It
Took Its Place Behind Them
Exodus 14:19-31
A Service of
Prayer and Remembrance
Commemorating
the 10th Anniversary of the September 11, 2011 Terrorist Attacks
A Joint Service
of Worship of
St. Paul Episcopal Church and First
Presbyterian Church of Batesville, AR
September 11,
2011
The Rev. Dr.
Robert Wm Lowry
Let me begin this evening by thanking Fr. John and
the congregation of St. Paul for the opportunity to be with you tonight and for
your hospitality. To paraphrase the
Psalmist, how good and now pleasant it is when friends dwell together in unity. This continues a good friendship between our
two congregations and that truly is a good and holy thing.
I take as my text this evening a portion
of the reading from Exodus we heard just moments ago.
The people of Israel are fleeing
from the hand of pharaoh through the Egyptian wilderness. The Lord commands Moses to raise up his staff
and extend his and over the waters of the sea so that they may part. He follows God’s command, and as the waters
part, in the words of the writer of Exodus,
“ the pillar of cloud moved from in
front of them and took its place behind them.”
Let us pray.
Almighty God, may the words of my
mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing to you our rock and our
redeemer. Should it please you to speak
through the words of this unworthy servant, then speak. And in this and all times, speak to us as
only you can, in the silence of our hearts.
Amen.
The
pillar of cloud moved from in front of them and took its place behind them.
Imagine
what it must have been like.
I
guess in truth, we don’t actually have to imagine. In his final monumental undertaking,
legendary filmmaker Cecil B. deMille paints a vivid, if not entirely accurate,
picture of the exodus from Egypt. Whenever
I read or hear this text, that image is my mental picture.
The
great cloud that looms above the people moves so that it is stationed firmly
between the people of Charlton Heston and Yul Brenner’s army. The billowing smoke, the occasional glimpses
of fire, the flashing lightening all combine to make Hollywood magic.
At
the moment these events were unfolding for the people of Israel, I doubt it was
quite the popcorn moment. I imagine it what
must have been an awesome almost terrifying sight.
In
that moment, the pillar of fire and smoke that led them through the Egyptian
desert gives way to the corridor of dry land bordered by the two great walls of
water inviting the people to cross the sea and enter into the Promised Land.
It
is an epic, emotional, dramatic scene.
In all it’s 1950’s technicolory Hollywood majesty, the climactic scene
of one of the climactic movies of the last century invites us to know what it
was to stand there that day in the shadow of the pillar of cloud and smoke and
fire.
In
the end of course, the people escape, Pharoah’s army is engulfed by the sea,
God’s promise is fulfilled and all Pharoah can do… is go home to Anne Baxter.
The
story of the people of Israel crossing from slavery in Egypt into the freedom
of God’s Promised Land is one of the great narratives in human history and one
of the pivotal ones in the greater story of the people of God. When the people first set foot on the bed of
the sea, a new day dawned.
And
the turning point was when the pillar of cloud moved from in front of them and
took its place behind them.
I
am hardly the first preacher to draw a parallel between the pillar of cloud in
the book of Exodus and the pillar of fire and smoke that erupted on lower
Manhattan a decade ago this morning.
What
began as a beautiful autumn morning with a big blue sky and perfect fall
weather quickly became a picture of darkness and destruction and death. The misguided and misdirected anger and hate
of 18 young men would ignite a fire that would burn even when the flames were
put down and the rubble carted off.
I
recalled in my sermon this morning the landing
in Newark Airport on September 13 the day air traffic resumed. When the airplane banked over northern New
Jersey and began to fly down the Hudson toward Newark’s runway, I had a clear
view of lower Manhattan out my window. I
remember the skyline of lower Manhattan with a void where two great towers of
concrete and steel had stood just three days before. I remember the plumes of smoke and steam
that, though of a lesser magnitude than they had been days before, still
billowed into the sky like the exhalations of some great beast dwelling beneath
the streets and struggling to be let loose on the world.
