Sermon from September 30, 2001
During the first full week after the attack on America, two bumper stickers caught my eye. One of them flashed by me on I-95 so fast that I could not read the short message. I caught up with the guy at the Delaware tollgate, and half a mile down the road he passed me again. This time I saw the bumper sticker clearly. It said, "Allah is only a prayer away." Two things struck me about that message.

First, I thought the guy was pretty brave, and maybe that is why he was in a hurry. In my heart I wished for his protection from people who would not be understanding about his faith. The more important thing that struck me was to change the words of a familiar patriotic song. Let us now sing, "Allah, bless America!"

Now there is nothing wrong with that, and I am sure that thousands of Muslims prayed exactly that, and good for them. However, it sounds strange to American ears, because Allah names the god of a specific religious faith that has specific doctrines and unique places of worship and habits of worship. The name "Allah" has about it the sting of the particular. We would get the same feeling if we sang, "Jesus, bless America!"

On the other hand, "God," as in "God bless America" is comfortingly vague. It can tumble off the lips of atheist, Jew, agnostic, muslim and Christian alike without offense. It does not suggest any specific religious faith or doctrine or place of worship. It is like a cloud on a summer day in which different different people see different shapes.

The other bumper sticker I saw up by Concord Mall was making the same point but not as pointedly. It read, "God will bless America, if America blesses God." Obviously, that person was irritated by the chummy vagueness of "God Bless America" and wanted to make the point that God might have some conditions for blessing America.

For all of you under 50, you have to know that the public religious display in the first days after the attack was a throwback to the 1950s and to President Eisenhower's famous statement that "America is a nation under god, and I don't care which god it is." The '50s were the heyday of an American Civil Religion that tried to put a faceless religious halo over the political and social status quo.

As soon as a Muslim says, "Allah," and a Jew says, "Adonai," and a Christian says, "Jesus," the shallowness of civil religion becomes apparent. It has no soul, it has no mind, and it has no spiritual and moral power.

In the anguish of those first days after the events of Spetember 11the most sincere thing of all was the spirutual hunger of millions of people who crowded into churches. We all came looking for something to help us make sense of our national tragedy. Many came genuinely looking for God. American Civil Religion cannot make sense of our national tragedy, because it is spiritually bankrupt. We will find such meaning only in the sting of the particular. But there are limitations there too.

Islam, for example, may try to point to that meaning, but in this country it has not yet found its public voice, and in any case I believe worldwide Islam is in a life and death struggle to decide if Muslim fundamentalists will define Islam's future.

Judaism, for all its contribution to American culture in finance, journalism, government, law, science and the arts, cannot speak to America's spiritual need. No other religion can speak to our times like Christianity's Billy and Franklin Graham and James Dobson and Charles Colson and Pope John Paul II. When I speak to you, I speak out of a tradition that has the power to make sense of our national tragedy. So, today and in the days to come, please hear with me and through me the word of God for our times. We listen today to Mark 11:12ff.

Mark 1:1-11 tells of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem with its royal overtones. The King has come to the seat of Jewish power, which was not a palace but the temple. Verses 12-14 pick up the action. The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again." And his disciples heard him say it. There has to be a sequel to this, if it is to make sense. What happens next is the key to what Jesus said to the fig tree.

On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts.

When I read this, several words come to mind that apply to Jesus' behavior: unexpected, courageous, public, dangerous. Unexpected, because we have seen nothing so far that gave any warning that Jesus would behave like this. Courageous, because it appears to be His action alone, not that of His disciples or of anyone else; and because it happens in the temple, the nerve center of Jewish life. Public, not only because it happens in the temple in broad daylight, but also at Passover, when religious pilgrims from all over the Empire will be in Jerusalem. Dangerous to Himself, because He acted alone and dangerous to the Jewish authorities, because He may touch deep feelings among the common people, and a public riot would call out the Roman cohort stationed adjacent to the temple. The pressing question asks, "Why did He do it?" Verse 17 gives one answer.

And as he taught them, he said, "Is it not written: 'My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations?' But you have made it a 'den of robbers.'" I know you care deeply about the meaning of scripture and about our Lord's motivation for His inflammatory action. Be patient for a moment as we analyze His statement in verse 17.

First, He explains by quoting the Old Testament: "Is it not written?" Once again, Jesus stands squarely in the tradition of the great prophets of Israel. Quoting their words implies that He sees clear parallels between the spiritual dangers that faced Israel of old and the spiritual dangers that faced Israel in His own day. His inflammatory actions and words are not the anti-Semitic rhetoric of a gentile outsider; they express a thoroughly Jewish quarrel that had happened before at crucial moments in Israel's life. Behind the quarrel lay differing Jewish interpretations of the meaning and destiny of Jewish life.

Second, I said that Jesus stands squarely in the tradition of the great prophets of Israel. Just how great becomes clear from the quotation. 'My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations' comes from Isaiah 56:7. 'A den of robbers' comes from Jeremiah 7:11. Isaiah and Jeremiah stand at the head of the list of the prophets in the Old Testament. Their ideas took hold of Him with such force that He did what He did that dramatic day in the temple. What were those ideas?

The key to understanding Jesus' quotation of the prophets is the word robbers, which comes from Jeremiah 7. And now I do something I do not like to do. Be patient with me as I get technical for just a minute. The English word robbers here does not capture the meaning of Jesus or Jeremiah. Breaking and entering or even armed robbery is not what aroused the passions of Jesus in the temple that day.

