Greetings,
In honor of this seventh anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy, I want to share with you a sermon I preached at an ecumenical memorial service on September 11, 2002 in Newark Valley, NY. The issues seem as timely now as they did then.
“Christian Living in a Dangerous World”
We come here today for at least two distinct purposes. The first is to remember in prayer and worship the victims and families of the tragedy that struck our country one year ago today. Our second purpose is to consider how we can live as Christians today in our complex, dangerous, and hate-filled world. I have no illusions that my words can change very much, if anything at all. Nevertheless, it is necessary to speak them out.
I wish to share simple words of faith without being simplistic. I wish to offer real hope without being naive. I wish to stand with all who have been affected without taking the side of one group over against any other. I wish to speak as a Christian without diminishing, trivializing, or demonizing any other Faith.
We have a complex situation to consider as we gather for this memorial service today. First and foremost, we remember, with all the compassionate support we can muster, every person who died as a result of the acts of terror on September 11, 2001. We want every member of every surviving family to know that we stand with them and that we pray for their healing, their comfort, and for their awareness of God's compassionate presence in their lives. But it is not enough to hold only those particular people in our prayers. As much as it hurts and as much as it scares us, we are called to make room in our faith and in our hearts for victims and survivors of hatred and violence throughout our world: in Africa, in Afghanistan, in the Middle East, Muslims, Buddhists, Jews, and Christians alike, and those in troubled countries and cities throughout the world. We are even called to make room in our hearts and prayers for the perpetrators and their families, no matter how distasteful the thought.
Complicating our response even more is the reality that so many perpetrators of violence grew up as the victims of violence themselves, in families and cultures where violent response to conflict was the norm. By saying this, I, in no way, mean to justify the perpetuation of terror and violence by anyone, nor am I suggesting that, as a civilized world, we, as individuals or as governments, can avoid taking actions that are designed to limit the destructive power of terrorism. I just believe that we cannot ignore any significant perspective as we consider our Christian response or as we direct our leaders to act on our behalf.
Another complexity facing us today has to do with the process of recovery from trauma. No matter how much we want to be able to “make it all better”, there are no shortcuts to the process of recovery. We are able to pray for survivors who have lost so much, but we can remove neither the pain nor the emptiness resulting from their losses. It is not a compassionate response when we try to cheer people up whose lives have been so deeply damaged. It is not a compassionate response to try to convince people to feel differently than they feel. But, it is compassionate when we act on our knowledge that God has granted us a healing process containing its own, often mysterious, wisdom. We can trust that people who are immersed in anger and pain and devastating loss will not necessarily stay immersed in those temporary but consuming emotions. It just takes time – lots of time. What we can do is walk with them, helping to be a container for all the human emotional responses that legitimately follow any great loss. Being present to suffering in this way is not a helpless response. “Walking with” is very effective in promoting healing. Anyone who has experienced a great loss knows that a compassionate hug is more healing than words intended to “make it better”.
We must remember, too, that every human being has experienced profound losses through the tragedy of September 11th. Many among us continue to be haunted by flashback scenes of crashing planes, crumbling buildings, of death and destruction, knowing that life will never, and can never be like it was before. Every one of us, gathered here and throughout our country and the world, has lost some sense of safety, has lost some hope that the world has the possibility of being a better place. And, if we had not already lost it before, we have now lost whatever blissful and childlike naiveté we had so carefully saved up and guarded from a more youthful and less complicated past. We all need to be the recipients of compassionate responses. Sometimes a simple, supportive hug is the best we have to offer. Don't forget to give and receive plenty of them.
Perhaps the most confusing and complex issue facing us has to do with how we respond to evil. A significant part of our remembrance today is rooted in the loving, faithful, and courageously heroic behaviors that so many passengers on the hijacked planes demonstrated: from the whispered phone calls saying one last " I love you " to the hastily coordinated action of a group of passengers who intentionally sacrificed their own lives in order to bring their plane down, averting further disaster and loss of life. We also remember, with deep gratitude, those firefighters, rescue workers, and police who simply did their jobs, even though it meant giving up their own lives as they were saving so many others. We are moved and awed and humbled by their courage.
