Remembrance and Hope

REMEMBRANCE AND HOPE (Wednesday, September 13, 2001)

"For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land." Jeremiah 32:15

We come here this evening barely 36 hours after the terrible tragedy none of us will ever forget here in our city and in Washington. We come because we feel impelled to be together, to offer our petitions and intercessions to God on behalf of the many who have been wantonly killed by this despicable and cowardly act, to pray for people even now struggling for their lives in the midst of a literal hell on earth, to pray for survivors and families, for the missing, for little children left orphaned and spouses bereft, to pray for our leaders and all in authority. We come because we know we must come, as helpless as we feel just now.

We begin with gratitude for those in our midst who were right in the thick of it and fortunately escaped - Tom Sinibaldi, who was across the street and talking to Jeannette on the phone when she saw the buildings start to crumbled and yelled at him to get away - and John Gallub's son, Alex, who was on the ground floor at a coffee shop where he worked and got out. There were many who worked nearby and saw it all from the windows - Julia Chen, and Raquel Vidal, and Jonathan Phillips, among others. Raquel was in the explosion eight years ago. We are grateful for people who volunteered their talents, such as Dr. Carlos Monteagudo, and others who have already given blood, and for the whole way the city is pulling together.

This is a service, we have said, of remembrance - for all those innocent passengers on four planes who expected only a five hour flight to California but who instead cruelly and in such a horrifying way had their lives snatched from them, for all the people who innocently went to work on a bright Tuesday morning in New York and Washington and never returned - including Ingrid Anthony's nephew and Marian Farkas' nephew, for the many heroic firefighters and police who went into the burning buildings to do good and never came out, for all the other innocent people who were killed in this unforgettable tragedy. The religion of the Bible is built on remembrance and on the fact, the plain fact, that in the long run God is stronger than any oppressor, whether it be Pharaoh in ancient Egypt or Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem, or death itself. We remember because we believe life is precious, it is a gift of God Almighty, and to take innocent life runs counter to God's clearly given law, in both the Bible as well, we must add, as the Qu'ran.

We come here also because we have hope. Hope for those who still lie trapped in the rubble. How horrible it is! Hope for our city, that we will overcome this. Hope for our country. Hope that the perpetrators of this malicious deed will be summoned to the bar of justice but that no wider war will result. Mankind cannot live without hope. There are many emotions which swirl around inside us at this time, and we would not be human if we did not acknowledge them - emotions of bitterness, anger, hostility, even revenge. It is wrong and unbiblical to say these emotions are wrong. You can find them all in the psalms which are in the Bible. But there is one emotion which must override all these human emotions and that is hope.

Today I found myself thinking of Jeremiah and his purchase of a piece of property. It is one of the great symbols of hope in the Bible. And there it is in the reading for September 30 along with Psalm 91. Jeremiah had spent much of his ministry warning the people of catastrophe that was to come. Then when it came in the form of the oppressor Babylonians at the gates of Jerusalem he changed his message entirely to one of consolation. And with the city in the worst position it had ever been in he went out and bought a piece of property! It was a clear act of hope.

It is tempting for people to think there is no such thing as evil. I have sometimes heard young people, say that. No one who lived through and understands September 11, 2001 will ever be able to say that again. We have looked evil right in the eye and it was a terrible thing to behold. But God is greater than evil. We must believe that. To not believe that is to give up. To not believe that is to let evil triumph.

Follow Jeremiah's lead. Trust in God. Do something positive. And don't engage in racial stereotyping. There are many more people of good will of all races and faiths than of evil. St. Paul wrote to the Romans: "If God is for us, who is against us? I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."