Anniversaries...bitter and sweet...

Except as a television witness from North Carolina, I played no part in 9/11.  In the days that followed I learned of friends and neighbors who were in New York or Washington.  I have since learned of close-ish connections we have to a few folk on flight 93.  But I had little to offer that day but tears and prayers.

My dear friends Inez and Stephen lost nearly everything, but through fate and grace and the mysterious divine economy of faith and life they live and love and play and pray and work even until today.  It is one of the sacred treasures of my ministry to have baptized their children, and I think of them and pray for them often.  Inez is one of the most poignant writers I know, last year she wrote this:  http://inezsays.com/how-do-you-say-goodbye.htm .

Anniversaries - bitter, like the 11 years since everything came tumbling down -- and sweet - today is my one year anniversary at White Memorial, the official 1st year has come to its close -- mark time, shape memory, and cast impressions into our faith and souls.  There is very little so powerful as memory. 

Memory defines us.

What do you remember?  About this date?  About a friend lost in NYC, or DC, or Pennsylvania?  About the college classmate who died in Afghanistan (Joshua Harris, Davidson College Class of 1994) or in one of the conflicts since?

This has been a great age of conflict, my prayer is that peace will prevail.  Always has been.  With God's help, always it always will be my prayer.

11 years ago my wife was carrying our first child.  We held hands and prayed for friends and family near and far.  Then I stayed up just about all night and wrote a sermon for Wednesday, September 12.  From Isaiah 40, verse 8, I concluded it like this:

And it is by that Spirit we shall walk, for the Word of our Lord endures forever.  The endurance of the word is the promise of God that long after terror at the hands of others has reigned, long after the evil-doers have gone, long after the grass has withered, the flowers have faded, long after we have walked through the valley of the shadow of death, long after we have been to the mountaintops, long after we have each fought our good fights and finished our races, long after the walls have tumbled down, yes, long after all of those things our God and His word and our duty as the people of the word will endure.  In fact, they will endure forever.  And they will do so because they have despite the forces of evil that have sought to squash them for 2,000 years.  They will endure because behind them is a truth and hope that is so beautiful the words to depict it escape most who try to capture them, but not all.

In July I witnessed the capture of these beautiful words when I received an E-mail from a woman in our congregation:  a woman whose husband struggles with cancer.  After I had read the new testament lesson, from Matthew’s 28^th chapter, that concludes with the words, “And remember, I am with you always, even to the end of the ages,” her young son asked her, “What does to the end of the ages mean?”  She responded to him like this, “I whispered to him that it meant forever and ever.  He thought for a minute and then asked me if God ever dies.  I said that no, God doesn’t, and that’s the most wonderful thing about God.  He thought about it for a moment and his eyes teared up.  He looked at me and said, ‘I don’t even know why I am crying, but I think it’s because I’m happy.’”

Friends, when the walls come down, know that the Word of our Lord endures forever.  Indeed, now is the time to mourn the dead, to say goodbye to innocence, and to want and desire justice for what has occurred.

But it is also the time for something else – a something else characterized in the words of my second hero.  He is a farmer named Wendell Berry, who also happens to be a poet.  In one of his most read and famous poems he writes this two-word imperative mood sentence:  “Practice resurrection.”

Let us, our nation, our city, our communities, our churches, and our families be the people who practice resurrection.  For now is the time to do nothing less.  And may that resurrection be rooted in the word of God that endures forever.  A word that is stronger than death.  A word that raised our Christ.  A word that sent pilgrims across oceans and into continents.  A word that throughout the modern era has sought to build and raise, rather than to tear down and destroy.  A word that professes that love is stronger than hate, pain weaker than recovery, anger secondary to neighborliness, and death a pale afterthought when compared to the beauty of life. 

We have seen evil.  No one can deny this.

But we have also seen hope and providence because we possess the promise of the enduring word.  And even though walls built strong do fall, we have a great God with a great word who is able to be the balm for our wounds, the healer of our hearts, the restorer of our courage, and the builder of new walls.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our Lord endures forever.