| It was early on that ever-so-perfect, ever-so-blue-skyed Tuesday in the month of September-last, that we found ourselves ever-so-suddenly enveloped in a darkness of smoke, and ash, and evil, choked by the sulfurous air of a hell come to earth.
Now, according to our psalmist (Psalm 139:11-12): “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me shall become night,’ [well,] even the darkness is not dark to You[, O God]; [even] the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to You.” But where was Your light, O God, amidst the darkness of that day? Again, our psalmist claims (Psalm 139:7a, 8b): “Where can I go from Your spirit[, from Your presence, O God]? … [For even] if I make my bed in the Underworld, You are there.” But where were You, O God, amidst the horrors of Ground Zero, as those collapsing towers cremated and entombed so many dazed and desperate innocents, as those images of exploding fuel tanks raised up in us the specter of a monstrous evil lurking in the shadows of religious fervor? Where were You, O God, on 9/11? Where were You? This question has been posed time and time again over the past year, and it was powerfully raised once more last Tuesday evening in the PBS/Frontline documentary entitled “Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero,” seen on Channel 13. This program is not to be missed. It will be rebroadcast on Channel 13 this coming Wednesday evening at 8:00 p.m. And I will also see to it that a videotape of it is available for you to view right here at the church at any time on Wednesday. Just drop by, and ask to see it! At one point during this documentary, the sorrow-stricken widow of a young fireman asks, “How could God create the beauty of a sunrise and then turn this loving man[, this loving husband of mine,] into bones?” On one level, her question seems easy enough to answer: namely, “God did not turn your husband into bones; it was the evil lurking in the hearts of certain men that did that.” But on another level, this widow’s question is quite impossible to answer satisfactorily, for she was really asking: “Why didn’t God prevent this loving man from being turned into bones?” Indeed, in that form, her question is basically the same one that many have asked about Jesus’s death, “Why didn’t God prevent that loving man from being turned into bones?” And that question, like her question, leads us into the very heart of mystery, divine mystery. For these are questions that no person this side of heaven is really able to answer. Christian theologians have realized from the earliest centuries that when confronted by the mystery of evil and the wreckage of history, all that one can do is to sift through the debris looking for some sign, any sign, that despite all appearances to the contrary God has in some way been there, that amidst all the residue of evil there are, nonetheless, traces of a sacramental. What do I mean by “a sacramental”? Well, a sacramental is any sign found amidst what is veiled and mysterious and apparently without meaning-any sign that points beyond that mystery toward the power that can redeem even evil: namely, the sacred, the holy, the one we call God! For example, the cross of Christ is a sacramental. For in spite of its having been used as the instrument of torture and death during human history’s darkest hour, the cross signifies that even at the very pinnacle of Jesus’s suffering God was there, with him, transforming his suffering into a saving love, transforming his death into life eternal, the same life eternal that God offers through Jesus to all of humankind. And it is this sacramental, the cross, the cross as a sign of the sacred in the midst of the debris of human history, as a sign of everlasting life born from the very depths of agonized death-it is this sacramental, the cross, that illumines the meaning of the grace-bestowing sacrament we are celebrating today, the grace-bestowing sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. For in this sacrament, the Spirit of God transmutes the broken body and shed blood of the Christ who hung helplessly on that cross into something living and dynamic-into the power of saving love, the power that bestows grace, the grace that works within us and through us to transform sinfulness into goodness. It is my belief that there are sacramentals to be found in the midst of every wreckage in human history. If so, what are the sacramentals to be found in 9/11, the signs of the sacred that have emerged from the wreckage of this unspeakable horror, the signs of hope that point beyond the mystery of evil to the presence of God, to that power, greater than death, which transforms suffering into love and death into eternal life? For me, one of the sacramentals in 9/11 is that unforgettable image of the shattered remnant of the towers’ twisted steel framework, seemingly suspended amidst those clouds of dust, and smoke, and ash. For me, what the cross signifies about Calvary is what that eerie, hulking skeleton signifies about Ground Zero-namely, that God has the power to bring new life and hope out of even the very worst that humankind can do. What if a sculptural rendering of that haunting image of architectural fragments were to stand as the centerpiece of the memorial erected on this rebuilt, hallowed ground? What if such a sculpture were to stand as a cross-like marker for that invisible cathedral of sacred repose? For me, a second sacramental in 9/11 is the final phone calls placed by those who were confronted so starkly by death in their doomed airplanes and buildings. In the PBS documentary to which I referred earlier, we are introduced to Irving Kula, a rabbi of the Conservative tradition, who each day in his morning prayers chants and davvens, using these transcribed conversations and recorded messages as his texts, for he has found them to be such pure expressions of love, such pure testimonies to the connectedness, the oneness, of all being. In these phone messages coming from the valley of the shadow of death, the sacred is heard to be present. And finally, let me mention one other sacramental that I find in 9/11-the haunting image of those two persons standing on a ledge on the 80th floor of the South Tower, obviously having been forced there by the searing flames and suffocating smoke within. Who were this woman and this man? Were they strangers, or co-workers, or friends, or lovers? We do not know. We only know that in their moment of ultimate horror and hopelessness, they reached out, their hands met and clasped, and they leapt together, flying downward to their deaths and to their lives beyond. What a prayer of love can be seen in their reaching out to each other! At the very end of that documentary “Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero” two voices reflect on the unforgettable image offered by that pair. The first voice says: “His hand and her hand nestled in each other with such extraordinary, ordinary, naked love. It’s the most powerful prayer I can imagine, the most eloquent, the most graceful. It’s everything we’re capable of against horror, and loss, and tragedy. It’s what makes me believe that we’re not fools to believe in God. It’s: to believe that human beings have greatness and holiness within them, like seeds that open only under great fire; to believe that who we are persists past what we were; to believe against evil evidence hourly that love is why we are here.” [The Reverend Joseph Griesedieck?, Episcopal priest] And then the second voice reflects: “To me that image is an inescapable provocation. This gesture, this holding of hands in the midst of that horror-it embodied what September 11th was all about. The image confronts us with the need to make a judgment, a choice. “Does [this gesture] show the ultimate hopelessness of human attempts to survive the power of hatred and death? “Or is it an affirmation of a greatness within our humanity itself that somehow shines in the midst of the darkness and contains the hint of the possibility of a power greater than death itself? “Which of the two [does this gesture show]? It’s a [judgment, a] choice [we make]. It’s the choice of September 11th.” [Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete, Catholic priest] Now, when this second voice began its reflections, the image on the screen was that of the World Trade Center’s skeleton, hauntingly aswirl in the smoke and dust and ash of death. But when this voice asks us whether the couple’s clasping of hands might not be an affirmation of a greatness within our humanity that somehow shines in the midst of the darkness and contains the hint of a power greater than death itself, then the images being shown on the screen become those of stars and galaxies and of a cosmos awash in light, and, as the documentary comes to its end, we viewers are being drawn by the camera out through a circular nebula of radiant light, out into the depths of infinity. Yes, these are some of the sacramentals I find in 9/11, some of the signs of the sacred that emerge for me from the wreckage of this unspeakable horror, some of the signs of hope that point me beyond the mystery of evil to the presence of God, to that power, greater than death, which transforms suffering into love and death into eternal life. And how at-once all these images are with the Good News proclaimed to us this morning by the apostle Paul: “We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord, so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living." (Romans 14:7-8). Let us pray: O God, as we are led this week to peer again into the mysterious depths of 9/11’s evil, may we also be able to perceive there the signs of Your presence, the signs of Your power to transform suffering into love and death into eternal life. This we pray in the name of our crucified and risen Savior, Jesus, the Christ. Amen. |
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