I am speaking to you at a time of "wars, and rumors of war", to use Saint Matthew's happy phrase and, believe it or not, I've been thinking about how a faithful person would act at such a time. I want to tell you about some coincidences which have prompted my thoughts. G. K. Chesterton, the English author and catholic apologist, once called coincidences "spiritual puns" - the puns that God makes. You be the judge.

I keep a stack of books by my bedside that I'm continually at work to read through. Coincidentally, at about the time that all Hell was fixing to break loose in New York and Washington, I had just started to read a book which I'd purchased over a year previous. Its called Five Days in London, May 1940 by John Lukaks - probably one of the great historians of his generation. Lukaks spent a professional lifetime studying the origins of the last World War. He developed a thesis that Hitler was not bound to fail, and that he came very close to winning, very early on. But that he did fail, because, in May, 1940, in Churchill's finest hour - his hinge of fate ­ Churchill managed not to lose that war. When the secret records of the British War Cabinet were declassified in 1970 Lukaks found the meticulously kept minutes of the meetings of the War Cabinet which had been held over a long weekend, from Friday, May 24 to Tueday, May 28, 1940, and in them read the record of a running battle between the appeasers, led by Lord Halifax, the foreign secretary, who wanted to open negotiations with Hitler to end the war, and Churchill, standing alone, who was determined not to do so. And we now know that Hitler lost his European War late in the day on a Tuesday, May 28th, when Churchill, by sheer force of will, managed to prevail, by persuading the Cabinet to agree, as an irrevocable statement of policy, that England would go on fighting no matter what happened - no matter what happened. There would be no negotiating with Hitler. Then and there he saved Britain, and Europe, and Western Civilization.

Churchill won by arguing to his Cabinet that the long history of the world showed that a people who went down to defeat and yet remained faithful sometimes managed to recover from that defeat, and to live to see better days; but that peoples who abandoned their faith and surrendered in the face of adversity rarely recovered.

Which brings me to my second coincidence. While Churchill's battle was being played out in the cabinet room at No. 10 Downing Street another, very real and deadly battle was being fought in France. And Lukaks tells a little-known story of a part of that battle and - coincidentally - it's a story that I remembered having recounted to you five years ago. I hope you won't mind if I retell it.

In the space of two short weeks beginning on May 10th the German army had invaded France, Belgium and the low countries, split the combined British and French armies in two, and bottled up about half a million allied forces in a pocket centered around the sea-port town of Dunkirque, in northwestern France. Annihilation seemed certain. Most people know the story of how the British miraculously managed to evacuate about 340,000 of those troops from that beachhead, to fight another day. But not everyone made it off that beach.

About 40 miles south of Dunkirque lies the ancient port city of Calais. On May 24th, in Calais, blocking the advancing German army, stood 4,000 allied soldiers under the command of a British Brigadier named Claude Nicholson. Early in the morning the Navy sent a signal containing plans for the evacuation of this force. Churchill, who knew how to read a map, got word of the order and sent a signal of his own. Basically it said: "You will not be evacuated; it is critical that you hold Calais for as long as you can; the longer you do the more time you buy for us to evacuate the bulk of the armies at Dunkirque. Maintain contact with Dunkirque as well as you are able and we will attempt to re-supply you and support you as best we can. You must not retreat. You must not surrender. Good luck."

Those men held off a German army for four days. When it was all over, 30 survivors were picked up offshore. The rest were captured, or killed. Brigadier Nicholson never saw England again: he died in a POW camp. During the four-day battle the garrison kept up a stream of radio communication with Dunkirque and England. At the end, before the codes and ciphers were burned and the communications gear smashed, someone sent one last signal back to Britain. It consisted of just three short words: BUT IF NOT. Then the frequency went dead.

The message was received in Britain. But what did it mean? Was it some sort of shorthand, some sort of code? If so, what was the reference, what was the translation? To the people in England who were connected to their faith story, the transmission was immediately understood as a message of great power, bravery, courage, defiance and faith. The words are a quotation, actually. And the message is an allusion to the third chapter of the Book of Daniel, recounting the time of the Babylonian captivity.

