First Congregational Church of Leverett

Out of the Ashes

September 11, 2011

Leverett Congregational Church, Leverett, MA

Lee Barstow

Lectionary Readings

Genesis 50:15-21

 ¹⁵ After the death of their father, Joseph's brothers said, 
         What if Joseph still hates us and plans to pay us back for all the harm we did to him?¹⁶ So they sent a message to Joseph: 
         Before our father died,¹⁷ he told us to ask you, 
         Please forgive the crime your brothers committed when they wronged you. Now please forgive us the wrong that we, the servants of your father's God, have done.
          Joseph cried when he received this message.

 ¹⁸ Then his brothers themselves came and bowed down before him. 
         Here we are before you as your slaves, they said.

 ¹⁹ But Joseph said to them, 
         Don't be afraid; I can't put myself in the place of God.²⁰ You plotted evil against me, but God turned it into good, in order to preserve the lives of many people who are alive today because of what happened.²¹ You have nothing to fear. I will take care of you and your children.
          So he reassured them with kind words that touched their hearts.

Matthew 18:21-35

 ^21 (A)Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, 
         Lord, if my brother keeps on sinning against me, how many times do I have to forgive him? Seven times?

 ^22 (B)
         No, not seven times, answered Jesus, 
         but seventy times seven,^[a]23 because the Kingdom of heaven is like this. Once there was a king who decided to check on his servants' accounts.²⁴ He had just begun to do so when one of them was brought in who owed him millions of dollars.²⁵ The servant did not have enough to pay his debt, so the king ordered him to be sold as a slave, with his wife and his children and all that he had, in order to pay the debt.²⁶ The servant fell on his knees before the king. 
         Be patient with me, he begged, 
         and I will pay you everything!²⁷ The king felt sorry for him, so he forgave him the debt and let him go.

 ²⁸ Then the man went out and met one of his fellow servants who owed him a few dollars. He grabbed him and started choking him. 
         Pay back what you owe me! he said.²⁹ His fellow servant fell down and begged him, 
         Be patient with me, and I will pay you back!³⁰ But he refused; instead, he had him thrown into jail until he should pay the debt.³¹When the other servants saw what had happened, they were very upset and went to the king and told him everything.³² So he called the servant in. 
         You worthless slave! he said. 
         I forgave you the whole amount you owed me, just because you asked me to.³³ You should have had mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you.

   ³⁴ The king was very angry, and he sent the servant to jail to be punished until he should pay back the whole amount.

 ³⁵ And Jesus concluded, 
         That is how my Father in heaven will treat every one of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.

 Out of the Ashes

This is not an easy service or an easy sermon, because commemorating 9/11 ten years later by definition involves dealing with hard feelings.

We have been deluged with 9/11 stories in the national media during the last few days. I don't know about you, but I've begun to tune it out. I think I want to avoid the feelings.

It is natural to want to keep a lid on whatever feelings might be inside us about the tragedy and about all the other tragedies that have stemmed from it. It would be hard enough to open up again to the grief of all those lost and the fear of terrorism stoked that day. That in itself is hard, but even harder is confronting the grief and the fear over what has happened since…

There's the spectacle of violence brought by our response to the tragedy in waging a War on Terror. Jim Moos, a member of the UCC Collegium of Officers reminds us in an online letter of more than 4,000 American service personnel killed in Afghanistan and Iraq and tens of thousands injured who will carry physical, emotional and spiritual scars for the rest of their lives… over 100,000 Afghani and Iraqi citizens killed and over 5 million displaced from their homes or refugees—mostly innocent civilians. [i]

And there are the fears that our political process is failing, that the institutions charged with finding solutions are making things worse. We grieve for a loss of trust when we witness first responders who suffering lung disease for lack of medical treatment. We fear the loss of protections in the due process of law. We yearn to know what we fear is unknowable… how to move toward peace, how to forgive, how to find common cause in the midst of such deep distrust.

Who would want to dredge up all these feelings? Feelings are painful. And sharing them is scary, because it flies in the face of a culture that's all about looking good, looking like we have it all together, a culture that expects the question, "How are you," to be answered, "fine."

And so we ask, why let up these bogeymen of feelings during the 10-year commemoration? Why do it here? Here's why: because it only by confronting and sharing our feelings that we can heal.

The best way I have seen this put in my research comes from Serene Jones, who is president of the Union Theological Seminary of New York City. In a conversation Friday at Trinity Church in New York City, right next to Ground Zero, where first responders were given food and refuge in the early days of the tragedy, she said: "When grief becomes mourning, that act of mourning is inevitably tied to a community's articulation of what they hope for — to be able to name what was lost and to truly get it in your gut some sense of what wholeness would look like. Grief is not about somehow overcoming the pain …it … can be a reminder -- when one loses a spouse for instance – of what the love was [about] that was so enlivening and giving — [so] life-giving. [There's] a very strange connection between hope and grief."[ii]

What I hear Serene Jones saying is that sharing our grief and our fears forces us to grapple with what we have lost, in order to remember what we loved about it. This strengthens us as a community because our common unity depends on a common vision of what we love and stand for and want to preserve. This allows us to hope, because we need to see what we treasure in order to hope that we can find it together.

