Sermon
September 16, 2001

Pastor: Neal MacPherson

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LAMENTING OUR LOSSES

My sisters and brothers, as chilling as it was to witness those two airplanes crashing into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, and to hear of the airplanes crashing into the Pentagon and a wooded area in Pennsylvania, for us who are people of faith it is equally chilling to hear all the easy speeches calling for revenge and retaliation. As a faith community and as a nation, we surely have to stop and take time to look deeply within ourselves in order to find the wisdom that will enable us to move towards the peaceful world God desires for all her children.

Last Friday, when the sanctuary was open for prayer and reflection, one of the members of our church was seen there reading a portion of Tich Nhat Hanh's little book Living Buddha, Living Christ. Among the words she read are these: There must be ways to solve our conflicts without killing. We must look at this. We have to find ways to help people get out of difficult situations, situations of conflict, without having to kill. Our collective wisdom and experience can be the torch lighting our path, showing us what to do. Looking deeply together is the main task of a community or a church.

My sisters and brothers, let us begin the task of looking deeply together. And let us begin just where we are. Let us begin with our grieving, our cries and laments spoken to one another and to God. Let us begin with our tears and our sorrow. If we stay there for a while, without immediately moving towards answers and solutions, we just may begin to receive the gift of wisdom from on high.

As a faith community we need to help our nation to lament, not just for a day, but for a while. For we also mourn. We mourn the death of brothers and sisters whose names we do not even know, but brothers and sisters nonetheless. As the bells tolled across the nation in remembrance of those who died, I was reminded of those well known words composed by John Donne over 400 years ago when he heard the bells of St. Paul's Cathedral toll announce the death of a human being whose name he did not know. He wrote, . . . No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend=s or of thine own were: any man=s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

And so we weep. We weep for ourselves. The deaths of our brothers and sisters are also our deaths. The deaths of those we did not even know have diminished us. Is this not why tears come to our eyes when we hear the stories of those who mourn the death of a wife, a husband, a child, a brother, a sister, a friend? Their loss is our loss. Therefore, we weep, we lament. We weep over the city, as did Jeremiah after the destruction of Jerusalem, as did Jesus when he entered Jerusalem five hundred years later.

The loss of those whose lives were so shockingly and abruptly taken away is not the only loss we suffer, however. We have more losses to lament. There is the loss of our basic security, a security we have taken for granted. All of a sudden we find ourselves vulnerable, as vulnerable as the people of Europe during World War II, as vulnerable as the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as vulnerable as the Jewish people during the dark days of the Holocaust; as vulnerable as Palestinians and the people of Iraq, as vulnerable as the Christians of the Sudan, as vulnerable as native peoples of every continent and nation. We are no longer secure, and we lament our loss. Not only the loss of our security, but also the loss of our power. We, who could not prevent the deaths of five thousand people by a small group of terrorists armed with nothing more than knives and box cutters, are powerless. There is not a missile defense system of any magnitude that could have prevented the events of last Tuesday. We are vulnerable and powerless, and so we lament. Perhaps, though, when we lament the loss of security and power, our lament is over something that was not real in the first place. Our lament may lead us to see a truth, that power and security (at least the kind we as a nation have relied upon) are illusions. The events of last Tuesday have unmasked these illusions, thanks be to God, for power and invulnerability are the illusions that have led us as a nation to run roughshod over the rest of humanity. Osama Bin Laden's hate has been fueled largely by our actions in the Persian Gulf War.

We need to help our nation lament this loss of security and of power, for it is in lamenting this loss that our nation may be awakened to the wisdom that points to a new way of being in the world. If we are able to stay with our cries of despair, our vulnerability and loss of power, we may in truth be compelled to join the human race. We may begin to understand that if it is true for us as individual human beings, it is also true for us as a nation, that we are not an island unto ourselves, that we must begin to work for a world in which all, including the people of Afghanistan, will be considered as part of our own flesh, our own blood. We seem surprised that so many people throughout the world have shed tears for us this past week, and well we should. For as a nation, by our wealth and our power, we have set ourselves apart and above others. And yet, others throughout the world know that we are part of them, and so they weep for us and for themselves. By the grace of God, lamenting our losses may lead us as a nation to ask the most piercing question of all: why is it that people hate us so much that they would be driven to do what they did? To continually ask ourselves that question may lead us finally to understand that the world will have no future if we do not come to terms with the inequalities created by our wealth and our greed, and the injustices created by our power. For it is these very inequalities and injustices that have lead others to hate us and wish us harm. As a nation, we must indeed be guided by the vision of a world in which sharing by all will mean scarcity for none, a world in which no nation shall lift up sword against nation. In such a world, there will be no need for terrorists. In the absence of such a world, there will always be terrorism.

My sisters and brothers, the wisdom that may lead us and our nation towards a more peaceful and just world may indeed arise from our tears, our loss, our lament. For a while, we need to voice our lament, experience our loss, take time to weep. We need to look deeply together. Then, possibly, we may hear afresh additional words written by Tich Nhat Hanh.

. . . To preserve peace, our hearts must be at peace with the world, with our brothers and our sisters. When we try to overcome evil with evil, we are not working for peace. If you say, ASaddam Hussein [or Osama bin Laden] is evil. We have to prevent him from continuing to be evil, and if you then use the same means he has been using, you are exactly like him. Trying to overcome evil with evil is not the way to make peace.

My sisters and brothers, the peaceful world for which we pray and hope does begin with a peaceful heart. To work for peace, we must have a peaceful heart. We must be at peace with one another. We must reach out to our Muslim brothers and sisters, and also our neighbors, in peace. We must examine our own lives so that we do not, by our privilege and wealth, contribute personally to the inequities of our present world. We must look to God for the wisdom that comes from on high. We must follow in the way of Jesus the Christ, whose way was the way of peace and justice. All of this may begin to happen if we find the grace and courage to lament, to grieve our losses and weep.

My inspiration this week came from a husband whose wife was on one of the airplanes that crashed into the World Trade Center. After telling his story, interrupted by his own tears and my tears, he was asked, "What do you think we should do." He said, simply and without hesitation, "We should let the criminal justice system look after those who were behind all of this," and then he went on to say something like this, "I do not believe in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; I do not want all of this to lead to the deaths of more innocent women, men, and children. Let us allow the justice system which is already in place deal with this." Here is a human being who has a peaceful heart, who has allowed himself to lament well and voice his cry unto God who is a God of compassion and comfort, the God of peace. Here is a human being ready to leave vengeance up to God, a human being ready to overcome evil with good. May his wounded and wise spirit be in us, and in the leaders and people of our nation. So help us, God.

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