This Sunday brings to us a strange convergence of cataclysmic events. It was four years ago this morning that we huddled together in a state of shock, fear and outrage with the images of four commercial planes, each filled with passengers, crashing into, and demolishing the twin towers, into the Pentagon, and into Pennsylvania farmland. In the past four years, nothing had happened since within the borders of the United States that rivals the shock magnitude of the devastation, that is, until just two weeks ago when Hurricane Katrina blew in from the Gulf Coast to slam into Louisiana and Mississippi, its winds and floodwaters wreaking havoc; killing hundreds and leaving a million people homeless.

What do we make of such horrific events as these? Where is God in all this?

A third event touched my life as well this week -- on a smaller scale, but no less horrifying for the persons it devastated. I was called upon to perform the funeral for a 25 year old man, the son of a former church member, who died suddenly from a drug overdose.

The convergence of these events on this Sunday has led me to do an unusual thing as I prepared myself for preaching: I set aside the lectionary readings assigned for this Sunday, and reached instead for another text that came to mind as I thought of these tragedies.

In our story this morning, like ourselves, those who are in Jesus’ presence have been rattled by distressing news of their own day -- an event that in certain ways resembles the horrors we encountered on September 11th, 2001. Pilate, the Roman governor in Judea, had just committed a political act of terrorism. Galilean Jewish pilgrims making sacrifices in the temple have been murdered by Pilate’s soldiers. This, too, was an act designed to wreak terror in the hearts of masses.

In the course of their conversation together, Jesus brings up another horrifying event. A tower by the pool of Siloam in Jerusalem had collapsed, apparently taken down by a sudden strong gust of wind, killing eighteen persons. Going about their ordinary, daily lives one moment, dead the next. On the surface this event seemed to resemble the death and suffering wrought by Hurricane Katrina: suffering brought about not by human cruelty but by nature, or, as they like to say in the insurance industry, an "act of God."

Upon further reflection I realized that the sharp distinction between an act of human beings (9/11) and an act of nature (Hurricane Katrina) doesn’t hold up: in various ways the sufferings of the present crisis have been brought about by human sin: it is said that Katrina, when it entered the gulf of Mexico, was only a tropical storm, but because the waters of the gulf were 2 degrees warmer than usual, it was transformed into a violent hurricane. Most scientists who study such things will tell you that the increase in temperature in the gulf is a consequence of Global warming, brought on by the destruction of the ozone from our abuse of our environment through our greed and the excessive burning of fossil fuels it inspires.

And further, those who suffered the most from the hurricane were more often than not people living in poverty -- people without the means protect themselves from the onslaught of the terrible winds. Jesus and the Biblical prophets of old would have much to say about the blind eye our society turns to the growing gap between the rich and the poor. It is the neglected poor who have suffered the most as a result of the hurricane.

Enough said. I will leave such commentary to return to the Bible passage before us.

Why do bad things happen if God is real? Now there was a common theological understanding in those days, often found still today, that asserts that bad things happen to people because God is punishing sin. Job, you may recall, had his three friends try to convince him of this particular doctrine. Since God is a just God, and God is in control, a certain logic would follow: those who meet the big slam are simply getting what they deserve.

There can be some comfort in such a view, particularly for persons such as ourselves, and those standing there in Jesus’ presence that day, who stand apart from the suffering. If it is true it suggests that we can avoid bad things happening to us by keeping our noses clean. By dent of will I can stay on the straight and narrow, and then life won’t be such a vulnerable, fragile gift.

But the truth of the matter is that life IS fragile, and we ARE vulnerable, and there’s no getting around that, but life is nonetheless a GOOD GIFT. Life’s goodness was affirmed when our God in the central mystery of our faith took on human flesh, born among the homeless (those one million persons left homeless by Katrina), born into a world of violence to one day lose his life at the hands of government sanctioned terrorism.

The words Jesus’ speaks in response to these two tragedies are unsettling. He says, in effect, that we’re all sinners, and we’d better watch out.

What does that mean? Perhaps this: everyone of us has been given this extraordinary gift of life. It is precious -- heart-wrenchingly beautiful, but in various way we have squandered the gift, like the prodigal son squandered the gift of his inheritance. The gift was given to us to be cherished and shared, and instead we have filled our days with superficiality: muttering about the raw deal we have, harboring petty resentments against those who haven’t given us what we believe is our due, hoarding the gift tightly. We fritter our days preoccupied with little things that in the big picture don’t matter a wit. We treat the gift as though it weren’t a gift at all but a private possession to hoard with endless tomorrows, when in fact all we have for sure is right now.

And so Jesus rebukes his listeners: "I tell you; unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did." Now on the surface, Jesus’ words might suggest that if you successfully "repent", you will manage to bypass death, bypass unexpected tragedy. But that’s not what Jesus means.

What he means, quite simply, is that it is time to wake up. WAKE UP!

Standing somewhere on the horizon, perhaps closer than we know, is our own death, mocking us for the daily frittering of the great gift of life.

We will all one day die. There is no getting around that. The question is, what will our departure from this life look like? Will we depart this life ‘asleep at the wheel,’ so to speak? Will we die as those who, in some sense, never really lived? Will we die, clutching to our resentments, clutching to our material possessions, clutching to the illusion that this is our life to do with whatever the hell we please rather than a priceless gift from God with eternal consequences intended to be offered up in love?

We all remember those days immediately following the terrorist attacks four years ago. There was a kind of collective waking up that took place. Divisions were overcome. We remembered what really mattered in life. We weren’t consumed with winning arguments, getting ahead, getting stuff, getting laid. For a time, people stopped cutting one another off on the roadways and giving each other the finger -- how could we after what we had experienced together?

Do you remember that sweet tenderness with which we treated one another, intimates and strangers alike? Yes, it became oh so clear, life is fragile, yes, we are vulnerable, but nonetheless life is a gift. It is good -- very, very good. And in the end, love is all that matters.

Similar things have happened in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. As we watch images of people left with absolutely nothing, we realize anew how so very much we have, how stunningly blessed we have been, and the impulse to help arises, the desire to be an instrument of the greater love we call God.

And in the face of both tragedies, most of us sensed the reality of the eternal: that there is far more to this gift that I can see with my eyes and touch with my hands. A stillness was experienced, as the psalm says, in which God whispers to us: "I am here. Beneath everything, I am here."

In conclusion, I just want to express a word of gratitude to those among us who live graciously and lovingly in the valley of the shadow. There are those among us who have received from doctors diagnoses that highlight the inherent fragility and preciousness that is the gift of life. Your courage, your sense of presence to the moment, your open hearts, are an inspiration to the rest of us who would likewise yearn to wake up. Thank you.

In the kindness of Jesus,

Pastor Jeff