Texts: Jeremiah 15: 15-21; Matthew 18: 21-26

The city had a strange mixture of quiet and noise that Wednesday. Randolph and King had picked the middle of the week for what they called the March for Jobs and Freedom so that the federal government would see that civil rights legislation and equal employment were serious issues that faced the Nation. Brainstorm of the late A. Philip Randolph, a union organizer who had earlier successfully gotten Roosevelt to bar racial discrimination in federal employment and among federal contractors, and organized by Bayard Rustin, known as a pacifist and at that time a closeted homosexual, the idea of a mass march “on” Washington alarmed many people. The racism of that day, in some ways far removed from our world today, reflected itself in the fears of that march.

Non-essential government workers were given the day off; most stores and businesses closed their doors; there were rumors of a mass attack on Washington. Only the churches stood firm with the marchers. We made literally hundreds of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, tons of iced tea to be put in thermoses – this was the age before water bottles and Snapple – and set up sleeping quarters for many who would not be returning from the march until the next morning. Although the march is best remembered for the “I Have A Dream” speech, there was so much more to that day. So much more.

At that point, those of us who supported civil rights for Negroes, as the term was then used, were heady because we saw this march as moving a languishing civil rights bill forward. As the summer became the fall, however, little changed until that fateful day almost three months later when Kennedy was shot and Johnson, recognizing the canker in the soul of a Nation, pushed the bill forward. Even the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham resulting in the death of four Sunday School children less than a month after the March changed little. Yes, but that was a long time ago, one says. Thankfully, yes, it was another time, even before my own children were born, but old wounds have a way of resurfacing, like a scar that just doesn't go away. We all carry such scars.

Sometimes the scars we carry are so many that they feel like a a patchwork quilt stitched upon our psyche and seared into our souls. The deepest scar we carry is the one of which Jeremiah speaks and caught in Jesus' rebuke to Peter as reported in this morning's Gospel; it is the scar of betrayal. How often have we heard the phrase regarding a book or a movie, “a story of love, loss, and betrayal.” It is the betrayal that eats into the center of our souls. Sometimes we feel, as did Jesus in his rebuke to Peter, betrayed by our friends who misunderstand what we are about; sometimes we feel betrayed by God. And that is the wound that is the most difficult to heal.

This past week after Irene blew through our state and headed north causing billions of dollars in damage and resulting in close to 50 deaths, Michelle Bachman called Irene a sign from God and then had the temerity to link it to her drive to gut spending for the poor. The blog Politico commented in response to her statement that it was ironic she would have used a storm that results in the government having to spend millions in clean-up as a sign that government should cut spending. And who can forget Pat Robertson's comments about Katrina or the Haitian earthquake as punishments from God over liberal sexual attitudes or slave revolts against brutal masters? But these outrageous comments speak to a deeper issue in the way many, if not most, of us were raised to think about God.

Our theological roots have their grounding in ancient, if not primitive, ways of thinking about the universe. The people who became the Jews had entered into a covenant with the Lord, the God they worshiped; that covenant stated that they were to worship the Lord and the Lord above all other gods. Jeremiah in the book that bears his name and in Lamentations cries out to the Lord because the people have betrayed the covenant they made; he linked the devastation visited on Jerusalem as a result of that betrayal. And he is inconsolable. That is the part of Jeremiah that speaks to our despair when we feel betrayed, whether by other people or by God.

There is no question that judgment is visited on a people who betray their principles, their covenant with each other. Unsure how to frame such judgment, we often ascribe that judgment to God. Even such a skeptic like Voltaire was shaken by the 1755 earthquake that leveled Lisbon and resulted in more than 60,000 deaths. Occurring on All Saints Day when many were in churches, it was felt as far away as Sweden and central Africa and resulted in Voltaire's satire of the best of all possible worlds, Candide. The problem is, of course, even though we have the scientific knowledge that explains how faults interlock on the earth and how tropical storms are formed,we are unable to erase the underlying theology that we have been raised with that says, God is in control. We need to reframe our theology to look beyond the incurable wound of betrayal by God and consider how to address the deepest wounds we have so we can develop true communities of love and forgiveness.

During this coming week we will see many old wounds resurfacing over the events of 9-11. Some of us sitting here lost friends and acquaintances in the World Trade Center attack. But many of us also lost something else. Even after the first attempt to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993, we felt impenetrable, a feeling belied by the memories of a previous generation that really did remember Pearl Harbor. The betrayal we felt, the incurable wound we experienced is the realization that we really are a part of the rest of the world. We are not so different.

This coming week presents an opportunity to cure some old wounds. Curing a wound does not mean forgetting or “getting over it,” a phrase I absolutely detest because it does not reflect emotional reality or theological reality, for that matter. We don't “get over it.” We learn how to heal the wound even as the scar forms. The scar runs deep but we are able to move ahead through the ability given us by God to help heal others. Jeremiah called his wound incurable because of his utter isolation from others. As we touch each other, we end that isolation; then even our wounds can be cured.

Let us pray: We are so often mystified, healer of wounds in our souls, when events seem beyond our control. We feel more than more frustration of not having electricity or flooding in the basement. And we want to ascribe responsibility. But you, O God, have given us the ability to show love and care even in the worst of times. Help us to extend the grace of your love to others, and through sharing our wounds, to heal them. Amen.