A sermon after Katrina

Someone asked for a copy of this several months back, and I forgot to post it.

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This week, all the news, all our conversation, seems to be circling around one thing: A great, spinning fury of wind and water named Katrina.

You’ve seen the news: a city underwater, homes destroyed. Hundreds of thousands fleeing the city, cars marching like ants along the highways out of town. Thousands dying in the streets when the levees broke. Hundreds of thousands homeless. Hundreds of thousands of refugees.

Bishop Duncan Gray of Mississippi sent out a letter asking for help. Six church buildings have been completely destroyed, several more badly damaged. The damages in the diocese of Louisiana are not yet counted, but they will be far more grim.

It may be true that some in our midst this morning are here because you’ve come from New Orleans. If so, know that you are welcome here, and that we grieve with you over the loss of life and the destruction caused by the storm.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees. That’s a number almost too big for us to grab hold of, almost too big to imagine. How can we grasp the idea of the drowning of a city?



I want to tell you a story from one of the refugees; I heard it over the weekend down at Kelley Air Force base, and I have permission to tell it to you.

Richard and Andrew Jones are brothers. They live, or I should say lived, in the same house in one of the poorer sections of New Orleans. They’re grown now, and their children have moved away. Richard’s hair is graying, and he walks with a limp, leaning on a walking stick. When the news came that evacuation was a good idea, they laughed. They’ve seen plenty of storms. Then the word changed from voluntary evacuation to mandatory evacuation. But neither of the brothers own a car. Neither of the brothers had enough money for a plane ticket, even if they could get a seat. And there weren’t enough buses out of town. So they settled in to wait. They put old sheets of plywood up over their windows where they could. They put duct tape across the windows. Richard got out his best walking-stick, a beautifully carved thing about four feet long. They packed the most precious things they owned into two backpacks, and carried some more things into the attic. And waited for the end of the world as they knew it.

The storm hit early Friday morning. The wind rose, and the rain fell harder and harder. The electricity went out first. So they lit a candle and turned on the battery powered radio. And the wind blew harder. Then their cell phones lost signal. And then the radio signal went out. And they sat there, together in the darkness, watching the flickering flame of the candle, and listening. Listening for the distinctive whistle of a tornado approaching. Listening for the sounds of breaking glass. Listening for the sounds of snapping timber and falling plaster.

This morning we heard the story of the night before the Passover. It’s a story we read every year, on Maundy Thursday evening. The same story we read when we remember the night before Jesus walked into the arms of suffering and death. It helps us remember a time in the history of God’s people when we were faced with almost certain destruction.

On the night of the Passover, the children of Abraham took a lamb, and spread its blood on the doorposts of their houses. They ate hurriedly, bags packed, shoes on their feet, walking sticks in hand.

That night there was great death and destruction in Egypt, and the children of Abraham fled, refugees from Egypt. They ran for their lives across the heat of the desert. But Pharaoh sent his army after them, and eventually the Hebrews found themselves trapped between the armies of Egypt and the sea. Nowhere to run. That night, the story tells us, Moses stretched out his walking stick over the waters of the sea, and there was a great wind all night long, so strong that the sea was blown back. And all that night, the people huddled together at the edge of the sea, listening in the dark, listening to the violent howl of the wind, listening for the sounds of chariots and the thunder of hooves that would herald the end of the world.

When morning came, to their great astonishment, there was a path through the sea. And they leaned in to winds strong enough to hold back the waves, and they passed through the sea to safety.



The day after the storm hit, the sun rose, though it made little difference beneath the clouds over New Orleans. The levees had been breached, and the water was rising fast. Richard Jones waded through chest-high water and got his old canoe, the one he used to take his boys fishing in. And he began to row through the debris. One by one, he picked up his neighbors, and rowed them to the local elementary school, where the roof was still above water. He dropped one off, and went back for another. And another. And another, till his arms ached and his hands blistered and bled. When the water was neck-high inside the houses, he finally went back for his brother Andrew and their dog. When I asked him how many people he’d rescued, he said he didn’t remember. But his brother Andrew spoke up for him. At least 35, he said. At least 35 lives. This is all we got left, he said. Everything else is gone. Just these bags. And then he opened up his backpack, and he said to me, I want you to know I’m not doing this just because I know you’re a preacher. And he reached into his pack, and pulled out a Ziploc bag, and inside was an old, weather-beaten Bible. One of the few treasures he carried with him through the storm, through the death and destruction.


Presiding Bishop Griswold wrote this a few days ago, in a letter to the church:
At this time let us be exceedingly mindful that bearing one another's burdens and sharing one another's suffering is integral to being members of Christ's body. I call upon every member of our church to reach out in prayer and tangible support to our brothers and sisters as they live through these overwhelming days of loss and begin to face the difficult challenges of the future.

What can we do about this?
Well, there are two urgent needs right now. The first, and most urgent need, is money. Money to feed and house thousands of people whose homes have been destroyed. The bishops of West Texas have asked us to take up a special offering, and we’re going to pass the plates twice today for just that purpose. Whatever we collect will go directly to disaster relief through the church agency called Episcopal relief and development. It’s a good organization, trustworthy, I’ve given to them before.

The other need is blood donations. There’s a bloodmobile outside, and they’re taking donations as fast as they can. Nobody’s going to mind today if you get up right in the middle of the sermon and walk out of church. If you’re out there during communion, we’ll bring it to you.

San Antonio may host as many as 25,000 refugees. Several thousand are at Kelly, and more planes were landing all day yesterday. There will be more needs in the weeks and months to come. And we will respond, as soon as we know what we can do. Right now, it’s kinda chaotic in the refugee shelters. Right now there’s a need for volunteers, to help things get set up. There will be more about this at the announcements before eucharist.

We have seen the destruction wrought by wind and water. We have seen despair. But our hope goes deeper than our despair. In the words of Bishop Duncan Gray of Mississippi, “as Christians, we understand the power of death. The devastation of Hurricane Katrina brings us face to face with the reality of death and the despair when hope seems crushed. But we are a people of both the Cross and the Resurrection.

The last word from God is not death, but life. God uses the open hearts, minds and lives of faithful souls to renew, restore and redeem that which seems beyond hope.”