I was in the World Trade Center for the last time on St. Patrick's Day last year. Carol and the girls and I had taken the train up to New York to see the parade and a show. We split up in New Jersey, and Caroline and I took the PATH train into the station beneath the World Trade Center to buy half-price theatre tickets. As we walked out of the North Tower and into a cold, blustery snow squall Caroline and I looked up to see the Towers disappear into the low clouds. I still can't believe they're gone; and I can hardly get my mind around the shock that September 11th has caused that city, and this country.

Now imagine, if you will, something more. Imagine all of Manhattan, gone. Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, wrecked. Chicago, St. Louis, Dallas, destroyed. San Francisco and L.A., leveled - not by some band of terrorists, but by an invading army. Imagine the contents of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim, the National Gallery and the rest of the Smithsonian, the Field Museum, the Walters and the BMA, the Getty - all carted off. Imagine President Bush hauled out onto the south lawn of the White House and forced to watch the entire cabinet and joint chiefs shot dead, before having his own eyes plucked out and then being marched off to captivity and death. Well, that's about what happened to the Hebrew people in 587 B.C., at the time of the Babylonian captivity.

The prophet Jeremiah tells us that the setting for the Babylonian invasion was one of heedless optimism - Alan Greenspan might have referred to it as "irrational exuberance". Everybody was feeling very self-satisfied, very invulnerable. Sort of like it was in America on September 10th. And then the Babylonians showed up.

So in the Bible story Daniel and his brothers, strangers in a strange land, have been taken as slaves, perhaps for years, perhaps forever, to serve in the court of King Nebuchadnezar. The Psalmist writes, "By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. How could we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?" They're even forced to abandon their own names.

But that's not the worst part. The worst part is that the three brothers, now called Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, have also been ordered to abandon their faith, and to worship the king's golden idols or else be cast into the midst of a fiery furnace. But this they cannot bring themselves to do. The problem isn't that these foreign gods are strange. The real problem is that these gods are simply useless - because they cannot save. They have no power. Daniel and his brothers have known the power of the living God. Compared to that, King Nebuchadnezar's gods are a simply a joke. The Prophet Jeremiah mocks the false gods: they're made of wood and ivory, covered with expensive silks and gold - they look really great - , but they're like scarecrows in a cucumber field. They cannot move; they cannot speak. You have to prop them up or else they fall down. They have to be carried around because they can't walk. They're expensive toys ­ expensive to buy, expensive to maintain (just like some of the toys we have today - nice shiny ones, with four wheels and a lot of chrome, that sit waiting for us in the parking lot - you know what I mean). But they can't do anything important for you.

Anyway, Daniel and his brothers will not break faith, no matter what happens - no matter what happens. So they are brought before the king to answer for their refusal. And Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, answered and said to the king, "O Nebuchadnezar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up."

The King is enraged and orders them to be thrown into a fiery furnace. But that is not the end of the story. God works his miracle, and Daniel and his brothers are not consumed in the flames. They walk out of the furnace unharmed, and then and there Nebuchadnezzar discovers what Daniel knew: "That every people, nation, and language, which speak any thing amiss against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, shall be cut in pieces, and their houses shall be made a dunghill: because there is no other God that can deliver after this sort."

But even that is not the end of the story. Because we know that, within a mere 50 years, by 537 BC another king, Cyrus of Persia, defeated the Babylonians, and the Prophets Isaiah and Nehemiah tell how he released the Hebrew people from bondage, allowed them to return home, and even funded the rebuilding of the temple which Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed.

And, coincidentally, a month ago, in adult education class, when we were reviewing this history, Laura Wacker looked up and remarked "How could the Israelites have managed in the face of all that? How could they manage to maintain their language and faith in the face of such adversity? How could they have managed to make it back home against such odds?" And I've been thinking about her comments ever since, and I think I know the answer: They didn't manage it. Because God provides for a faithful people - there is no other God that provides after this sort. Maybe the Hebrew people had fallen short, maybe they'd lost their way, maybe they found themselves in troubles they couldn't quite see their way clear of. No matter. As Jeremiah says in this morning's reading, God has a promise: "I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people."

My friends, don't you see that the fiery trial though which we have just passed, and through which we continue to pass today - horrible though it is ­ is certainly not the worst, and surely will not be the last, terrible thing which a people like us have been called to endure, and will be asked to endure, in the future? How will it all end? Don't know. God knows. And He's not telling. That information's classified. And we don't have clearance.

