The questions started coming in the middle of the summer, as people began looking at their fall calendars: “Did you know that Sunday One falls on September 11 this year? Are we going to do Sunday One on September 11?” And the answer, obviously, is Yes to both: I realized the two dates would coincide as far back as last year, when Sunday One fell on the 12th, and it really makes the most sense to start church school the Sunday after Labor Day, rather than, say the Sunday before, or the one after. Still, I completely understand the feelings behind the question: these are two very different occasions, one of which, to borrow Franklin Roosevelt’s apt phrase, marks a day of infamy, and the other a day of celebration and new beginnings. How do we afford each the honor and appropriate attitude it deserves?
Now if this were the only coincidence of ideas, I could probably handle it. But I was also reminded of the fact that today marks the beginning of the third year of our Church Vision, when we said we would focus our emphasis on mission and outreach, on ways of engaging more deeply in our community and our world. Then my friends on the Pru Board asked me to include a few words about the coming Capital Campaign which will honor our history and provide for our legacy. Others think now is the time to begin talking about ways of celebrating Second Church’s 300th anniversary which is less than two years away. And if all this weren’t enough, today we find ourselves in the midst of multiple transitions as we bid Godspeed to Angie in two weeks and welcome Barb and Judy to our staff. All of these were suggested to me as the appropriate theme for this morning’s sermon. It’s like one of those Steven Soderbergh movies – the director who made “Traffic” and the new film “Contagion,” - Soderbergh’s movies look like seven different movies all going on at once until you finally begin to understand first, that they are all intertwined, and then later, how.
But the most appropriate starting point for any sermon worth its salt is the Bible, and the passage that first came to mind earlier this week as I considered the confluence of Sunday One with September 11 was the familiar one from I Corinthians, “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and, individually, members of it.” It’s a verse that speaks well to both observances this morning. You and I have lots to celebrate together today, including seeing all our young people, seeing all of you, being together in the loving presence of God this morning, sharing the community of faith and fellowship, looking forward to a cookout and a picnic, and plans for a great year together ahead of us. When one of us has something to celebrate, we all celebrate together. Yet we are also mindful of the suffering in our world, the deep mourning that the remembrance of that gorgeous Tuesday morning exactly ten years ago brings, shattered as it was by nearly inconceivable destruction and death. And as a community and as a world, as Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, we all suffered together.
But I think Paul’s words to the church at Rome are better suited for today, because love is stronger than death and good is stronger than evil: “Let love be genuine,” he wrote, “hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love each other with mutual affection; outdo each other in showing honor. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer.” These are the things that make us a community, whether we are talking about this church community, or the world community. One of the remarkable goods that came out of September 11, 2001, was that for a while at least, the world was united, and perhaps more to the point, the world understood that it was united. Our nation, so badly scarred, enjoyed the empathy and goodwill of nearly the entire family of nations. More than one world leader said in those days, “We are all New Yorkers; we are all Americans.” We were one world community. Human nature being what it is, those sentiments did not last forever, and the world’s nations soon turned back to their own agendas and self-interest. But even when we are not paying attention to it, or when it is difficult to see clearly, even when most visible evidence indicates otherwise, we are still a world community. Regardless of whether we share the same goals, or whether we agree with each other, regardless of who happens to be at war with whom, or where peace might be found, we remain citizens of the same world, inhabitants of the same planet, children of the One God.
I shared this story with you ten years ago, but today is a good day to share it again. The first Saturday after September 11 I performed a wedding on Nantucket. Debbie and I caught one of the first planes flying again on Friday, which meant we would be able to get back to Beverly in time for Sunday morning worship. The bride was Jewish and the groom was Christian. And the significance of their union on that weekend, of all weekends, was not lost on anyone. For in spite of the fact that the nineteen hijackers believed their religion called them to death and destruction, there in that small chapel on that warm Saturday afternoon, surrounded by families with considerably different history and experience, two young people of different faiths said by their union that, No, faith does not call us to death and division, but rather to love and to unity and to wholeness. I remember chatting with the father of the bride before the ceremony began. He was a proud man and a faithful one, and he observed to me, “These two young people – they are teaching us something here today that the world could learn a lesson from.” Our young people are able to teach us something that the world could learn a lesson from.
This is one of the reasons that it is actually quite fitting that Sunday One falls on the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001. Because it is from our children that our world has something to learn. I can remember during our Open and Affirming discussions that the young people of our church, my daughter Blythe among them, wondered what the big deal was. Our children already understood that you treat everybody the same, that you don’t single out any class of person and tell them they aren’t as good as someone else. For them, it was a non-issue because they couldn’t imagine their friends or their world any other way. Our young people are able to teach us something that the world could learn a lesson from. And in a little while, at the end of our Service of Remembrance and Hope, our children will return to our midst because they are our future, and there is still something we can learn from them.
The Psalm that Barb Schreur read this morning is the same lesson we heard on that first Sunday after September 11 – and if you want to see more of that morning’s reflection, you can find it on Second Church’s Facebook page. So on a day that we remember changed the way we understand our world, as well as in the days following torrential rains, a tropical storm and even an earthquake, the words of Psalm 46 – especially verses one through three, which I am actually going to read as verses three to one - sound as fresh as this morning’s headlines: “[For] though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its water roar and foam, though the very mountains tremble with its tumult, we will not be afraid, for God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in time of trouble.”
Let us pray.
No comments:
Post a Comment