Who Will Part The Waters?
The Very Reverend Sam G. Candler
The Cathedral of St. Philip
Atlanta, Georgia
11 September 2005
Proper 19A in the Revised Common Lectionary
“Moses stretched out his hand over the sea,
and the LORD drove the sea back.” –Exodus 14
Would that Moses had stretched out his hand over New Orleans last week! Moses, the great deliverer of his people, lifted up his hand, and the water parted. The water of misery parted. The water of death parted. The ground was dry again. Would that Moses was there in New Orleans now, parting the waters of despair; people are still suffering there..
Would that the strong arm of Moses had been raised four years ago, on that fateful 9/11 day, when terrorism struck the United States of America. Our very civilization was attacked. Today, as we remember 9/11, we still suffer from the effects of national fear and anxiety.
Is there a Moses today? Might we have a Moses around us, who can raise a mighty hand of calm? When so many are throwing up their hands in hopelessness, is there someone who can raise an arm of strength? The question is deeper: is there a God, who will save us from the suffering we remember today?
These past two weeks, sadly, have brought forth not only the literal floodwaters of suffering, but also the suffering floodwaters of blame and accusation. Sure, at any given time, I have plenty of disagreements with government leaders, but this past week I agreed with one assessment. Let’s not play the blame game. The blame game leads to bitterness for everyone.
In fact, the blame game has become one of the most easily forecastable events in the world today. We cannot always forecast disaster. We do not know exactly when and where the next tragedy will occur. But we can always forecast that when disaster occurs, some people will react by blaming.
Blaming others will not part the water for us. Even if somebody else is guilty of something, that person is rarely any more guilty than the rest of us. Somebody had the audacity this past week to ask me if perhaps the hurricane was the result of God’s wrath on the corruption of New Orleans. No. That is not the God we know in Jesus Christ. If God acted that way, then you and I both would have been annihilated long ago.
I have another answer today. I offer another answer to our nation’s suffering and awe and grief. There is one course of action that will part the waters for us. It is this: the life of virtue, the virtuous life. Disaster and suffering, of any sort, whether of human or natural cause, calls God’s people to one thing. Disaster and suffering call us to the virtuous life.
I read a lovely book this summer. Some folks like to choose their reading from the current New York Times best-seller list. But I chose a book that was popular about sixteen hundred years ago. It was written around the year 390 A.D., by Gregory of Nyssa, and it is called “The Life of Moses: Concerning Perfection in Virtue.”Gregory of Nyssa tells the story of Moses as a devotional lesson, a metaphor or symbol, of how human beings grow in the virtuous life. He says, “[We] have but one purpose in life: to be called servants of God by virtue of the lives we live” (Life of Moses, Part II, chapter 315. (Page 135).
“To be called servants of God by virtue...”
Today, we need that virtuous life of Moses. We need it as much as the Christians of sixteen hundred years ago did, and we need it like the Israelites did thirty-six hundred years ago.
When the Israelites fled from the persecuting and oppressing Egyptians back then, they encountered floodwaters. Those floodwaters rose for both sorts of people. We name those people the Israelites and Egyptians, but we do not mean the literal Israelites or the literal Egyptians of today. We mean, spiritually, those who follow the moral good, and those who ignore the moral good.
When you hear this lesson today, or any lesson from ancient scripture, do not think that God means to single out the particular Egyptians of today for destruction. Read the lesson like Gregory of Nyssa, sixteen hundred years ago, read the Bible. The story is a moral lesson for us.
Moses held out his hand, and the sea stopped.
How did Moses hold back the sea? He was prepared. He had stepped up into the position of leadership with a willing heart and a strong spirit.
Tragedies and calamities occur in this life. The question is, “How do we cope with disaster?”
We cope by being prepared. But I do not mean being prepared, physically, for each and every tragedy. I do not believe there is ever a way to avoid every calamity that the earth winds up for us.
No, what I mean by preparation is not physical. I mean moral preparation. I mean spiritual preparation.
The strength of moral preparation is its ability to meet the unexpected tragedy. When we are morally prepared, we can encounter all sorts of calamity and still do the right thing. Consider, for instance, the awful reports of crime and looting occurring after Hurricane Katrina.
