ACNS 2696 – ANGLICAN COMMUNION OFFICE – 19 September 2001

Sermon preached by the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion

Christchurch, Lausanne, Switzerland

16 September 2001

In the name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit: the One God. Amen.

It is a privilege for me to be here with you at Christ Church for this special service of Remembrance. I want to thank Canon Habiby for his invitation so I could be here to pray with you this evening. It is a special privilege because this is the only Compass Rose Society parish on mainland Europe. That in itself tells me of your deep concern about your brothers and sisters around the world and I thank you for that. It is because of you that the Anglican Communion is able to tell its story and keep all of us connected to each other.

That spirit of connectedness abounds here at Christ Church. Indeed history was made when the world’s Christian denominations met here to form the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches. So much of that work centres on how faith enables order, not just in our structures, but in our very lives.

This eyewitness report was received by the Anglican Communion Office of Communications via the internet from Trinity Church, New York.

“Before the first blast, staff on the streets around Trinity heard what to some sounded like military jets carrying out a low flypast before hearing the blast. Within minutes, pieces of paper were raining from the sky onto the church, the churchyard and the surrounding streets.

The Revd Stuart Hoke, executive assistant to Dr. Matthews, was among those in the church leading prayers and hymns for shocked passers-by some time later when a tower at the World Trade Center collapsed. The power was cut and much of the congregation fled screaming into Broadway. Trinity’s office tower shuddered and dust began to penetrate the building down the lift shafts from the top.

When the order to evacuate the office block came, Trinity staffers and pre-school children filed out under the direction of security staff and fire wardens. They streamed down Greenwich Street at the back of the building, heading through the gloom and holding masks or towels to their faces, to the south end of the island of Manhattan. When they heard the sounds of another collapse from the World Trade Center, they dashed for cover in doorways and under alcoves.

Numbers boarded the Staten Island Ferry across New York harbour to escape the downtown area, and others were evacuated by buses up the east side. As at the time of writing, there was no way of knowing the fate of friends and colleagues.”

Today we come together to remember the lives of thousands of people from around the world who were killed last Tuesday in New York, Washington and in Pennsylvania. Today we come to try to understand the unexplainable. Like the day Kennedy was shot, none of us will ever forget where we were when we first learned about the first jet crashing into the World Trade Center. None of us will ever forget the emotions we experienced when we first heard the news and how that news has transformed our lives in just a matter of hours. We come today to remember, and to try to understand the great mystery of life and death.

A Lutheran pastor wrote this prayer:

“Almighty and compassionate God, our eyes could hardly watch, nor our ears hear, nor our minds conceive nor hearts believe the unfolding of the tragic events of September 11. Never have we seen such horrific terror and slaughter of the innocent. Never have we experienced our shores, our airports, our commerce, our communications and our government in such a quick and total state of lock down, alert and defence. We are attacked and besieged. Fear and mourning have gripped our souls. Tears and anger flow with abandon. Life and liberty have been severely challenged. O God, in such a moment of shock, we hardly know what to pray. And yet we know, in you alone will we find hope, comfort and strength.”

It does not matter if we are Muslim, Christian or Jew. It does not matter if we are Buddhist, Hindu or non-believer. We are all human. We all have to face our own humanity and in facing our own humanity we face our own death. The unexplainable tragedy of this past week gives to each of us an insight into “what life is all about”. Such a crisis opens up for us dimensions of life which we never knew existed.

How many times have people said to you “Time will heal your grief?” I would like to suggest today that real grief is not healed by time. It is false to think that the passing of time will make us forget such tragedies. If time does anything, it deepens our grief because we become more aware how much life means to us. We become more aware of the intimacy we experience and what love really means to us. Real deep love makes itself visible in grief. The grief we now experience shows us how deep, full, intimate and all-pervasive our love is.

Expressions of concern and prayer have poured into my office from many parts of the world, in some instances from people who themselves are deeply wounded by continuing violence and bloodshed.

I was privileged to accompany the Archbishop of Canterbury on his extraordinary Pastoral Visit to Jerusalem just a few weeks ago. He visited Jerusalem at the invitation of the Anglican Bishop because the Archbishop wanted to be with the Christian community in its isolation and fear. In the Archbishop’s address to the ecumenical community he said, “However many times I have been here and notwithstanding so many Jewish, Muslim and Christian friends, it is not for me as a stranger to state with precision what justice might mean to this beloved land with all its problems. But this much I know, it involves entering another person’s world of pain and fear, and understanding it as much as you yourself would like to be understood.”

I pray that the events of this last week will invite us to see the United States as a great nation, not in terms of power and wealth, but measured by its ability to be in solidarity with others where violence has made its home and become a way of life.

