On September 11, 2001 our world changed. On that date 9/11, an emergency call went out to America and then another and another. Thousands of 911 calls went out, cries for help, so many human voices that it seemed like a wave of terror. Horrific images unreal, unimaginable images that looked as if they belonged in a bad disaster movie flashed across our national conscience entered our peaceful living rooms and shook our souls to the core. We saw the World Trade Center struck by planes, twice, we saw the fireball, the collapse, the gray dust rise and we watched the Pentagon in flames. My first reaction was confusion: Are we at war? What country are the planes from? Then I realized they were civilian, American planes turned into weapons, living bombs by madmen. We saw New Yorkers running and then walking in a mass out of Manhattan. Again it did not seem real. A horror movie, surely, a terrible misguided attempt at reality TV?

But then it began to sink in for all of us. No this is real. An act of evil has been committed, a deliberate murder of thousands of innocent people. And then the question: who did this, why and how? Do we know anyone who has been hurt or killed? A numbness sets in, a tired watchful numbness. The tragedy is so large, the fears so great and any hope seems so frail. How do we face such evil and still believe in the goodness of people? How do we keep our hope alive? How can our hearts not cry out at a time like this? I asked someone the other day: Are you all right? And she answered: At this time is anyone? And I thought how true. How can anyone be all right at a time like this?

So let us begin there. We cannot deny the magnitude of what has happened any more than we can at a memorial service deny that the person has died. The fabric of so many lives has been torn, the wounds are so great and in that sense it is a war. We are all wounded even if we did not know anyone who was killed or wounded. 4,700 human beings are still missing. Our sense of safety is in shreds, our illusion of invulnerability in tatters and we feel helpless in the face of it all.

But we are not. You are good people stunned by evil. You are people who feel for others. You want to help. The measure of our humanity lies in our response. Some 20 or so fanatic people committed this act of terror but literally thousands and when it came to the call for blood, millions of people answered the cries for help. Those were the other stories:

There was a woman in a wheel chair carried down over 40 stories in smoke and darkness to safety by total strangers. The men who carried her chose to risk their own lives for surely they could have gotten down a lot faster without her. The passengers on that fourth plane that voted to fight to prevent another disaster were true heroes. The firefighters who answered the calls and died or were wounded are surely signs of human goodness. The police, the nurses, the doctors the ordinary people who helped, all are an answer to those who would say that evil has won. Those rescue workers, who even as we speak this morning continue to dig through the rubble in the fading hope of finding survivors are but also in the grim but healing task of finding more bodies so that the families can know for sure they are indeed our nation’s heroes and heroines. And proof of goodness in this world. The unexpected unity, the interfaith prayers to which Muslim clerics pointedly were invited, the sense of us all being in this together, that is America at it’s best. And our faith as well! Millions stood in line for hours to give blood all over the country, tell me when that last happened?

These are all signs of hope. Acts to remember and to keep close to the heart when sadness overwhelms us. And it will. No one who has been through such an experience will ever forget it. How many of you in here today have actually been in a war, in combat? It changes you doesn’t it? My mother never fought but she saw bombs dropping on the school next door as she, herself a teacher hurried her students downstairs to the bomb shelter. 600 children and teachers died by mistake that day in Copenhagen, a tiny blunder in a huge and just war and yet, my mother’s soul was wounded forever. She never again since that day could quite trust life. The sound of propeller planes overhead made her cringe and if any of us were late coming home she was sure something terrible had happened.

Wounds of war go deep. It will take much time and much gentle patience before we heal from this as a people and as individuals. Some scars will always remain. That is how it is in war. But there are things we can do. We can remember how much we need one another. Hug your children, tell your family how much you love them, talk and cry and yes, laugh too. Joy is not dead even in the face of this. And as a congregation we can be there for each other so that no one will be alone in this. Meister Eckhart, the German mystic wrote: Whatever God does his first outburst is always compassion.

War is agony. Like good deeds leave blessings the act of killing as a stone thrown into a quiet pond also leave ever widening circles of fear and grief behind. There are those who survive a war soldiers, wound dressers and civilians. Then there are the next generation: children who will never know a parent or a grandparent except as a name inscribed on a shiny black marble wall. Where on Memorial Day you visit and leave letters and flowers and crayon drawings. Like at the Vietnam War memorial where toys are collected, teddy bears and all kinds of messages. Love has to find somewhere to go, but a wall is a poor substitute for a warm hand. And for the soldiers who have had to kill nothing will ever be the same. In the classic anti war novel All Quiet on the Western Front All Quiet on the Western Front Erich Maria Remarque describes one soldier’s reaction.

"The silence spreads. I talk and must talk. So I speak to him and say to him: "Comrade, I did not want to kill you. If you jumped in here again, I would not do it, if you would be sensible too. But you were only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind and called forth its appropriate response. It was that abstraction I stabbed. But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are just poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony--forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy? If we threw away these rifles and this uniform you could be my brother like Karl and Albert. Take twenty years of my life, comrade, and stand up---take more, for I do not know what I can even attempt to do with it now."