What caused that crime and looting? Did the hurricane cause that? No, a lack of moral foundation caused those incidents. In fact, that moral laxity, that moral abandon, was already in that culture. It took the disaster of hurricane winds to uncover and reveal that immorality. Lest we consider ourselves immune, let us admit that moral laziness and moral abandon also exist in our city, the great city of Atlanta. What else causes our children to throw rocks at passing trucks, and then, when the truck crashes, to dance upon the overturned wreck?
But moral unpreparedness exists beyond individual acts of cruelty and violence. To live in a city is to live in a broad and challenging political environment. Politics means making critical choices about stewardship and the right use of resources, and these choices must usually be made long before, long before, the city experiences consequences. It is a moral political choice to ignore the need to upgrade the New Orleans levees. Just as it was a moral political choice for Atlanta to let our sewerage infrastructure become out-of-date. Sure, politics often forces us to make tough choices. But those choices always have a moral dimension.
Finally, the hurricane did not cause the poverty and despair that were already in New Orleans, and in other parts of our country. The hurricane winds shockingly uncovered and revealed that poverty. Poverty is a moral weakness in any culture
Morality, however, does not mean just learning how to avoid the bad. We often think of morality that way. A good, moral person stays out of trouble. Let’s keep our hands clean, we say, and we’ll be okay.
But morality is also a positive and aggressive choice. Good morality is about engaging the world, engaging the world with good, and overcoming evil with good.
Only now are we beginning to hear of the amazing and morally good stories emerging from New Orleans. We hear of doctors and nurses and caregivers who attended the sick in hospitals even when those hospitals were being attacked by hoodlums. We hear of policeman and fireman and national guard folks stepping into the murky and grimy water in order to save. We hear of morally good citizens taking in strangers and evacuees, schools opening up extra spaces in classrooms.
These acts of moral goodness do not just happen overnight. They are the result of discipline and practice, like every good habit.
None of us knows exactly when the next tragedy may strike our lives. It may be an isolated event that affects only ourselves. Or it may be such a calamity that an entire city is displaced. We do our best to prepare for those events physically; we keep the machinery of our culture in good repair, we wear our seatbelts, and we obey laws.
But no matter what our physical preparation, we must always be attending to our moral preparation, too. It is our moral preparation that will determine how we respond to calamity. Will we have the courage to do the right thing? Will we have the courage to leave our normal routines so that we can truly care for our neighbor? Will we raise our arms to help?
Or will we throw up our hands in despair? The morally lazy will always blame someone else. The morally lazy will wait for someone else to wade into the water.
One of the things we do today, at the Cathedral of St. Philip, is to commission Christian Education teachers and leaders. This is a normal routine for the beginning of the Fall season. Many families have been away all summer. Some have traveled on vacation. Others have just taken a few summer Sundays off. But in churches throughout the country, this day marks a “homecoming,” a return.
What we are we returning to?
I hope we are returning to our moral and spiritual training. It is a mistake to assume that we will always know the good, immediately, when any crisis erupts. Knowledge of the good takes time and seasoning. Going to church one Sunday out of four, or whenever we feel like it, does not train us. Our children will not be changed for the better through attending one class or one event. No, it is the routine of church attendance, it is the routine of hearing the stories of faith and courage, it is the routine of rubbing shoulders in Christian community that creates moral good.
We return, today, to the routines that mold and fashion our Christian spirits. When Moses lifted up his hand to stop the water, he did so as a morally fashioned man, a true leader, someone who had fought for his people, and who would also suffer for his people. He was not afraid to wade into the water or climb the highest mountain. He grew in virtue, he teaches us to grow in virtue.
We do not know where the next flood waters will emerge. We do not know the exact cause of the next calamity. But we do know that God has given us structures and routines and communities which form our Christian habits.
Pay attention to your disciplines in this time of anxiety. Pray, serve, listen –love mercy, do justice, and walk humbly-- practice forgiveness over and over again – seventy times seven times! Practice love over and over again. Practice it so much that you become a lover yourself. With those routines, with those disciplines of morality, God gives us power. God gives us the power to part the waters of misery with the courage of virtue, and the perseverance of faith
AMEN.
The Very Reverend Samuel G. Candler, The Cathedral of St. Philip
Comments? Contact Dean Candler at: SCandler@stphilipscathedral.org