So what are we to do? What's our role? It seems to me that we are called to be - and to remain - a faithful people. No matter what happens. No matter what happens.

Few of us are called upon to risk death or endure captivity for their faith, like those brothers in Babylon or those British soldiers on a French beach. Thank God for his small mercies. But each and every one of us is called, in some way of other, to make a commitment, to make a connection, to live for that faith. Maybe some of you have been personally touched by the recent tragedy. Perhaps you have lost friends or relations, or know people who have. Perhaps some of you will see sons or daughters, or the sons or daughters of friends of yours, sent off to fight, perhaps to suffer injury or death, for our defense. Perhaps your job or your financial well-being's in jeopardy and you're apprehensive about that. I sometimes wonder whether living with one's faith can't be just as hard as having to die for it.

I can guess what some of you might be thinking: "Sounds like he's got this faith business all figured out. He knows all these stories. Maybe he wants to try out for Bishop. I can't have faith like that." To which I'd reply: "Don't presume more than you can hope to know. Spiritually, I'm skating on thin ice just like every one of you. (Or whistling past the graveyard, if you prefer a more seasonal metaphor.) But I sat in that pew two weeks ago and heard St. Luke's Gospel: If you had faith the size of a mustard seed it is enough. Why is it enough? Because a little bit becomes enough when God provides for a faithful people.

OK, so you may ask, "Who are a "Faithful People"? And how do I get to be one of them?" I think that, quite simply, a Faithful People are a people who act faithfully. Let me repeat that: a Faithful People are a people who act faithfully - no matter what happens - no matter what happens.

Which brings me, at last, to Stewardship. Five hundred years ago St. Ignatius said it best: "Act as if ye had faith, and faith will be given to you." Here, today, this [stewardship] is a faithful act. In fact, it seems to me that, right now this is the quintessential faithful act. At this time, and in this place, and in these circumstances, nothing you can say or do will say as much about yourself to yourself as your willingness to pledge. At a time when planes are falling out of the sky, and buildings are crashing down around our heads, anthrax is in our mail and our stock portfolios are in the tank, nothing - nothing - so defines us as a faithful person as this one act.

And why do I care? Because I know that God provides for a faithful people - that "there is no other God that provides after this sort." And how do I know this? And why am I so sure? Because I know my story, and my story tells me that, time and time again, God provides for a faithful people ­ that "there is no other God that provides after this sort." Two thousand, six hundred years ago, by the waters of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar found out what Daniel knew: that God provides for a faithful people - that "there is no other God that provides after this sort." And Two thousand years ago, in Jerusalem, on a cross and at an empty tomb, God provides for a faithful people - that "there is no other God that provides after this sort." And sixty years ago, in a cabinet room at Whitehall, and on a beachhead in France, God provides for a faithful people - that "there is no other God that provides after this sort."

And here today, all around me, I see the evidence with my own eyes: When Heyward and Charlie and Nathan, and before him, Barbara, are called to be ministers to us, I can see that God provides for a faithful people - that "there is no other God that provides after this sort."

And when I look around to see the work that Tom Twells and the Vestry have done to make St. James look two hundred fifty years new, then I can see that God provides for a faithful people - that "there is no other God that provides after this sort."

And when Fritz and Cathy Schwartz, and the Lazzaros, and dozens of others like them help to transform Collington Square, when they provide food, and help and hope at Paul's Place, when they help keep the Caroline Center running, when they make Christmas come in April year after year, then I know that God provides for a faithful people - that "there is no other God that provides after this sort."

And when I see Gina Howard, and Albert and Lindy Edy, and Leah Gucciardi, Michael Curley, Rob Zinkham, Bob Hanley, Dr. Wright, Debra Barton and Val Smalkin and dozens of others help provide instruction to hundreds of our children, in Godly Play, in Sunday school, in confirmation class, and in the youth choir, year in and year out, then I see and then I know, that God provides for a faithful people - that "there is no other God that provides after this sort."

But all of that only happens if, when and to the extent that we are willing to do this [pledge]. And the message I draw from all of this is the promise that, no matter what happens - no matter what happens - God will provide for a faithful people - and that "there is no other God that provides after this sort." And so I entreat each one of you: no matter what happens - no matter what happens - act as if ye have faith, and faith will be given to you. Act.