Proper 4A 2008 Matthew 7:21-29

One of the wonderful things about having almost a whole month off was not just the absence of deadlines – sermons and such – nor just the opportunity for recreation and rest. Although those are important things. Rather it was the opportunity to stand aside from the daily round and look at the world from 90 degrees from normal and see what new patterns could emerge.

It is of course a commonplace to say today that the world is a dangerous place. It always has been, really, when you think about it. Indeed the last 100 years have been filled with wars and rumors of wars, economic recessions and depressions, holocausts and genocides, ethnic cleansing and the like. One wonders sometimes, in the night, about the kind of world we are leaving our children and grandchildren. I’m not sure God is pleased with us.

Jesus spoke harshly to those who hid behind empty words and actions. The full phrase in koine Greek is “hoi ergatzomenoi anomian.”.”. Our NRSV lection for today translates it as “you evil doers”. But it literally and actually means “the ones working lawlessness”. Anomia lawlessness more strictly denotes not paying heed to existing law and/or acting as if there were no existing law or laws. (1)))) Anomia connotes a chaos in which the strong and armed terrorize the weak and defenseless. Without much of a stretch it can mean the lawlessness that leads to the destruction of the environment through neglect and inaction.

What caught my attention in my reflections in May was the concept of the “failed state”. In simplest terms a failed state is lawless, anomia: such government as exists is no longer able to impose order on the chaos, and cannot protect its citizens from lawlessness. We have had recent examples of failed states: Lebanon, too many African nations, Iraq if the new government cannot be able to govern, Somalia, Darfur.

And now there is Mexico, careening into a failed state if it isn’t stopped. Recent headlines tell us that in two cities the entire police forces have quit from fear of the drug cartels. Senior Mexican government officials and members of their families have been murdered. Mexican drug cartels are also fighting each other for control of the huge American drug market because of the billions of dollars in annual drug sales here in our own country.

Noted one analysis: “The amount of money involved — estimated at some $40 billion a year — is sufficient to increase tension between these criminal groups and give them the resources to conduct wars against each other. It also provides them with resources to bribe and intimidate government officials. The resources they deploy in some ways are superior to the resources the government employs.” The same source noted that the size of this market is economic incentive for the cartels to expand their operations in the United States with attendant cartel pressure on American government and law enforcement figures and organizations already occurring in Mexico. (2)

Anomia: lawlessness. Jesus was addressing two groups. One group was composed of his fellow Jews – those who were acting as if there were no existing law which embodied the will of God for them. His words, “Then I will declare to them, I never knew you, you who are working lawlessness.”

But his words are a warning to us as well. We are also in danger of the chaos of lawlessness sweeping over us. Underneath our complacent sense of well being and perhaps even false security we suspect that the tendrils of the drug cartels are even now reaching into the Northern Neck and even Northumberland County. Among the poor of our county there have already been murders suspected to be drug related. It seems that we are NOT willing to pay the cost of stopping it by increasing education and law enforcement. Nor are at all likely are we to legalize drugs and remove the huge profits that feed the forty billion dollar a year to the cartels and impoverish even more the poorest among us.

As for the environment recyclable glass, plastic bottles, and cardboard still constitute too much of the refuse in the waste compactor. And there are simple ways we can help out otherwise: for example, using water twice by taking a bucket or pan into the shower and using the captured water to water plants. It also reduces the carbon footprint by not pumping plant water again. In addition reducing our shower time by two minutes each day reduces the carbon footprint 15.3 pounds a month. (3) Think of what would be saved if 200 million adults did this (200,000,000 x 12 x 15.3 =!!!) Left over coffee and grounds are wonderful for azaleas, rhododendron, and mountain laurel. We can all think of many other ways. But acting and being green works only if it becomes part of the nomos (nomos) of our lives. Nomos is the opposite of anomia, nomos is what is proper and right and habitual in our lives. In ancient times it had a comprehensive range of meaning which embraces any kind of existing or accepted norm, order, custom, usage, law, and/or tradition. Nomos is what is valid and in use. (4) Nomos is the opposite of lawlessness and chaos. Nomos is order.

We are the Noah’s of our time. It’s up to us to save it all. There’s no one else. We’re it.

Joshua and Moses in the Old Testament and Jesus in the New all three challenge us: Choose you this day, nomos or anomia, lawfulness or lawlessness, order or chaos, life or death.

AMEN


1. Libronix electronic TDNT article anomia
2. Stratfor Geopolitical Weekly, Mexico: On the Road to becoming a failed state?, 13 May 2008, stratfor.com
3. Time, 26 May 2008
4. Libronix electronic TDNT, article nomos