The Greek word in Mark 11 and the Hebrew word in Jeremiah 7 label violent men, and the Greek word at least labels violent men of a certain kind, namely political revolutionaries, who were intent on overthrowing the Romans and throwing them out of Jerusalem. Do you remember Barabbas? John 18:40 specifically calls him a robber, and all four Gospels say that the Romans had sentenced him to execution, because he had killed someone in an insurrection. Maybe the English word that captures the meaning of Mark is terrorist. The weapons are different; the modus operandi is the same.

It would seem, then, that Jesus is not accusing the temple authorities of inappropriate commercial activity in the temple. He is accusing them of encouraging political revolution and making the future of Israel depend on the successful overthrow of Roman power. Jesus had a dramatically different vision for the future of Israel, and that is where his quotation from Isaiah comes from.

"'My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations,'" says Jesus. The future of Israel is not bound up with political revolution, but with its calling to be a spiritual blessing to all the nations of the earth. The center of Jusaism, the temple, is to be a place of prayer for all nations, not a center for revolutionary violence. Jewish nationalism was betraying Israel's divine calling.

When Jesus drives out those who buy and sell in the temple and overturns the tables of the moneychangers, he, like the great Jewish prophets before Him, is engaging in a dramatic symbolic act. In that act He is saying to the Jewish leadership of His day, "Either you stop using this holiest place on the face of the earth as a center for violent revolution, or the day will come when other forces will stop it for you in ways you cannot resist and do not want. It must be stopped. This is to be a place of prayer, a place where heaven and earth intersect."

His symbolic action in the temple also implies that the God of Israel might allow Jewish institutions to be uprooted. It was of course unthinkable to Jesus' generation; it was unthinkable to His disciples. Jewish institutions, whatever the Romans might do, seemed like fixtures, as permanent as the mountain on which Jerusalem was built. To suggest any significant change in them, never mind their removal, seems like uprooting a mountain and tossing it into the sea.

Convinced that Jewish leadership had forsaken their divine vocation and had embodied another vision at the heart of Judaism, Jesus comes with force against the otherwise valid institutions of temple life. Jewish leadership was not impressed.

The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching. Jesus did not stay to discuss it. When evening came, they went out of the city. Verses 20-21 begin to tie together some loose ends.

In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots. Peter remembered and said to Jesus, "Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered!" C.S. Lewis called this a miracle of destruction, and it is the only one of its kind that Jesus did. As we learned throughout Mark, miracles always serve as material illustrations of some spiritual reality. What does the destruction of the fig tree illustrate?

A day had passed since Jesus had said to the tree, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again." Sandwiched between those words and the withereing of the fig tree was the inflammatory episode in the temple. I believe that Mark intends us to see the withering of the fig tree as an illustration of the spiritual desiccation that was sapping the life-giving power out of Israel's divine vocation.

The withering of the fig tree expresses Jesus' conviction that Israel's real problem is not Rome. Israel's real problem is Israel. Bad as the Romans may be, the thing that threatens Jewish life is the shriveling that is going on within Jewish spiritual life. Judaism has become a tree whose life is withering away from within.

Jesus' action in the temple and His cursing of the fig tree introduce a theme that will work its way throughout chapters 11-13. Throughout Mark, I have said that Jesus came to show Israel a new way of being Israel. The theme that runs throughout these three chapters proclaims a significant passing away of the old way of being Israel.

Also, we cannot read these chapters, as if we know nothing about Israel's future. Within 40 years, in response to a concerted Jewish insurrection against Rome, the Roman legions destroyed the temple, burned Jerusalem, laid siege to Masada and utterly crushed the Jewish uprising. The Judaism that pursued violence brought down on Israel the very thing it feared the most. The fate of Judaism raises a pressing, contemporary question.

Can religions and nations today shrivel away from within and bring down on themselves their own destruction? Suffice it to say that if God allowed the venerable but shriveled institutions of Israel to be removed from the earth, I don't know why any nation, including our own, should be invulnerable to the same fate.

As the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse prepare again to ride across the earth, nations are being shaken. There is fear on earth today. The God of the Bible is present in this shaking and fear to test the nations. We shall not escape it. If we reject that possibility and if we fail also to see in our national calamities a warning from the God of the Bible to repent of our besetting sins and turn to Him, then the ultimate meaning of our national tragedy will escape us.

The testing of the nations also includes Islamic fundamentalism. I look toward the Middle East, and I see there an abiding hatred toward the West and its secular culture that threatens so much that many Muslims hold dear. I see their wanton brutality, done in service to Allah, as a desperate effort to rid Islamic culture of the sensuality and indulgence of Western culture.

As I look again, I see, as perhaps Jesus saw in His day, these massive efforts to keep Islam pure bringing down upon the heads of the Islamic world the very thing they designed to prevent. Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the attack on the United States becomes architect of the greatest catastrophe the Muslim world has ever seen. Bin Laden's terror, far from ridding his region of the world of American influence, brings Americans and other Westerners there in increasing numbers.

I watch as hundreds of sacks of food were unloaded for distrubution in Afghanistan, and each sack, printed in bold letters, reads, "USA." I see the military with their smart weapons and rock and roll and women dressed in pants and many soldiers praying to the Christian God and passing out Bibles – all on Muslim soil. I see refugees – two million Afghanis alone, susceptible, as are all refugees to new ideas, even Christian ideas. Intelligence communities from Western nations infiltrate the region. Bankers and diplomats from many nations come calling in the capitols of the Islamic world. And not for one year or two, but perhaps for a decade.

Might it touch Mecca and Medina and the Dome of the Rock? It seems unlikely, but the Jewish temple also seemed inviolable. God would never permit it to be touched, would He? We look out onto historical deeds of global impact into which the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus has inserted His hand. Let us look and tremble.