Out of the tragedy we come and have a new awareness of ourselves. The greatest mysteries in life are not explainable. The love that a father has for a daughter is not explainable. The love that a mother has for a son is not explainable. The love that two people have for each other is unexplainable. Love is unexplainable. That is why we are here tonight. We are trying to make sense out of the mystery of love that binds us all together. As a result of tragedy we are all aware just how much we are truly loved. It has been said, grief is alive. Grief is a living thing. We are challenged to live in the fullness of our grief. For it is in that grief we ultimately will become whole.

In a message from the Archbishop of Kenya to the Episcopal Church in the United States, Archbishop Gitari wrote, “God of history, we so easily move on and forget disasters letting them fade into memory; particularly disasters that happen to other people and in other parts of the world. We ask you to remember those who will never forget what has happened in the last 24 hours, because life for them can never be the same again; and remembering them, we ask you to comfort them for your love’s sake.”

In the Christian tradition, even at the most horrific moments, the call for respecting humanity or creation, whether others do or not, makes no difference. Hard words indeed. In the London Independent Robert Fisk reminds us of God-talk versus technology. He wrote, “Eight years ago, I helped to make a television series that tried to explain why so many Muslims had come to hate the West. Last night, I remembered some of those Muslims in that film, their families burnt by American-made bombs and weapons. They talked about how no one would help them but God. Theology versus technology, the suicide bomber against the nuclear power. Now we have learnt what this means.”

Last Friday just moments before I left the office and this sermon was being printed “for the last time”, I received a Special Report from Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams from Wales. Archbishop Rowan was in New York last Tuesday morning. He was walking to Trinity Church to do a video taping when the first jet crashed into the World Trade Tower. Archbishop Rowan wrote in his Special Report his reflections as he “had to face the real possibility of a sudden and violent death as buildings collapsed and the streets filled with choking dust, fumes and falling debris.”

“I remember the strong feeling, ‘Now I know just a little of what it is like for so many human beings, Israelis and Palestinians now, and Iraqis a few years ago’; and I could only thank God for the opportunity to find out something of this, giving room in my heart for the experience of those who live regularly under threat.”

But the rest of Archbishop Rowan’s article really did not touch me until yesterday when I sat glued to BBC and CNN. All day we heard the language of revenge, the language of retaliation. Archbishop Rowan reminded me that God speaks a different language, not a language of revenge and retaliation, but a common language “by God sharing with us the experience of terror and death. And when we speak to God the language of hatred and rejection, nails and spears, nail-bombs and airstrikes, terror attacks and the bleeding bodies of children in Ireland, Baghdad, Jerusalem or New York, God refuses to answer in that language.” But then Archbishop Rowan says, “how hard for us really to believe we are free to speak God’s language!”

I believe we as a Church, we as Christians, are called upon to speak God’s language. In the society in which we live God’s language is not a popular language. But God’s language can not be reserved only for the National Cathedral in Washington, for St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, or Christ Church, Lausanne. It is not a popular language, but the “unspeakable tragedy of thousands of innocent dead can not be made ‘better’ by more deaths. It may be humanly as unforgiveable as it gets; but that is not the same as saying that revenge (as opposed to just punishment) is what is needed.”

As people of faith, we recognise evil for what it is, and we know our utter dependence upon the love, mercy and compassion of God as we confront those forces with prayer and in simple acts of kindness and hospitality. While others will choose the weapons of war and destruction in the pursuit of reprisal and revenge, we know that it is in the Cross that we find the strength to stand firm, to keep vigilant in prayer, and to turn the hearts and minds of men and women to the ways of God’s justice and righteousness.

One person wrote to us, “It is nice that the Church has responded this way to the plight of those caught up in the events of September 11. But I feel a sense of hypocrisy in our response. Every day 30,000+ children die of starvation and curable diseases.

Where is our moral outrage against ourselves? Where is our vigil for these victims of human sin? Why are we not moved to help and them and massively address this deadly imbalance of resources? Why are hearts made of stone and our feet made of clay?” Each one of our faith communities helps us understand the unexplainable. Each one of our faith communities helps us to live in the fullness of our humanity. Let us not shy away from the pain that we carry. Let us not shy away from the emptiness which we experience. Let us not shy away from the grief that is so much a part of our very being. Instead, let that pain, let that grief be rooted in our love so that we can ultimately live in the intimacy of our loss. For when we are able to do that, the tragedy in the United States may make sense. God’s language will make sense. The unexplainable will become explainable and the depth of God’s love will embrace us as we come to have a deeper understanding of life and death. For it is then that we will know that love triumphs over death and that in death, we have new life.

Alleluia, Christ is Risen. He is Risen indeed. Alleluia.

John L Peterson 16 September 2001 _________________________ The ACNSlist is published by the Anglican Communion Office, London. You can join or leave the ACNSlist via our ACNS web page – http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/source.html#subscribe