That
pillar of fire and smoke would remain firmly fixed in our minds eye long after
it disappeared from our view. I would
wager to say that for many of us it would be easy to conjure up a vision of it
right now.
It
remains fixed before us defining everything else in our line of sight. It has become the measuring stick by which
world events are now measured.
It
is almost as if that day was the restarting point of time. Pre-9/11 and post-9/11 are our new cultural
BC and AD.
Late
last week, a friend who is a stringer for NPR called to interview me for a
piece he was working on that was broadcast on Saturday. I’m afraid I wasn’t much help to his
story. He and several other reporters
around the country were interviewing people about what they were doing on
September 10, 2001. When he asked me, I
searched my memory trying to think of what it might have been. In the end, all I could remember was that it
was a sunny Monday in Shreveport and I took the dog for a walk down by the river
before substitute coaching pee-wee football in the afternoon.
That
was it.
Nothing
else stands out.
It
was just a plain old Monday.
Had
he asked me about the next day, I could give him moment by moment details. It is still vivid and at times feels ever
present. As a colleague commented to me
the other day, it is almost as if one September day has lasted for ten years.
I
wonder if perhaps tonight, with ten years between those tragic events and this Lord’s
Day, it might not be time to let it be a new day. Perhaps it is time that the pillar of cloud
moves from in front of us and takes its place behind us.
Like
most things, that is easier said than done.
When
the Israelites stood on the banks of the Red Sea and Moses hurried them along
to journey across to the Promised Land, there must have been at least a moment
when the people thought better of that suggestion. There must have been a moment when someone
said, “you know that pillar of cloud back there got us this far, maybe we need
to stick with it. Maybe we should keep
it out front.”
With
the unknown horizon across the sea in front of them, I imagine that it was
tempting to turn around, put their backs to the unknown and set their eyes and
expectations on the familiar; the pillar of cloud that had led them thus far.
Given
the option between the known and the unknown, most of us will choose the former
every time.
The
problem with sticking with the familiar for the Israelites was that the pillar
had moved. It was no longer in front of
them pointing the way to freedom and the Promised Land. Now it was behind them. To turn and face it now meant to turn away
from freedom and direct themselves, once again, toward Egypt; toward Pharaoh;
toward captivity.
The
pillar of cloud moved from in front of them and took its place behind them.
None of us will forget the events of that
September morning.
Nor
should we. It will rightly remain a part
of our collective memory and shade our perspective of the world for generations
to come.
The
image of that pillar of fire and smoke that came from lower Manhattan, from the
outer ring of the Pentagon and from a lonely field in rural Pennsylvania will
remain ever present in the narrative of our nation and our world.
Nonetheless,
it is, perhaps, time that we posed a question to ourselves. Where does that pillar of fire and smoke
belong? Shall it remain in front of us,
continuing to give direction and shape to our lives; shall that pillar of fire
and smoke remain our true north or shall it take its place behind us? Not as a forgotten chapter but as a reminder
of where we have been and where, in the mercy and grace of God, we hope to
never return.
Today
we remember the lives not only of the nearly 3000 who lost their lives on
September 11, 2001, but also the more than 4000 who, since that day lost their
lives in Iraq and the more than 1800 who lost their lives in Afghanistan, 80 as
recently as this morning, along with countless civilians caught in the middle
of a war of other’s making.
As
we look back in mourning on those who are lost, we must have the courage to
also look forward in hope to the tomorrow that God has promised. If we linger too long on the past, if we
allow our world to be measured not by the promise of God’s tomorrow but by
yesterday’s tragedies, we fail to do honor to their memories by wasting the
future of which they have been deprived.
If
we do indeed have that courage to look into the horizon of tomorrow, we will
never forget what came before nor will we enslave ourselves to it as we cross
over into God’s promise.
The
pillar of cloud moved from in front of them and took its place behind
them.
May
it be so for us and for our world.
Sola
Deo Gloria! To God alone be the
Glory. Amen.
