September 11, the Asian tsunami, and Hurricane Katrina – natural and unnatural disasters that have dramatically exposed the fault lines within governments, societies, and nature itself.  Day after day we have watched the unfolding drama of disasters that most of us could never have imagined – the latest in New Orleans, a city described as one of the most romantic, historic, and musical cities in the world. 

 

Overnight Hurricane Katrina turned this city, known as the Big Easy, into the hardest place on earth to live.  With unintended irony, one New Orleans website still advises would-be- visitors: “One thing you should remember to do before coming to New Orleans: forget everything you know.”

 

Today that advice seems to be apt.  forget the graceful antebellum mansions, the rich cuisine, the annual Mardi Gras festival, and the sweet sound of New Orleans jazz floating across the French Quarter.  Remember, instead, the hunger, the bedlam, the human misery that New Orleans’ poorest and weakest residents suffered as they waited for someone, anyone, to save them after the levees broke.  Remember the shame and horror we all felt as we watched their despair.

 

The same website goes on to describe the city’s legendary appeal:

 

“This is New Orleans.  Queen City of the South.  An exotic temptress.  steamy, sultry and sensual.  For three centuries sunken lazily in the bend of a mighty river near the edge of a continent.  Suitors come from near and far – drawn by her beauty, intrigued by her sounds and smells, beguiled by her grace, enchanted by her spirit.  This is New Orleans.  Feel free to fall in love.  Sin at will.  There’s always time for guilt tomorrow, or the next day.”

 

No doubt the vast majority of the city’s residents have lived more virtuous lives than this research version of New Orleans might indicate.  But how telling that the city’s seductive charm, famous for more than two hundred years, vanished in an instant.

 

However, just as New Orleans experienced catastrophic nightmares of realities, so also could be any city including the ones we enjoy.  Pasco, Moses Lake, Seattle, Spokane, Boise, Portland.  Earth quakes, storms, tsunamis , hurricanes are events that could threaten everything that we love in our cities for they could be swept away in an instant, just as it was in that Queen of a City – New Orleans.   

 

Think about it with me here.  What would happen if our city’s infrastructure suddenly collapsed? If there was not enough food, water, and shelter to go around?  What kind of people would we prove to be? How would we treat our poor? Our sick and elderly? Would middle-class values and middle-class dreams survive such a catastrophe?

 

This is the question of the hour during this opening of the sixtieth Fall Board Session of the General Baptist Convention of the Pacific Northwest.  For this is a question not just about our cities, but about ourselves.  On a personal level the question is where is my fault lines? How would I act under the kind of pressure that was brought to bear on the citizens of New Orleans?

 

What am I basing my life on? I wish I could tell you that my confidence has grown as I try to imagine myself confronting similar conditions.  But to be honest about it, it is hard to be anything but frightened by such thoughts.  When worse comes to worst, I know it will only be God’s mercy that will sustain us and those we love.

 

Today, I have an Opening Persuasion of Proclamation that no matter what comes or goes -

 

JESUS CHRIST THE SAME YESTERDAY AND TODAY AND FOREVER​

 

 Fix your eyes on Christ because He is God forever!  He is the One who is, who was, and who will be – the One who banishes our fear because He holds the past, present, and future in His all-powerful Hands.  No city will last forever.  But Jesus will.

 

Jesus is the key! In the story of creation, already planning the new creation, Jesus is the Key!  He is the key because Jesus is supreme above the ruins of the fall.

 

Jesus is the Key!  He is the key in the ark, the rainbow and the dove, Jesus is the key!  He is the key, in the sacrifice on Mount Moriah, Jesus is the Key.

 

Jesus is the key, as the Ladder of Jacob, Jesus is the Key. 

 

Jesus is the key in the story of Jacob, Jesus is the Key.

 

Jesus is the key in the Paschal lamb, Jesus is the Key.

 

Jesus is the key in the manna of the desert, Jesus is the key.

 

I tell you, He is the Key! 

 

The face of Jesus can be traced like water lines in fine paper. 

 

For John the Apostle reports Christ speaking while the Apostle is  on the Isle of Patmos: “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “Who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”