“The Church’s Response to Hurricane Katrina”

3 September 2006

Scripture Reading: Luke 10: 25-37

Rev. Dr. Carol L. Kerr 

Blue Point Congregational Church

 

What is god like?  This is the one question that Jesus tries throughout his ministry to answer again and again.  What is God like? 

It is the one year anniversary of hurricane Katrina which made landfall just after 6 am august 29 and was the worse natural disaster in American in nearly 80 years.  It scattered the Gulf Coast community and left and indelible mark from Lake Charles, La., to Biloxi, Miss.  Kate Morse who preached here this summer is one of the refugees. 

“How do you reconcile this horrible event with an all- powerful God who is in control of everything, who has set up natural laws?”  This is the question a news reporter in the wake of a natural disaster asked Rev. William Willimon.  I think it is a good question.  It is a modern question.     It is a lawyers kind of question.  It is skeptical and rational, and confounded.    

It is a lawyer’s question.   This question is an appropriate question to ask about FEMA.  Which seems to have been bogged down in so much regulation and strapped into so much law, rational thinking and bureaucracies that it was rendered paralyzed.  How do you reconcile this horrible event with a huge federal agency who is backed by billions of dollars and set up laws….?  We expected the government to help in this disaster.  Sadly, FEMA seems to have lost its ability to cope.  We have all heard the stories.  Billions of tax dollars poured into FEMA and billions being stuck in the mud of an endless and inane federal bureaucracy.   This complete failure of government has been most exemplified by the astrodome horrors.  We remember hundreds of people sent to the astrodome as a place of last resort, mostly the poor, the aged, and the very young, people who were unable to leave New Orleans.  We remember watching the situation deteriorate, no water, no food, toilets broken.   No air-conditioning in 100 degree heat with high humidity.  School buses of the city which could have been used to bus these people out of the city to safety, submerged in water, left idle, because someone in the government didn’t think it through, or no one was assigned to think through bussing so no one did.  Maybe they went out to lunch that day…  This I found unbelievable because we had just set up the department of homeland security which was suppose to have been in charge of coordinating efforts of local state and city governments incase, particularly of a terrorist attack, which could be, as Bin Laden has indicated millions of people.  But, this disaster there was a complete breakdown of government. 

Even though the above is a good question.  Jesus never asked this question.  Instead he asked, What is God like?  It is this question that I believe allowed the church to respond so differently than FEMA.  In contrast to FEMA’s paralysis, in spite of billions of dollars, and years of supposed planning churches throughout the nation found themselves able to respond effectively with very few funds and little planning.   I am delighted to know about that.  And I wonder why?  I wonder that it might be because Jesus, and the church does not ask the question of the reporter, “How could God do this?”  that is not the question that drove the missionary response of many people like you me.  A man like Donald Bliss, a retired construction superintendent, who drove his blue pickup truck to Biloxi from his home in Greene, Iowa, saying about his church group “We just wanted to help.”  …  the question that got people to get into the Volkswagens, their Chrysler wagons, their minivans, their pick up trucks, Volvo's, Mercedes, Ford focus, their motor scooters, even bicycles, and get down there and start helping is the answer to Jesus’ question, What is God like.

Jesus answers the question, “What is God like?”  Jesus responds, God is like a shepherd who abandons the 99 sheep and goes to look for the one lost sheep and, when he finds the one lost sheep, he buts it on his shoulders like a child and throws a party for all his friends. 

What is God like?  He is like the guy who says the first shall be last and the last first.  Or the parable of the poor widow putting her money in the offering.  And so, the churches focus their work on the poorest of the poor.  Case workers interview community residents to tell who among them are in the most dire need.  These are the homes rebuilt first. 

Parable of the talents.    “The first responders were the individual congregations on the Gulf Coast, which began doing everything they could to rescue, feed, clothe and house people immediately after the storm.  After a few weeks more and more volunteers began streaming in.  The church such as the Lutheran Disaster Response, took over and bilt a camp in Biloxi Miss.  With huge tensts, trailers and RVS.  Hey build showers and bathrooms.  They coordinated food for the thousand of volunteers that came streaming down. 

“We could not have survived without the help of volunteers,” says Bilozi City Councilman Bill Stallworth.  Insurance claim checks have been small or none existent, and residents says faith-based groups, have offered much more help than the government. 

What is God like?  God is the woman who, upon losing a lost coin, turns her whole house upside down and when she at last finds that coin, shouts to her friends, “Come party with me, I found my coin!”   One member of Beecher UCC mother was concerned about the wedding ring she left sitting on top of the dresser in her house when they left.  Knowing the possibility was slim of finding this ring in a house that had been inundated by water to the ceiling, members of a work group nevertheless spent the day searching while cleaning up other debris in the house.  They found it!  It wasn’t the wedding ring, but another heirloom ring that was able to be returned to this woman who had lost everything.  Come party with me, she had found apiece of her past!

What is God like?  God is not the cosmic bureaucrat, sitting in his office, saying, “If they need me, they can contact me during office hours.”  God goes out beyond the camp, seeks, searches and saves.  What did happen to those thousands of FEMA trailers that were never delivered and were slowing sinking into the ground at XXX?  Are they still there? 

What is the difference between the question, How could God do this?  And What is God like?  How can God do this to me question (give various examples of feeling like a victim)  Makes you feel stuck.  That kind of faith goes no where.  What is more important and way more inspiring. Is What is God like….

 It makes a difference because it will change our faith.  The first will make us think that our faith is something that we do, something that we summon forth, a matter of your hard workd and earnest desire.  It is a works righteousness.  But, I don’t think that would have gotten all those volunteers down there.  I think there faith is motivated by a different question.  God is like the wild lover chasing after his beloved.  Faith is when you get soul and found by a a passionate lover of a God. 

Our text from the son of songs is an ancient Hebrew poem.  It sounds like two young adolescent lovers, and may be.  But you know how the church ahs alreays read this, as a love song sung by Irael to her God and God to Israel.  Faith is not a cool, calm, or rational matter of belief.  It is not a lawyerly weighing the scales on one side and counterbalancing them on the other side  Rathr  it is a cut through the paper work kind of God. 

What does this have to do with us?  For one thing we might just continue to help down there even though it is after the first year anniversary.  I e-mailed Kate Morse asking her and she said, What remains a theme, however, is the concern that the national church/local churches/individual members will lose interest in restoring the Gulf Coast and local UCC churches (many of whom make up the New Orleans Assoc./South Central Conference) as well as Back Bay Mission in Biloxi, MS now that the one year anniversary has come and gone.  I don't know how helpful this is for you...  Do let me know what more I may be able to provide to you... 

Also, I have enclosed in the bulletin how you can connect etc. 

The second thing, though, is not just about going down there and Katrina.  It is about what we do up here.  We are loving like God loved us.  What is God like?  God is lover in love with humanity.  What are we like, we are lovers in love with God and passionately helping humanity.  What are we doing here when we worship?  What are we doing when we take up the offering?  What are we doing when we work on Thursdays int eh community clothes closet for the poor?  We, are loving a God who loves us and is love din return.  It’s our song of love to the beloved.  100% of each gift made to the hope Shall Bloom – UCC Hurricane Recovery Fund goes to support hurricane recovery programming.  This is possible because church member’s gifts to Our Church’s Wider Mission basic support provide for the infrastructure necessary to enable the UCC disaster response.