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Sermon by Ellen Francis, OSH |
Preached by Ellen Francis, OSH on Sunday September 16, 2007 at the Convent of St. Helena, Vails Gate NYand Grace Church, Monroe NY
This past Tuesday was the 6th anniversary of September 11th, 2001. I imagine that each of us still remember that day clearly: where we were when we heard about the attacks; how we listened to the unfolding news; our fear and worry for NYC and for anyone we knew who was in the city that day. In the days shortly after, there was a new feeling in NYC that was tangible and a bit hard to describe. It seemed that for a fleeting moment, we were all sisters and brothers, and all in profound sympathy with the families of those who had died and with the firemen, police, and rescue workers. There was a sense of community in that usually enormous and anonymous city. There was a sense of caring for one another; a gentleness and generosity. The photos of those who were missing were posted on walls, which became memorials and the focus of prayer and vigil, and made more real to all of us the enormity of the loss.I went about NYC in my habit, and people would stop me on the street for a few words or a prayer. The MTA staff waved me through the turnstiles on the way to ground zero. A man in a deli insisted on paying for my lunch. There was a brief moment of a week or two in which our shared humanity and mortality was right at the surface, and our shared grief was most raw. And we really, genuinely cared about the well-being of one another. We realized what was most important: the wife of a firefighter asked him on the phone what he would like for supper; he answered, “I don’t care; I just want to come home and hug everyone”.
I counseled and prayed with a woman who had had a fight with her father on the phone the night before 9/11, and that was the last time that she would talk with him. In addition to the military response, there was also an out-pouring of concern about the people of Afghanistan. Any time I gave talks about that country, by the end of the program people were always pulling out their wallets and wanted to give me money on the spot. I gave them names of organizations dedicated to working with Afghan women and children, and that I felt were trustworthy.
I wonder if someday, September 11th will be designated as a national day of remembrance or a commemoration on the Church calendar. I imagine that it would be part Memorial Day, with remembrance of those who died. I imagine that it would be part Labor Day, to honor police and firemen, those who did the cleanup at ground zero, our armed forces, and the international teams of humanitarian workers who serve the people in Afghanistan and Iraq. I hope that it could be a day to recognize the suffering of all people under oppression and poverty all over the world, and a day to make a recommitment to the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals. Perhaps it could, most importantly, be a day on which we pray that we will find hope for reconciliation and peace.
In the Gospel reading assigned for today, there are two parables about losing and finding. Both emphasize the exclusive and all-absorbing attention given to finding what was lost, and the enormous joy when the lost is found. The shepherd seems to have been relatively wealthy, and so we might think that the loss of one sheep wasn’t such a big deal. Still, the shepherd makes every possible attempt to find that one sheep, even to the point of leaving all the others alone and maybe at some risk.
The woman with the lost coin was probably very poor; 10 small coins wasn’t much for someone to live on. The loss of one of those coins would have been a big deal, and she’s ready to turn her little house inside out to find it. At the conclusion of both parables, Jesus is quite explicit that the joy of the shepherd and the joy of the woman are like God’s joy in finding one “lost” sinner. Maybe Jesus is making a slight dig at the Pharisees, when he says that there are 99 who “need no repentance”, (that is to say, at least they think they need no repentance). The first story seems to emphasize the joy of God in finding one lost soul, over so many others who are already righteous. The second story seems to focus on the dedication and intensity of the search.
Following 9/11, may wondered, “Why do they hate us?” We lost some of our ignorance of how other nations feel about the US. We lost some of our isolation, and many have tried since then to learn more about the Middle East and about Islam, and to understand better how the U.S. is viewed abroad. We gained an opportunity to open our hearts to each other and even to our enemies, to try to understand and address the underlying causes of all that divides us and even of terrorism.
In the worst tragedy, God weeps with us. Out of the worst tragedy, God brings into being whatever good is possible. We lost innocence, but glimpsed true compassion in which we saw opportunities for our breaking hearts to open up to suffering, near and far. We had then and always have the opportunity to offer love. Offering love is always risky, and God never fails to risk all to find the core within each one of us that can repent and love. In sending Jesus into the world, we are given the gift of perfect love. For it is in God’s great compassion that God is always searching for us and coaxing and nudging us to a repentance that will lead us from isolation into community, from ignorance into understanding, and from violence into peace.