When the troubles of the world invade our piece of the universe, it is difficult to compute. It calls everything into question. Our oasis is not truly an oasis. Is there such a thing as a safe neighborhood? Are there places where a high school student being charged with murder and dismemberment is beyond comprehension? Well I must say that I never dreamed that the neighborhood of my church would ever end up in the national news for something so horrific. And I’m pretty attuned to these kinds of things. I read about barbaric behavior all the time because I want to be in solidarity with people who have lived with oppression in their lives. I want to know the stories of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Taliban in Afghanistan or the Tutsis and the Hutus in Rwanda. But a high school student who lives in Plymouth being accused of murder… I’m not sure that is a story I want to know. It doesn’t fit in this nice little quiet neighborhood. Or does it? The truth is that there is probably no place on this planet that is fully protected from evil. We can do our best to try to escape evil from the outside. We can rant and rave, we can weep and wail and gnash our teeth. We can cast blame in every possible direction but the truth is we will not see peace in this world until most of the people of this world have peace within themselves. We will not see change in the world until most people are working for change.

There was a funny article in the New York Times this week about the excess of monkeys in New Delhi. There was a picture of a man pushing the monkeys away; monkeys that were disturbing him while he was in a local park. Similar to our problems with deer, the monkeys in New Delhi are creating disturbances because of overdevelopment. Well, guess what, on occasion, the monkeys bite back. I think the monkeys are biting back big time in global ways. From violence within the hearts of drug using teens to the environmental crises which face our world, the monkeys are biting back. The people of Georgia, who by the way are no different than most people in the US, are being bitten by the monkey of draught. Now they have decided to conserve water…now! The people of Southern California are rethinking where they build their homes. Now they are thinking about that …now!

None of us can control what anyone else does. We can’t control what the people of Southern California do, what high school students at Plymouth-Canton do or even the behavior of people in our own families. My husband and I have tried to teach water conservation to our children resulting in more than a few times of the water supply being shut off in the midst of a shower. "So you want to wait until Northville becomes like that little town in Georgia where they don’t have any drinking water?" We can teach, preach, model, yes and even nag but in the end the choice is theirs. All we can really do is change ourselves.

Today’s reading from Isaiah gives us a vision of a new life: "For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth: the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind…I will delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard or the sound of distress." What keeps us going in this world of ours is the vision of something better, the vision of a new life, the vision of a world in which the wolf and the lamb shall feed together. Today’s reading comes from the final chapters of the book of the prophet Isaiah, a complex and lengthy book of the Bible that spans several centuries. Several books of the Bible contain visions of a world enveloped in justice, righteousness and peace, a vision that is first offered in the book of Isaiah. This vision of a new world has kept and continues to keep people moving forward even in the midst of terrible turmoil.

One of the gifts of the Christian faith is to be able to see the world in terms of resurrection. Our faith did not end on the cross; it was reborn on the beach when Jesus ate fish with his friends. How that translates into daily life is that hope must always be in our hearts. We cannot afford either personally or globally to give into hopelessness or despair. A resurrection view of life keeps us focused on the possibility of new life even in the midst of tragic circumstances. Today’s psalm is full of hope: "let the rivers clap their hands and let the hills ring out with joy. It is at times difficult, very difficult to envision our rivers clapping their hands when seeing and smelling pollution. There is a river near our former home in WA State called the Duwamish River, a river that once was a strong salmon run. It wanders right through Puget Sound and for years it was heavily polluted by Boeing and whoever else recklessly dumped their chemicals in it. But slowly the Duwamish is being brought back to life; it is rising from the dead because the people of Puget Sound have a resurrection vision of that river. Hopefully the same will happen with the Saginaw River right here in Michigan which, as you know from the local news, has excessively high levels of dioxin dumped years ago by the Dow Chemical plant in Midland.

There are two choices we can make in this life that God has given us. We can either contribute to the good of the world or we can contribute to the evil. Silence is not an option. We can either work for God’s vision of new heavens and a new earth or we can work against it. One of the major complaints railed against the churches in Germany during the time of Hitler was that most refused to speak out. Every decision we make, every day of our lives can be measured against the cross and the resurrection. When I took a certain young person in our family off to college last fall, we spent a bit of time in the dorm room before heading out to Target to purchase a few forgotten items. I noticed the cases of bottled water that each of her roommates had, but I didn’t say a word. When we arrived at Target, she put a case of bottled water in the cart. When I asked her why, she muttered something about wanting drinking water. I said: "You have a bathroom in your room. That bathroom has a faucet. This is not the Dominican Republic." "Ugh, I’m not going to drink water out of a bathroom tap," she retorted. My mind immediately flashed to the then recent article in the Detroit Free Press about the negative environmental impact of bottled water. : "You know, when I went to college, the students were actually ahead of the adults on most of these issues." I emailed her a copy of that article. I refuse to give into the cross.

The Chinese character for crisis consists of two strokes. One of the strokes stands for danger but the other stroke stands for opportunity. In any time of crisis we must be aware of the danger but never forget the opportunity. In our faith we must be ever mindful of both the cross and the resurrection. If we forget the cross we are caught up short when violence and tragedy strike. If we forget the resurrection, we become immobilized. There are two things that many people do wrong. One is that they avoid thinking about evil and do their best to pretend it does not exist. The other is not being involved in trying to bring about change.