SMOKEHOUSE SPIRITUALITY~ ON THE SUNDAY AFTER 911 WE NEED LILIES

For forty years, I wrote a sermon every week. Not just the sermon, but a manuscript to boot. There is something about writing a sermon manuscript that requires a preacher to wrestle with words. You cannot hide from a word you have written down. It sits there on the page and waits for you to decide whether you really mean it.

I kept those sermons. Twenty-seven years’ worth of them from Lovers Lane United Methodist Church. I filed them two ways: one by Scripture text and another by date. There is something both comforting and unsettling about having a filing cabinet full of your former preacher self.

I was appointed to Lovers Lane on April 1, 1998. Twenty-seven years later, after my retirement, I found myself wandering back through those files—not merely to remember what I had preached, but to remember what we were living through when I preached it. So it seemed appropriate, on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, to pull out the sermon that I preached on the Sunday after September 11, 2001.

I remember that Tuesday, September 11, 2001, was supposed to be a big day at Lovers Lane. We had long awaited the beginning of the Alpha program, and that evening we expected perhaps 250 people to show up for a meal and teaching. They did, and they were looking for a lot more than the Alpha teaching. There was fear in the eyes and hurt in the hearts of those who gathered, and they came to hear something they could hold on to.

That evening, like everything else that week, changed. Instead of simply beginning a program, we turned the evening into worship. And then, every day that week, we opened the doors of the iconic stained-glass sanctuary at noon and again in the evening for worship and prayer. We didn’t have a lot of prepared words, but we had a lot of care, prayer, and tears to share. We did not advertise that we were open for our kind of business, but somehow they knew, and they came.

They came because they were afraid. They came because they were confused. They came because they needed somewhere to go where they could sit beside somebody else and remember that they were not alone.The sanctuary filled.

The following Sunday, we were scheduled to begin a new contemporary worship service called Crosswalk. We went ahead with it. And that Sunday, every worship service looked like Easter. Even the brand-new one that still goes on today—and this Sunday it will be 25 years old.

There was something about that week that made us understand why people need the church. Not because the church has all the answers, but because sometimes the world gives us questions too large for any one of us to carry alone.

So I went back and read the sermon I had written for that Sunday.  I wrote:

The Islamic religion and those faithful to its tenets did not do the horrific on Tuesday. Muslims are not to blame. Radicals who follow a blasphemous form of religion are to blame. Not good Muslims, many of whom are being unjustly villainized. Please, don’t be guilty of the hate and judgmentalism that filled the hearts of the real perpetrators of the evil that raised its head.

A realization I have made in recent days is how little we know about Islam. I have a Quran. I had studied world religions in seminary. But I am ashamed to say that I know not one Islamic imam in this Metroplex. I am going to change that.

 Many here probably know that Muslims view Muhammad as a great prophet. Muslims do not view Muhammad as a savior, certainly not as God, but as a prophet. I have never quoted Muhammad in a sermon.  Today, that changes. Muhammad said, “If you have two loaves, sell one and buy lilies.” He was right. We need more than bread. We need lilies.

We need love and light right now. We need beauty and blessedness today. We need life and abundant living. In John 10:10, Jesus says, “The thief comes only to steal and to kill and destroy. I came that you may have life and have it abundantly.”

In that same 10th chapter, there is talk about the thief that comes to kill, steal, and destroy. And the world has come face-to-face with the thief, and it is not the first time the thief has been in our midst. The thief is no respecter of persons.

Death is a natural progression in life, but life can be stolen from us, having nothing to do with God’s will and way. Human beings can be killed and destroyed even in the name of God, which is the worst form of blasphemy. All people of all ages, of all religions, know this harsh reality.

There is an eerie picture going around on the internet. It is a CNN photograph taken of the collapse of one of the Twin Towers. In the smoke and shadows, there appears to be an image of a bearded and horned, evil-looking, Satan-prototype figure. Someone asked me what I thought about that. I simply said that I had not seen it, but I didn’t need to see “a devil in smoke and shadows” to be very clear that the events of Tuesday were evil.

We would do well to remember that evil is bigger than a person with a name or even a country, but it will be defeated. That is our promise from God. The gates of hell cannot prevail against the goodness and power of God.

We remember that one of the means the thief has traditionally used is “war,” pitting soldier against soldier to steal, kill, and destroy. Now wars can be fought in the shadows, like the thief in the night.

