Ezekiel 33:1-11

Psalm 119:33-40

Romans 12:9-21

MATTHEW 18:15-20

“Let love be genuine”

In today’s Old Testament reading, we hear the prophet Ezekiel being commissioned by God to be a “sentinel for the house of Israel,” to warn people to repent and be saved. The military sentinel’s job was – and is – to warn of attack; if the sentinel failed to warn, God says, the deaths of the victims were his fault. Likewise, it was the job of the prophet not, primarily, to foretell the future with God’s help but to speak God’s word to the immediate situation – in words that would carry meaning through the centuries to come.

This was the job of the prophets in ancient Israel, from Nathan in the 10^th Century B.C. on, including speaking truth to power, not being the lapdogs of “the powers that be.” The Church, at its best, has carried on in the tradition of Nathan, and Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Amos and, yes, Jesus and many others: speaking uncomfortable truths that must be spoken, or the one commissioned by God is guilty of dereliction of duty.

So today, I will reflect on some uncomfortable truths we as a nation have been facing ever since Hurricane Katrina appeared on the scene.

But first – some more Bible study: study which is very pertinent to our current national situation.

The Old Testament prophets were not afraid to speak truth to power – from Nathan publicly calling King David to account for his adultery with Bathsheba, to Elijah confronting King Ahab over his acquiescence in the murder of Naboth so as to obtain Naboth’s vineyard for himself, to Jeremiah, Amos and others targeting broad national policies of national apostasy, foreign misadventures and favoring the “uptrodden” while crushing the poor. As a result, most kings of the Israelite nations of Israel and Judah got pretty bad grades from the biblical authors – both the prophets and the writers of the historical books like 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings.

But there were exceptions. And one of these was King Hezekiah of Judah, the Israelite mini-state based in Jerusalem. He reigned in the early 7^th Century B.C. and did some very good things, two of which I want to mention this morning.

Jerusalem is built on a mountaintop, which made it relatively easy to defend militarily in ancient times, as long as the city had an adequate water supply and a good wall around it, as well as defenders. The problem with the water supply was that the biggest and best spring of water was outside the defenses of the city. An attacking army would simply shoot arrows at anyone going to the spring to get water, and then wait for the inhabitants of Jerusalem to surrender, or die of thirst.

This was, you could say, an obvious problem, but no one had done anything effective about it in the 300 years that the Israelites had been living in Jerusalem before Hezekiah! Perhaps the advisors of previous kings had said, “We’ll never be invaded or have a disaster. Why bother to fix this problem?” Or, “There’s nothing that anyone can do.” Or, “There’s enough water from other sources for the king, his advisors, his army and the rich people.” Or, “Let’s just cut taxes and pretend there isn’t a problem. That’ll make everybody happy.”

Hezekiah was different. He ordered his Army Corps of Engineers to drill a tunnel through the solid rock upon which Jerusalem was built so that the spring could be reached from inside the city, and access to it from outside the city was then blocked. To do this, King Hezekiah’s people had to work with picks and shovels – no power drills or trucks then! -- and they worked both ends against the middle. This, almost 2,000 years before the compass was invented! By the grace of God, and I mean that, the two tunnels met in the middle. And Jerusalem had enough water for all of its inhabitants for at least a significant siege.

The project worked. I’ve walked through Hezekiah’s water tunnel, and the water was up over my waist in places.

Oh yes, and the wall. In the days before Hezekiah became king, the defensive wall around Jerusalem only protected the highest part of the mountain – not coincidentally, where the royal palace was, along with the Temple, the downtown business district and the rich neighborhoods.

That meant that if Jerusalem was attacked, even if the attack was repulsed and the Israelites won the battle, the poorer neighborhoods would have been destroyed because they were outside of the city’s defensive wall. The poorer people – there was virtually no middle class in those days – would have been “dead meat.”

Hezekiah extended the city wall so that all of its neighborhoods were inside the defensive fortifications. I’m sure that project, and the water tunnel, took a lot of money; they certainly took a lot of work. I daresay there was grumbling by some. “Why defend those people?” “Why provide enough water for everyone?” “Why prepare for a disaster that might never happen?”

But Hezekiah got it done. That’s leadership. And that’s righteous leadership: “love your neighbor with all your heart, all your mind and all your strength.” ALL your neighbors.

The prophets took note, with approval. God noticed, too. When disaster did draw near, with God’s help everything came out alright. You can read about it in 2 Kings 19:32-36.

King Hezekiah was righteous: he thought ahead, planned ahead, and worked ahead of time for the benefit of all the people with his water tunnel and wall. “Be prepared,” “Do the right thing,” and “Remember everyone” were his mottoes.

DO WE HAVE ANY HEZEKIAHS TODAY?

Every adult who’s paying attention knows that there are hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. And anybody who knows anything about New Orleans knows that the whole city is below sea level. Is it hard to figure out that there’s a problem? Moreover, the fact that the levees date from the 19^th Century is widely known, as is the fact that they are only capable of withstanding a Category 3 hurricane.

