The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 16, 2001

By
The Rev. Ann M. Smith

The events of this past week have changed the world in which we live. As the drama has unfolded day by day shock has given way to anger, fear, grief and confusion. Many people unable to bear the feelings of helplessness have tried to find someone to blame. "How can there be a God? If there is a God, where is God in all this?" Others have turned to God and religion to make some sense of it all. Churches have opened their doors as havens of peace.

We have witnessed the destructive forces of evil at work in our world. We are eyewitnesses to unprecedented acts of terror and violence. The world will never be the same place. In the course of the week I have heard people express in many ways the implications in their own lives for what has taken place. We no longer feel safe. We have lost innocence. Deepak Chopra expressed it as "a deep wound at the heart of humanity". It was not merely an attack on the United States; it was an attack on all of humanity.

How do we bring about in our own lives some semblance of meaning, of order into the chaos that we have all experienced? How do we regain the sense of safety that has always characterized our lives? How do we remain true to our faith? How do we reach out to others with the reconciling word of God? How do we become instruments of God's healing and peace in a fractured world?

The Old Testament reading expresses a terrible time of chaos in the life of the people of Israel. Jeremiah prophesies that the people of Israel will be overcome by the destructive force of the hot summer wind, which will destroy indiscriminately. They will be a people without hope. Their cities will be laid in ruins; the whole land desolated. All of creation will join in mourning as Israel's stupidity at turning away from God will spill over and contaminate all of creation. How clearly that prophetic voice speaks to us of the chaos that has reigned in New York, Washington and throughout the whole of the United States! Peoples' lives have been shattered. Whole buildings have collapsed. The infrastructure of a huge and powerful nation has been damaged irreparably.

I have felt very grateful this week for the wisdom of St. Francis of Assisi reflected in that wonderful prayer attributed to him. "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace," it begins. Even though on an intellectual level I know that he did not actually write those words, I know that it reflects his piety, his wisdom and his walk with God. In praying it I find that it gives me great hope in a world which I do not understand. It gives me an inkling of what God would have us do.

The reality of our faith is that because of our relationship with God we are not passive recipients but active instruments of God's grace and peace. All of our gifts, all of our strength, all that we are, is an instrument in God's hands. We are called to be active in compassion, to make a difference to the world. We can make a difference. We must not doubt that for one second. We must not doubt that God intends to use us for good. We must be willing to see the good in others. We must remember that God uses all who are willing to reach out in faith.

"Where there is hatred, let us sow love", the prayer continues. The events of the past week have made it easy to hate even though it is difficult to know towards whom we should direct our feelings of hatred. So much in our society makes it easy for hatred to flourish. We jump to conclusions about people based on feelings of racism and prejudice. We hate people who are not like us, who have strange names and strange customs. We hate what we do not understand.

As Christians we have the antidote to the hatred that exists in the world. Christ died on the cross to turn hatred to love. We read in that beautiful gospel passage about Jesus the Good Shepherd seeking out the one sheep that was lost and lovingly carrying it back into the fold. We who have experienced the joy of being found are called to be the instruments through which Christ may find others who are wandering in trouble, to touch them, to restore them, and to give purpose and meaning to their lives. The joy of being loved and accepted surely calls us to love and accept others, to bring an end to hatred, to truly love God and neighbour.

We struggle with what it means to be a neighbour. Who is my neighbour? Our neighbour is not the person who lives next door. Our neighbour is not even simply the one who needs our help. Our neighbour is the one who needs our love and compassion, the woman wearing the hijab, the man entering the mosque to pray, anyone whom we may be tempted to pinpoint as being the enemy at this time of unrest.

"Where there is injury, pardon," the prayer continues. This is not the first time that war has been waged in the name of religion. World Wars have been fought in which both sides clung self-righteously to the belief that God was on their side. In Ireland a religious war has been raging for centuries. We saw pictures earlier this month of small children crying in fear as they tried to enter their school. In the Middle East there are daily threats of violence by terrorists. Iraq, Bosnia, The Sudan, the list could go on and on.

Our faith calls us to ask for forgiveness for the ways in which we have wronged others and to offer forgiveness to those who have wronged us. How do we even begin to forgive the unspeakable acts of violence that our American neighbours have experienced? Sometimes it is impossible for us to feel forgiving. But the fact is that we cannot feel forgiven if we are not in return forgiving people. This is not a statement about the conditions under which God forgives. It is in God’s nature to forgive. What it does is to recognize that if we cannot or will not forgive we may not be able to experience the grace of God’s liberating forgiveness.

"Where there is despair, hope." At times of crisis it is our faith that allows us to hope. There is hope for the United States. There is hope for us. If we have seen the worst in human nature, we have also seen the best – people reaching out to others in love and compassion, people giving of themselves. My hope is that we will seek justice, not revenge and that it will be tempered with mercy. The greatest hope that the Christian community has to offer is our faith that "in dying we are born to eternal life". We pray for the victims of the disaster, but we pray trusting in God's loving grace. We cannot help but be affected by the terror of the events of the past week. But we can hold on to our faith and know that nothing can extinguish the light of Christ in our hearts.

We cannot merely pray for an end to terrorism. God created a world in which we are free to make our own choices. We must find a path to peace within ourselves and with our neighbours. And so we pray …