wfn.org | [ENS] Out of Deep Waters: Preachers,

["Matthew Davies" <mdavies@episcopalchurch.org>]

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Out of Deep Waters: Preachers, parishioners struggle to find meaning in
Katrina disaster

By Mary Frances Schjonberg

ENS 091305-2

[Episcopal News Service] Amid the horrifying experiences and images left
by
Hurricane Katrina, Episcopal preachers were faced with helping their
parishioners find meaning in the storm and its aftermath, all the while
struggling with their own reactions. Echoing through their efforts were
the
messages that God did not cause the hurricane and has not abandoned
creation
to the storm and that now, after the storm, Christians are called to
transformational action.

New beginnings

"Tonight you can be assured of two things," the Rev. Terry Pannell told
an
interfaith service for Muslim, Jewish and Christian hurricane evacuees
being
sheltered at St. Alban's Episcopal Church in Monroe, Louisiana, on
August
31. "The first is that God is where God is needed most. God is with you
tonight. And the second thing is that God does not forget. The waters
will
recede."

"Because God remembers, new beginnings are possible," he said. "What
Noah
understood and what displaced people throughout history have experienced
is
that the inner strength needed to overcome tragedy is found in the bond
we
have with God."

The Rev. Patricia Templeton, rector of St. Dunstan's Episcopal Church in
Atlanta, said on September 4 that the questions of where God was and why
God
allows such suffering to occur are questions "to which there is no
answer
that is fully satisfying."

However, she told her congregation, there are answers that she knows are
wrong. Katrina was not punishment for sin or part of a "greater and good
purpose ... that we cannot understand," she said.

"To suggest that God intentionally caused this tragedy for any reason is
obscene and nothing less than blasphemy," she said. "God is indeed
involved
in the sufferings of this Earth -- not by causing them, but by being
deeply
affected by them."

At St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Cypress, Texas, on September 4, the
congregation heard the Rev. Jeff W. Fisher quote French theologian Paul
Claudel: "Jesus did not come to explain away suffering or remove it. He
came
to fill it with his presence." Fisher said Christians "have the sad
opportunity to fill this tragedy with the presence of Jesus' love."

Bringing transformation

The Rev. Ellen Ekstrom, deacon at St. Mark's in Berkeley, California,
told
her congregation on the same Sunday that "God was with the people
climbing
up on rooftops to outrun the flood waters, God was with the rescuers,
God is
with the dying and the evacuees pouring into Texas" and with those who
grieve their losses.

Templeton told her congregation in Atlanta that God's presence brings
transformation. "And I must believe that although God may not be all
powerful in ways that prevent hurricanes and floods," she said. "God
does
have the kind of power that brings grace and redemption to even their
horrors, and give us the strength to continue and to rebuild and to make
all
things new."

One of the first to preach on Katrina was the Rev. Wilifred
Allen-Faiella,
rector of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Coconut Grove, in the
Diocese of
Southeast Florida. Hurricane Katrina made its first landfall, as a
Category
1 storm, near Coconut Grove on the evening of Thursday, August 25. The
following Sunday Allen-Faiella centered her sermon on Jesus' invitation
in
that morning's gospel to "take up their cross and follow me."

"Jesus doesn't say 'go look for a cross to pick up and carry.' The
existence
of crosses in each of our lives is a given," she told the congregation.
However, she said, our impulse is to deny the existence of hardship,
pain,
sorrow, suffering, illness and death.

"But trying to hide it or deny it or run from it does deprive us of
experiencing the resurrection, the transformation that always comes when
we
do take up our crosses," Allen-Faiella preached.

The next Sunday, she told her congregation that Katrina was
"apocalyptic" in
that the Greek roots of the word point to uncovering, revealing,
unveiling.
"An apocalypse of this magnitude breaks open and lays bare the status
quo.
It makes a statement: this is who we are. But it also asks a question:
is
this who we want to be?" she said.

She began to answer the question this way: "We Christians, and I mean
all
Christians -- right wing, left wing, and everyone in the vast middle --
all
Christians must regain our focus and find our voice again. We have been
so
busy fighting with each other, within our own denomination and with
others;
we have been so busy trying to grab political power cloaking it as a
stance
on 'family values' or 'pro-life'; we have been so busy being politically
correct; we have been so preoccupied with the numbers game ('why that
church
in Texas has 25,000 members!') that we have lost sight of who we are,
whose
we are, and why we have been put on this earth."

The Rev. Canon Patrick P. Augustine, rector of Christ Church in La
Crosse,
Wisconsin, noted the history-shaping events of the past four years, the
9-11
attacks, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the tsunami, and Hurricane
Katrina. He told his congregation on September 11 that the Christian
responsibility in the world today is to "look through the lenses of the
Gospel of hope, grace and love. Let not hatred win, to divide and
destroy
our faith communities."

'Called to be prophets'

In the gospel for September 11, Jesus tells Peter he must forgive not
seven
times but seventy-seven times. "It turns out to be hard to preach a
sermon
about forgiveness when there's so much to be angry about," the Rev.
Susan
Russell told the congregation at All Saints in Pasadena.

However, she said, that is what we must do. That and to "go set somebody
free -- that is our Christian mandate -- that is the work we have been
given
to do. As the Body of Christ -- as Jesus' hands and feet at work in the
world -- we have both the power and the responsibility to bless as we
have
been blessed ...."

St. Mark's Fisher told his congregation, "I do not want us to leave here
today thinking that the Christian life is just a glorified United Way
agency. Christians are not only called to fill the world with the
presence
of Jesus' love. Christians are called to live on the edge, fearless in
the
opposition and bold in our proclamation against injustice. Christians
are
called to be more than relief workers; we are called to be prophets."

Templeton invoked the message of the prophets. "God judges a nation not
by
the strength of its military or the wealth of its most powerful
citizens,
but by the care of its poorest and most vulnerable people," she told her
congregation.

The Rev. Donald Fishburne of Saint Michael and All Angels Church on
Sanibel
Island told his congregation on September 4 that he'd always heard
Jesus'
admonition that "the poor you have with you always" as an opportunity to
serve others, but that in the past week he saw those "others" as
brothers
and sisters.

"I am coming to know and feel in my bones that when the waters of death
come
for us all, we're all in the same boat," he preached. "Rich and poor,
black
and white, male and female, we're all alike, we're all the same, we're
all
in need of God's saving grace."

-- The Rev. Mary Frances Schjonberg is national correspondent for the
Episcopal News Service.

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