I feel lucky to be able to share with you folks this morning. I have had to shift gears a bit from what I had planned to talk about this morning -- reflections on my 25 years among Mennonites. I do want to say, though, that it is at times like this that I know for sure why I am a Mennonite -- being a part of the EMU community, taking part in the discussions on MennoLink, gathering with Shalom friends the other night and sharing in our time together this morning; these are why I am a Mennonite.

The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah is incredibly relevant for us as we seek to come to terms with the events of September 11. Jeremiah's contribution to our thinking and feeling and responding as people of faith to our current crisis lies in his powerful uniting of two themes.

Jeremiah combined (1) heart-rending grief over the suffering of his fellows with (2) an unapologetic critique of his nation's idolatry that had brought this suffering on. Grief and critique -- one without the other is either superficial or callous, either subject to manipulation by power politics or subject to unfeeling self-righteousness.

"O that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might weep day and night for the slain of my people!" (9:1).

Jeremiah gives us words for our feelings of horror and sadness at the 5,000 violent deaths and the countless other lives that have been irrevocably up-turned this past week. If you have been watching TV or listening to the radio, you can't help but be moved to tears over and over as you hear of the heartache, the tragedy, the fears, the anxieties. And think of the people on the ground whom received desperate cell-phone calls from loved ones on the hijacked planes.

This grief is linked with the heart of God. There can be no question that the acts that caused such suffering were pure evil. There can be no question that the devil was laughing in delight as the planes plowed into their targets.

And yet, I believe that the prophets would have us do more than grieve. What is sadly and dramatically missing in the god-talk of people such as our president and most prominent evangelist is any sense that these acts of violence -- evil as they certainly all -- should challenge us to consider repenting of the "American way of life." Jeremiah, on the other hand, was very clear -- the "way of life of his fellows" -- the images, the foreign idols, the lies, the denial of justice and righteousness were at the root of their suffering.

The prophets understood the events of their day with some subtlety. They saw God's finger in the very human (and very evil) acts of the Babylonians in attacking ancient Israel. They portrayed these events as having two levels of meaning -- they were acts of bloodthirsty aggression by human beings sold out to evil, but they were also expressions of God's judgment against God's people and their institutions for the injustice and violence of those people. The prophets understood the occurrence of the evil acts of the Babylonians as time to look inward with a critical eye.

This is what scattered voices are challenging us to do today, as well. I have been enlightened by the responses of some of my international friends. One spoke of watching TV and feeling a sense of internal division. He grieved for the loss of life and condemned those who committed the terrible acts. But, he said he couldn't help but think of these acts as retaliation against symbols of American oppression, as violent people responding violently to the violence of the United States.

A British journalist, John Pilger, in an on-line commentary, mentions a few of these past acts of violence. On Sunday, September 9 -- that's right, just two days prior to the destruction of the World Trade Center towers -- American and British bombers killed eight people in bombing raids over civilian areas of Iraq. About 200,000 Iraqis were killed during the so-called Gulf War ten years ago. At least 500,000 more Iraqis, half of them children, have died since then due to the embargo. How many Americans know that Osama bin Laden began his "terrorist" work in Afghanistan as a client of the CIA fighting the Russians and that his terrorist training camps were originally built with American money and backing?

Political scientist Chalmers Johnson wrote a prophetic book that came out last year called, Blowback: The Cost and Consequences of American Empire. He details how time after time the United States has supported violence around the world in ways that have in time turned on us with unintended consequences.

Blowback. As one of my favorite rock singers, Lou Reed, wrote, "If you spit in the wind, it comes back at you twice as hard."

For people who believe that God's will for human beings is always wholeness and peace, these next several months and years could be challenging times. The prophets may give us guidance. Their modus operandi was to challenge the status quo and conventional wisdom of their day. As a result, they were called naive and impractical and even irresponsible.

Are we willing to be naïve and impractical and even irresponsible? We may be facing a season such as pacifists faced sixty years ago the last time United States territory was "attacked," at Pearl Harbor. They spoke out when they could, but to some degree they had to wait the war out as few Americans listened to them.

However, let's think about the prophets. They spoke out when they could; they wrote what they could. And they were ignored. We probably don't realize how irrelevant they were in their own time because the main records we have are their own writings, not transcripts from the CNN broadcasts of their day. But the words of the prophets were, if you will pardon the image, time bombs. That is, these were the words that enabled the community of faith to survive.

I have to wonder if it may be most hopeful and sustaining to think of our work being done for, say, two generations from now. That is, pacifists may not be listened to in our society right now. But we must not despair. We believe that we have words of enduring value: love your enemies; beat your swords into plowshares; let justice and peace embrace; there is no way to peace, peace is the way. Let's still think them and speak them and write them -- and have hope that they will not return void.

In her book, Powers of the Weak, Elizabeth Janeway writes that people without obvious power have two main strategies to follow, strategies that will empower us. The first is to disbelieve the story we get from the powers that be. Disbelief. Redemptive violence is a myth, a lie of the devil. We may choose for ourselves how to think of our so-called enemies. Our nature does not require taking an eye for an eye until all are blind.

The second strategy is to band together. Let us find communities that will sustain us. I can't put into words how grateful I have been this past week to have the friends and family, colleagues and e-mail correspondents I have. I know I will not be alone. Let us join with other Christians, with Muslims and Jews, Buddhists and humanists, who share our conviction that justice and peace are what matters most, not nationality.

Sixty-two years ago this month Europe entered a long, dark tunnel of unprecedented violence. Recognizing what was ahead, W.H. Auden wrote one of his great poems, "September 1, 1939." These are the final two stanzas:

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages;
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair
Show an affirming flame.