Remembrance and Hope -- 9/11 Remembrance, 15th Anniversary (2 Corinthians 4:1, 5 - 10)

Do you remember where you were on 9/11?  I remember where I was.  On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I was at our home perched on a hillside overlooking highway 101 and the Pacific Ocean.  It was in my first parish in Gold Beach, Oregon, and I was a newly-minted pastor—we called ourselves ministers of the Word and Sacrament back then.  I stumbled out of bed at my usual hour—about 6 o’clock—flipped on the TV next to the big picture windows, and saw a picture of a building in the distance, smoke billowing out of it, and I remember thinking “What the heck . . . where’s Good Morning America?  Where’s Diane Sawyer?”  And then, there she was, reporting: “A plane has hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center."

I sat riveted, staring at the images on the screen, as they cut between cameras at a fixed position and onboard ABC’s New York affiliate’s helicopter.  I had no sooner gotten into my head what was thought at first to be an accident than a deadly bloom broke out on the South Tower, and it became clear that a second plane had hit that building, it began to dawn on everyone that New York City was under attack.

What about you?  What do you remember?  Do you remember the Pentagon and yet another airliner?  I do . . . The largest office building in the world, wreathed in black smoke, reports of evacuation.  A congresswoman from California recalls seeing the conflagration in the distance, and being told to run away from the Capitol building, just run, and she did, fleeing with her colleagues down Pennsylvania Avenue.  Turns out, their instincts were right: the Capitol building was the target of the fourth plane, and would’ve been hit if its passengers hadn't risen up . . . Four planes.  Four pilots, four co-pilots.  Four sets of stewards, four loads of passengers, 246 souls in all.

Do you remember what happened next?  Do you remember that the worst was yet to come?  I do . . . I remember the incredible, silent collapse—silent to those of us not there, anyway.  Covered on every network, mirrored on every screen, I remember the gasps of the anchors—Diane and Charlie and Katie and Matt—as first one then the other of the towers pancaked down upon themselves.  Watching it, we knew that whoever was left in those flattened stairways, offices and halls couldn't have survived the crush of steel and stone.

And then the images began . . . the planes hitting, over and over and over, from different angles and sides as more and more video is discovered.  The fire-balls, the jagged, airliner-shaped holes, and the jumpers, plunging over a thousand feet to the ground.  The collapse of the towers—over and over and over—and the cloud of smoke and debris that rolling down the New York streets like a toxic fog.  The images played again and again until it seemed they were burned into our retinas, until they haunted our sleep.

Thousands were killed—nearly three thousand, to be exact—and thousands more were stranded in Nova Scotia when U.S. airspace was closed.  Wall Street was closed until the 17^th, and world finances were disrupted.  At the same time, the country came together, for a few months anyway, and for a time, church attendance picked up.  But along with the good came the not-so-much . . . Despite President Bush saying that Islam was not the problem per se, there developed a strain of anti-Muslim sentiment that has continued to this day.  Human beings are, as Paul says, treasure in clay jars, fragile and fallible.

And yet, even though some of our brothers and sisters succumbed to the hysteria, the church as a whole was a source of light in the days following 9/11.  In those first days after the attack, the churches played a vital role in giving the country space to pray, space to communally grieve.  At my first parish in Oregon, on the edge of the continent, we opened our sanctuary for prayer on that Friday, as I understand this congregation did as well, and we were always available for sanctuary and counseling.  Indeed, the poor in spirit were blessed, those who mourn were comforted, and the merciful received mercy as the church fulfilled its vocation as demonstration of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.

And here's the thing: we were able—and are able—to do this only through the grace of God.  It is only by God’s mercy that we are able to be merciful.  God’s grace and mercy powers us and empowers us, and we become a conduit, a pipeline for that mercy to others.  And it is precisely in that that our hope and courage lies.  We do not proclaim ourselves for the simple reason that we can't do it ourselves, we are clay jars.  But though we are those jars, we are filled with God’s mercy and strength.  We can be afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed, so that through us Christ, who is the light of the world, might shine forth in the darkness.  Amen.