6 Mos Memorial Service Sermon

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Trinity Episcopal Church
44 East Market St.
Bethlehem PA 18018-5989
610-867-4741

The Dark is rising? The Light is rising!
A homily for the six-month anniversary of September 11

Scriptures:
Wisdom 3:1-5, 9
Psalm 46
Romans 8:14-19, 34-39
John 10:11-16

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Were you startled when we began with the collect for the Feast of the Holy Innocents? Usually, for a service like this, we'd use one of the memorial prayers. And the Scripture readings we've chosen are for a memorial service. But this isn't just another ordinary memorial or requiem service. We vest in white for memorials, but tonight, we're in purple. Not only because it's Lent, but because purple is the traditional color for sorrow and for repentance. I think that at this time, we do a good job to pray with sorrow for God to receive all innocent victims everywhere and to frustrate the designs of evil tyrants.

Noel Koestline, a colleague of mine, emailed me a prayer of lament which summarizes perfectly what I think many of us are feeling.

"O Lord, this Lent has already been too long. In the six months since September, we have seen too much death, too much ash, too much grief. We're weary of it all, but we know it isn't yet time for resurrection.

"We're weary of the on-going war; we want it successfully over already. We don't want to hear the daily reports of escalating violence in the Holy Land. Threats of biological attacks wound us further. Our circle of safety has been invaded. Our soul has been bruised and is not being given space to heal. We want to return to safer times. We don't like living in these days, and there's nothing on which our irritability doesn't fall--our family members, our co-workers and bosses, our friends, our pets and even our church. … "

Under normal circumstances, this would be a memorial for those who lost their lives in the events of September 11. And we would be giving thanks for all those who helped in so many ways, following those terrible days. We would be standing in the present and looking back at something that happened last year, and is over and done with. An awful and shocking memory, but a memory.

However, these aren't ordinary times and the anguish, fear and sorrow of September 11 continue, as each day we hear about more violence in various places in the world. We count the numbers of service men and service women being sent abroad. We count the dead, the wounded.

And for the past month or so, almost on a daily basis, one person or other has been speaking with me about the sense they have of impending doom, of heaviness, of anxiousness and oppression, almost as though evil in the world is getting stronger. At first I thought it was because a lot of us have been reading books and watching movies like Lord of the Rings, which talk in grand mythic terms about the battle between the forces of Light and Dark. I desperately wanted to lapse into psychologizing: "Well, yes, we're trying to make our very real insecurities and fears more manageable by creating a story about some sort of dark power of chaos."

But you know, the more I heard from people-sometimes in other parts of the country--and the more I read the news, the more I began to feel that something was wrong. It has happened only a few times in my life, but it is happening now. An awareness has been growing in me: "Evil is real. There IS evil in the world. And it has power." Does it sound strange for me to say that? I am a priest and a chaplain, and it's my job to work with people in some of the most horrendous times of their lives. Isn't it my business to deal with good and evil?

Of course it is, but sometimes I think I become more sensitive to evil's power in the world. And now is one of those times. It seems to me that many of us are feeling the same thing. It's frightening. But what can we do about it? We're not generals or political leaders living in the capital cities of the world. We're not millionaires with money and power. Many of us feel helpless even to affect the outcome of a local election! What can we do about the power of evil which seems to be growing, casting a shadow across the world?

In a series of young people's books, Susan Cooper wrote about what it feels like to know "the Dark is rising." It gives me the creeps even to think about it, let alone to talk about it. But I'm afraid that it might be so. I'm afraid that the horrors of September 11 and what followed were only the first outburst. I worry, because our normal human reactions of fear, despair, depression can be used to immobilize us, to make us passive in the face of evil, and to prevent us from resisting the subtle inroads of evil.

I asked a priest friend from New York who is deeply spiritual and firmly anchored in Christ, how she was planning to combat the evil she felt around her. She said that she was recognizing her own fear and depression-because it's important to acknowledge your feelings-and she was determined not to contribute. I like that phrase: "Don't contribute to evil." We know it's there, but we don't have to be part of it.

Thanks to Holy Scripture, we have some promises from God to fall back on. We have the assurance that those who have died are now safe with God. We have the promise that God watches over us, his holy ones. The Gospel reminds us that Christ is our Shepherd and that he will guard us and keep the wolf of evil from us. And in Paul's letter to the Romans, we have the strongest proclamation that I have ever heard about the impossibility that any evil can snatch us away: "For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us."

It's comforting to hear these promises from Scripture. It's comforting to pray together. I am profoundly grateful that we can come together to share a meal at our Lord's holy table. But how does any of this help us in our struggle not to contribute to evil, let alone combat it?

I think we can fall into the habit of thinking of good and evil as big monolithic constructs. They're not. Good is made up of millions of people of good will, people of faith, who treat each other with compassion, who forgive each other when they hurt each other, who help those who are less fortunate in all sorts of ways, for God's sake. Good is made up of people of all nationalities and religious persuasions who choose in our little ways, day by day, to reflect God's light and love.

Evil is also made up of millions of people of all nationalities and religious persuasions -people who focus only on their own feelings, on their own desires, people who live off the pain and sorrow of others, people who propagate fear and hatred, people who have a vested interest in making divisions between people.

It was not some faceless FORCE which caused the evil on September 11, it was people. It was not some faceless FORCE of good which rushed in, with courage and love to assist during the calamities of that time: it was people.

Whether we like it or not, as Christians, as followers of the light of Christ, we are called to take sides. We are called to fight evil moment by moment, day by day. We are called not only to "random acts of kindness" but to calculated compassionate responses to the world around us even in small ways: perhaps that angry person tailgating you has just been fired. Perhaps the person taking so long in the checkout line with dozens of coupons isn't there just to annoy you-maybe she can't feed her family if she doesn't use them. Sounds like I'm trivializing the battle of good vs. evil, doesn't it? But love stems from a million tiny acts of compassion just as hatred grows from a million tiny acts of anger and degradation.

Your job is to be aware of evil. Your job is to be alert. But remember, although sometimes we feel that the Dark is rising, we have the ability and the duty, backed up by the power of our Risen Lord, who shattered even Death, to assist in the rising of the Light.

AMEN.

--Laura+ (March 11, 2002)

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Trinity Episcopal Church
44 East Market St.
Bethlehem PA 18018-5989
610-867-4741