A spokesperson for our Army Corps of Engineers patiently explained that on national TV this past week. They knew the vulnerability of New Orleans ahead of time, but calculated that the odds of a Category 4 or 5 hurricane hitting the city were not high enough to do anything in preparation. OR, apparently, to do anything to evacuate people with military trucks, boats and planes as soon as they SAW a Category 5 hurricane on radar heading for New Orleans! OR to send sufficient resources in to help desperate people until days after the media trucks had been able to drive in.

Perhaps most appalling of all, a Louisiana State University professor last year did a computer simulation of the impact of a 120 m.p.h. hurricane hitting New Orleans which he presented to the leaders of the Army Corps of Engineers. He said that they sat in the audience and giggled during his presentation.

Pretty big joke, huh, generals?

The professor’s simulation, shown on national TV a couple of days ago, was eerily prophetic.

And the Director of FEMA said on national TV on Thursday that only that day did “the federal government know” that there were people, thousands of starving people, at the Convention Center in New Orleans. What planet does this guy live on? He could have hired someone at minimum wage to watch TV and take notes, and apparently that person would have known far more than the Director of FEMA.

I want Hezekiah’s Corps of Engineers instead! I want Hezekiah! Our governmental leaders, at many levels, have disgraced our country. And not just the current leaders. There hasn’t been anyone in the White House who could be mistaken for Hezekiah for quite a while. “Be prepared.” “Do the right thing.” “Everybody matters.” I might as well be speaking ancient Hebrew.

Maybe most of the politicians in Washington have never heard of Hezekiah. It’s about time they do. And while they’re at it, they should read about King Jehoiakim, too – the last King of Judah, who met a really ugly end. He was not a righteous man. God blessed Hezekiah for doing the right thing. Jehoiakim – that’s another story.

Some people get it. A lot of people deserve medals for their responses in this catastrophe. Think of the doctors and nurses working endless shifts, marooned without running water in the hospitals of New Orleans, pinned down inside Charity Hospital by sniper fire when they tried to evacuate patients! Think of so many Coast Guard helicopter pilots, many of the police, fire fighters and emergency medical workers on the ground, and many people from neighboring communities and states who have “stepped up big time”. I especially tip my hat to the Governor and people of Texas, whose hearts are as big as their 10 gallon hats. And I saw food trucks from the Southern Baptists feeding people in Mississippi, and the worker interviewed mildly observed that his truck had gotten there, and the army was still not in sight.

Maybe the American people aren’t that high a priority for the American government. Or certain Americans aren’t priorities. Maybe no one high up in government knows anybody who doesn’t actually have a car and credit cards and the ability to get out of town and book themselves into a nice resort in the Ozarks during an emergency. Without public help, many people couldn’t evacuate. Yes, the painful truth is that the so-called “response” by the federal government says a lot about social class in America.

Right now, we have perhaps nearly one million people made homeless by this catastrophe – in the United States of America! And a disproportionate number of them are poor, and yes, a disproportionate number of them are black. Water, food, medical protection, rescue and even basic protection from the lawless element which ran wild in New Orleans were not provided fast enough. The response of the authorities shows that institutional racism and classism are alive and well in America today.

An Associated Press report in yesterday’s Star Ledger puts the priorities of the authorities in stark relief. “The evacuation [of the refugees from the Superdome] was interrupted briefly so some 700 guests and employees from the Hyatt Hotel could move to the head of the evacuation line – much to the amazement of those who had been crammed in the stinking Superdome since Sunday. ‘How does this work? They [are] clean, they are dry, they get out ahead of us?’ exclaimed Howard Blue, 22, who tried to get in their line. The National Guard blocked him as other guardsmen helped the well-dressed guests with their luggage.”

Those of you who are on the parish’s e-mail list know that on Wednesday, I sent out an e-mail encouraging people to donate to the charity of their choice as soon as possible. Elda and I have given to the American Red Cross. I repeat that encouragement today. The need is far, far bigger than it was after 9/11.

I also invited, and invite you, to pray for everyone affected, and to write down and pass in information about any specific people you know for whom you want prayers. I share with you again the situation of my friend and colleague, the Rev. Harold Roberts, Rector of the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Biloxi, MS. The good news is that he and his family are alive. (Pause.) The bad news is that their house (on Beach Blvd.) and the church (on Water Street) no longer exist as structures.

But home is more than just a building, and the Church of God is far, far more than a building. Today throughout the devastated area, people are praying, weeping, leaning on each other and drawing strength and guidance from God. I think what will happen is we will need to and be able to provide our own Hezekiah-style leadership from the ground up, since our “leaders” have failed us. “Be prepared, do the right thing, remember everybody.”

As St. Paul says in today’s Epistle, “Let love be genuine…Do not lag in zeal…Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers…do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly…Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

The Rev. Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

Monmouth Junction, New Jersey

September 4, 2005