Traditional Jewish culture has the right community approach to mourning. They don't allow people to mourn alone. Their response is to sit with the grieving for seven days. In doing so they protect the grieving from the temptation to isolate. It helps them to remember they are not alone; it helps them to process their feelings; it helps them know their grieving is not an end but is part of their still-unfolding life; and it helps them find hope that after losing the one they depended on so fundamentally for support, their community is there to support them.

And sitting shivah is important for the community, because it helps all those who knew and loved the deceased to process their grief together; to share stories that reaffirm their common history and connections to each other, to remember, as Serene Jones said, what they love and therefore who they are. It reminds them they are there for each other.

This is why, after all, we tell our stories week after week from the lectionary scripture readings, like our stories today, which are all about violence done to brothers and about the challenge of forgiveness, which is a sermon in its own right.

And it is in our stories – both those from the Bible and those from our own experience – that give us hope when we can't find it on our own. We are reminded to let go of the burden of trying to figure out what can't be figured out, to turn to God. As a community, we remember together that we are in God's loving hands, that God is our source of courage, of strength, and ultimately, of peace.

So in processing our collective grief for 9/11 and its aftermath, and in our collective need to find hope, let's benefit from the example of our Jewish brothers and sisters. Let's transcend our natural human response to keep our feelings to ourselves. Let's trust that deep down inside each of us there is a place that's deeper than any of the wounds we hide from each other… a place where we crave togetherness… where we want to be known and to know each other, where we can sift through each other's experience to find our common experience, in order to strengthen our unity and our hope.

As I did my research for this sermon, it occurred to me we might spend some time doing this now. Rather than limiting our shared experience to my reflections, I thought it might be good for us to open up to reflections from all of us, or any of us who are willing.

And so I'm going to stop talking in a minute and ask you to share your feelings and thoughts about 9/11 and the 10 years since. There's no pressure here. If you don't want to share, that's just fine.

So please, if you're so inclined, share with us your memories, or what has been lost that you mourn for, or what it is that feels threatening to you from what's happened since 9/11. Or perhaps you have found reason for hope and can share that with us. For hope is something I hope this process can help us find… hope grounded in our desire to grow new life out of the ashes of what we have lost.

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Quotes Found Online in UCC 9/11 Resources

Edith Guffey, a member of the UCC Collegium of Officers writes, "I was the only member of the Collegium of Officers of the United Church of Christ in the national denominational headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio, on September 11, 2001. When it became clear what was happening, I invited all the staff to gather in the Amistad Chapel, our space for worship in the building. Like many others, all we could do was express our sadness, our fear, and our confusion about what was happening and why. The reality is that none of us ever controls our own fate but sometimes we try to and delude ourselves to the contrary. September 11th was a harsh reminder that much of life is out of our control and sometimes all we can do is pray, and that is what we did ten years ago when we gathered."

J. Bennett Guess, another  Collegium officer, writes that it took until 2004 before he could face reading the New York Times'  profiles of each of the victims, but that once he began, he became obsessed. He writes, "It was there I met people like Eddie Calderon, 43, a security guard at the trade center for 22 years.  His niece remembered him as an entertainer, how much he loved to dance.  He was last seen running toward the north tower after guiding dozens of workers to safety.

"I learned about Douglas Gurian, 38, who found pleasure in simple things.  Each summer when he took his family to Fire Island, he would take his shoes off before they reached the shore and not put them on again for days.  On the morning of the attacks, he was at Windows on the World, attending a technology conference.

"I read about Lisa and Samantha Egan, two sisters aged 31 and 24, who worked steps away from one another at Cantor Fitzgerald.  Their father took some comfort knowing they had one another during those frightening moments."

Geoffrey Black, our UCC General Minister and President, writes, "The pain and suffering that we as Americans associate with terrorism began that day and has continued ever since.  For that reason the date is etched in our nation’s collective consciousness.  However, it is important to note that for others around the world, that day is the day we experienced the degree of pain other nations and peoples have experienced far longer.  September 11th was a day the tragedies of the world came to our shores."

Jim Moos, another UCC Collegium member, writes, "Sadly, the terrible losses of that day multiplied over the past decade. A “war on terror” was quickly declared, and Afghanistan and Iraq were invaded. Over 4,000 American service personnel have died in those actions—more than were killed on 9/11 itself. In addition, tens of thousands have been injured. They will carry physical, emotional and spiritual scars for the rest of their lives. Less a part of the American consciousness are the massive losses suffered by Afghani and Iraqi citizens as a result of the wars and the chaotic forces they unleashed. Over 100,000 of them have been killed and over 5 million have been displaced from their homes or become refugees—mostly innocent civilians. Their names, faces and stories are largely unknown to us, but their families and communities continue to experience pain and grief."

[i] http://www.ucc.org/911remembrance/Jim-s-letter.pdf

[ii] http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2011/ccp-911/