We, who survive and must carry on, are also called to loving, faithful, and courageous behavior. We are faced with the task of determining a faithful Christian response to monstrous acts like those that happened one year ago today. Complicating matters, we are called by our faith to act out of compassion and love in a world where revenge and the perpetuation of violence seem to constitute the response of first choice for so many individuals and governments.
We understand the temptation. At an emotional level, fear and pain almost always lead to the desire for revenge. We all experience feelings like these, given the right circumstances, and we are only too familiar with how many of the Psalms are filled with passionate expressions of such vengeful feelings. However, just because we all feel such feelings does not mean it is fine to act on them.
A foundational question that must be considered in making any faithful response is this: "Do I want those pain- and fear-based desires for revenge to determine how I will act?” I was the chaplain of a state prison for a number of years. In the community, I was often confronted by questions about the appropriate response to violent crime. People would ask me, "How would you feel if this murder or rape or other violent act happened to a member of your family?" I would answer that I would feel exactly the same way they do, wanting revenge, but that I wasn't sure I was willing to allow those particular feelings, by themselves, to determine how, ultimately, I would choose to respond. And, I might add, many people who are in prison would not be there if they could have found a different response and had not merely followed their vengeful feelings. By the way, many if not most of them felt completely justified in their understanding of the situation and in the level of violence of their response.
It takes faith, hope, and maturity to be honest about the fear, the pain, and the desire for revenge without automatically acting on them. The challenge facing humanity, in the presence of so much violence and counter-violence, is to find a way to fight through the emotions to another level of response. How we respond to violence (when our feelings are screaming at us to respond in kind), reveals the health and depth of our faith. Admittedly, these words are relatively easy for a preacher to say. But this particular preacher knows how very difficult it is to get to the place where responses to violence can communicate "compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, patience, forbearance, and forgiveness" rather than simply getting revenge? As disciples of Jesus, we are called to return good for evil instead of simply perpetuating the violence, no matter how good, righteous, or understandable our cause. Sometimes the cross we are called to carry is a heavy one indeed.
It appears to me that not only is a simplistic, violent response inadequate to the presence of terrorism in our world, but that a simplistic, loving or non-violent response is also inadequate. This is not a situation that can be resolved by simplistic responses of any kind. No action, no matter how nobly or righteously motivated is without its own consequences. As much as we might desire it, we do not live in a world that we can divide neatly into its good parts and its evil parts. It is not possible to identify the good people vs. the bad people because human beings are so much more complex than that. But wouldn't be simpler if all the good people in the world could just have a "G" tattooed on their foreheads, and all of the evil people in the world could have a similarly tattooed "E". No such luck. The Gospel is quite clear that when we succumb to the temptation to make such judgments about one another, we always make the situation worse for all. Such blanket judgments too often result in demonizing, fearing, and hating entire religious or ethnic groups. Rather, we are enjoined to love our enemies (even those whom we just think are our enemies) and pray for those who persecute us, leaving the judgments about the “G’s” and the “E’s” to God.
The Yoke of Christ is easy in that we are not required to earn or deserve God's love, but the requirements of the Christian life, particularly in today’s complex and dangerous world, are anything but easy. Fortunately, we do not have to live out our Christian responses all by ourselves. Even the heroes that brought a Washington, DC - bound jet down in a Pennsylvania field acted together.
As you prayerfully remember all who have been affected by September 11, 2001, remember also that the Spirit of the Living Christ motivates us from within, and the embodiment of the Spirit that we participate in, and call “the community of faith”, supports us from without.
Remember today…and pray deeply, for victims, for survivors, for rescuers and even, perhaps especially, for enemies. And don't forget to pray for each other and for yourselves as well. Then, together, encouraged by the loving power of God, we will proclaim in words and deeds the Gospel of healing and reconciliation to a world sorely in need of large measures of compassion. Amen.
Wayne
“Our faith is 2000 years old, our thinking is not.”
The United Church___of Christ
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