The realization that the face of an enemy is really our own is in a sense redemption. It was what these hijackers were blind to, who saw the faces of the people on the plane and still went ahead with their plans. The poet Langston Hughes said it passionately:

I pray this day that we all remember that. Blood is equally red everywhere. And yes, those who did this must be brought to justice. But I pray we do not in our just anger commit equally unjust acts. A woman on Public Radio said it well: Children in Kabul had no more to do with this than did the children in New York. Like Langston Hughes I feel great anger when I hear and see the sufferings and agonies of these acts of terror. I want to well, kill someone! Therein lies the irony. Jim Wallis writes: The big lie behind all murder, from the random street killing to the efficient ovens of Auschwitz, to the even more efficient hydrogen bomb, is that the victims deserve to die.

Ours is the choice born between love and hate, to save this world or destroy it. Always we have a choice. Faced with this horror we still have a choice in how we react to it, in what we do next. As we live on this fragile planet our weapons can tear the very web of life apart. But our resolve to make peace can weave new patterns of truth and justice. It is a hard choice because war is always easier to wage than peace. And to be non violent, a true peaceful warrior requires a daily inner struggle. It takes no less than an inner war between our natural urge to hurt those who have wounded us on one side and the realization of our better self that an eye for an eye will make the whole world blind on the other. Or as the radical peacemaker known as Jesus said: why do you see the splinter in your neighbors eye and remain blind to the beam your own? Hear this plea by Ellen Bass as a prayer:

I want the future to extend before me like the horizon widening as I walk. I want the blue sierra that I planted squatting over the child in my womb to grow into a thick tangled hedge rich with blossoms and bees buzzing like crazy.

Imagine that? Part of our sadness this day is that these people had so much time taken away from them. But as I have said at many a memorial service the best way to honor those who died is first of all to remember them, and celebrate who they were. And then to live each of our own lives in way that give value and meaning to their memory. In Islam when someone dies they say to the families: May the rest of their allotted time, the rest of their life that they did not have now be yours. We can in the face of an invisible terrorist war become highly visible "peaceful warriors"! How do we wage peace? We do it in our own lives every single day. It is that simple and that difficult. We can chose to think before we speak to give the other the benefit of the doubt and we look deeply into our own hearts. Where we will find not only peace and joy but also fear and hatred. We must confront our own darkness; we must act not as a messiah, filled with undue majesty and certainty as did the fanatics, but rather as healers, filled with compassion, empathy, and humility.

When I was a little girl May 4 was one my favorite days. On that day the German forces in Denmark surrendered and as my father told me: we were once again a free nation. After years of darkness, blackouts, brutality and occupation people celebrated by putting lighted candles in the apartment windows all over Copenhagen. And when I was young they still did so on every May 4^th, in gratitude for our freedom and in remembrance of those who died for it. Freedom always comes with a price, my father told me, and should never be taken for granted, but guarded, valued and treasured..

We are still a free country. Buildings can be destroyed, people can be killed and wounded but the ideals on which this country was founded, free speech, democracy, freedom of religion and assembly cannot be destroyed in this way. No tyrant or coward or occupying force or mad with fury fanatics can take those away from us. Only we, if we allow our fears to get the better of us and forget our basic goodness, only we can do this. My prayer this day is that we will hold onto our hopes and be untied and help heal each other. My hope is that we will each be as candles to one another as we serve the spirit of freedom.

And may the God of all nations bless our coming in and going out from this time forward. Amen

You Who live without slumber or sleep,

You Who contain all that is in the heavens and the earth,

You Who know all our actions,

while we grasp but a fraction of Your knowledge,

Guide us to the path of peace through example of Your prophet Abraham.

Just as Abraham marveled at the stars, the moon, and the sun, only to see beyond and behind them You,

So may we look beyond the divisions that turn religions into false gods, veiling us from their Author, veiling us from You.

Just as Abraham hesitated not to offer his son, Isaac (Ishmael),* only to have the bare knife stilled by You,

So may we whose armies clashed at night on Abraham's land, killing countless innocents, victimizing others, may we now listen for Your voice, and guided by Your will, be spared the pain of further bloodletting.

In Judaism it is the star of David. Let it be the star of peace shining through the land of Israel and beyond.

*According to some Muslim traditions, it was Ishmael, not Isaac, who was offered as a near sacrifice to the God of Abraham.

In Christianity it is the shepherd of peace. Let his reign begin for all your children called to be his flock; from every nation peace their motto be.

In Islam it is the abode of peace. Let it expand and expand engulfing all claimants to Abraham's faith-- be they Jews, be they Christians, and also, in Your mercy, be they Muslims.

BRUCE B. LAWRENCE