembering what happened to Jesus in Jerusalem and what followed. Luke is warning his own church that our politics matter, our vote matters, our acts of justice and healing and peace matter. Unless life is just a game, then we do well to be warned.

I bring the warning up to you this morning because I am anxious about our nation and our time and because I believe that what we do here in our own church matters. I know we are small and some wish we were big. I know things change and I wish I could make church easy and comforting. I know that wrapping our heads around a Jesus Centered, Open and Affirming, Multi-racial church seems way too weird. But we are a nation at war, and we are a nation where the gap between rich and poor makes us more like two nations than one, and within our cities black and white and Hispanic wear different colors and speak different tongues and walk different walks. You heard the story of street war this week in Hartford where black and Hispanic gang members shot it out by an elementary school while kids cowered under desks. Be warned.

Is it time to push the panic button? Our text this morning says that if it’s panic time, it’s too late to do anything about it – all we can do is run for cover. But we don’t read scripture for condemnation, we read it for warning and for hope.

I know this. I know that Jesus promises that our small acts of justice and healing are like small seeds that can grow into great trees where all God’s people may find cover. And I know that Jesus releases people from bondage – even people bent by the scorn and hatred of others. And I pray that the narrow gate is still open and that this church will get to the other side with faces of different color and stories that do not sound the same and songs that sing of many colors and many stories.

Now is the time for the voice of the church to be heard. In the coming months the war will be debated in Congress. May our voices be heard. May we speak not only for our own troops, but for all who suffer. An election is coming. May we find elected representatives who will not lie to us about the costs of empire.

May we face squarely the pain on the streets of our own city. May this church put our resources behind youth and become a sanctuary of safety and hope.

But most of all, may we listen to the Lord who went to Jerusalem calling people to come take shelter under his wings. He warns us of the risks and the unpredictability to come. But there is peace in his walk and justice in his journey. When all is said and done, who else would we follow?

Amen