I was asked this week if wars are Christian. The answer is, “No.” Wars are not Christian. I also want to say that the term “holy war” is an oxymoron of the greatest proportions. However, there are times when Christians can go to war and be faithful people. At times in history, it has been our moral responsibility, even as people of faith, or especially as people of faith, to go to war.

A couple of years ago, I got to make the stroll again through Arlington National Cemetery and see the thousands of grave markers all aligned. I noticed crosses, Stars of David, and crescents with stars, and I was reminded that people of different faiths have died together, side by side, in war.

Let us also remember that, in war, innocent people die, and it is always a tragedy. Christian people must mourn this reality and pray that the loss of innocent life will be minimized. And this is not the first time we have witnessed this. Why would we think it could not happen here?

We would do well to remember: Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and Pearl Harbor; the Holocaust and the Cambodian Killing Fields; Jerusalem and the West Bank; Angola and Sierra Leone; Belfast and London; New York City, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Especially in times like these, we need abundant life. We need lilies.

In the very next chapter in John’s Gospel, chapter 11, we have the great story of Lazarus being raised from the dead. There is the great discourse that Jesus has with Martha. Jesus said, quite matter-of-factly, “Your brother will live again.” Martha said, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection of the last days.”Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Based on what our Lord and Savior Jesus said, we can sustain a vision of hope that death is not the final word. Father Mike knew that vision of hope and shared it with many others.

Many of us came together on television to watch the funeral of Father Judge—Father Mike, as he was affectionately known. He was a 68-year-old Franciscan priest and a chaplain with the New York Fire Department, working with Ladder 24.

Father Mike was a big, handsome guy who walked around town looking like one of the 17th-century friars. He wore sandals and a long beard, a brown cassock tied with a belt made of rope. His hair was white, and his cheeks were the color of roses. His big Irish grin was his hallmark.

We now know his story. He was a wonderful, beloved man who was called to duty on September 11. While giving last rites to a dying fireman, Father Mike was struck in the head by falling debris. The familiar scene of him being carried from the scene, thus becoming the first identified body of the tragedy, is emblazoned in our memory.

The firemen took his body to St. Peter’s Church and laid him on the altar with a sheet covering his still body. From there, he was taken by ambulance to the firehouse, where he lay there in state.

One of Father Mike’s friends said, “Father Mike going first will allow him to welcome all of the others home in heaven.” Testimony after testimony, we have already heard.

Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life… those who believe in me will know it.” Is there any question that we need more lilies? We know that Jesus referred to himself as the Resurrection and the Life, but have you ever heard him referred to as the Lily of the Valley?

For those who have walked in the valley of the shadow of death, we need to be reminded that it is not a valley we are meant to reside in, nor are we to fear evil.

(Then I sang that hymn right out of the Cokesbury hymnal)

“I have found a friend in Jesus, He’s everything to me.
He’s the fairest of ten thousand to my soul.
The Lily of the Valley, in Him alone I see
All I need to cleanse and make me fully whole.

In sorrow He’s my comfort, in trouble He’s my stay,
He tells me every care on Him to roll.
He’s the Lily of the Valley, the bright and Morning Star;
He’s the fairest of ten thousand to my soul.”

Twenty-five years ago, we needed to be reminded of these things. And we need to be reminded of them now as much as ever. Let us remember that evil and hatred does not have the final word. The Lily of the Valley does.

 

A Prayer for the Sunday after September 11

Gracious and loving God,

On this anniversary of September 11, we remember. We remember the nearly three thousand people whose lives were taken from them. We remember the firefighters, police officers, emergency workers, chaplains, airline crews, passengers, office workers, and ordinary people who became heroes in an extraordinary hour.

We remember those who ran toward the danger. We remember those who waited for loved ones who never came home. We remember the families who have carried an empty chair, an empty room, and an unanswered question for twenty-five years. We remember those who continue to bear the scars of that day, seen and unseen.

O God, forgive us when our fear turns into hatred, when our grief turns into vengeance, and when our desire for security causes us to forget the humanity of our neighbors teach us to distinguish evil from the people we fear. Teach us to reject violence done in your name. Teach us to seek understanding before judgment and compassion before condemnation.

When the world is dark, remind us of the light. When the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy, remind us that Christ came that we might have life and have it abundantly. When we are tempted to despair, give us lilies. And give us the grace to become peacemakers—not because peace is easy, but because you have called us to be people who make room for abundant life.

We pray in the name of the Lily of the Valley, the Bright and Morning Star—Jesus.