“A Lasting Memorial”

Isaiah 25:1-7; John 20:19-22

Rev. Deborah L. Clark

September 16, 2001

What an awful week this has been. A week filled with images of violence and destruction—images so horrifying they belong in a bad movie, only they are real. A week of sorrow, as we learn more and more about friends and neighbors who have lost loved ones, who saw the devastation firsthand, who wait in ever diminishing hope for word from someone who is missing. A week of conflicting emotion, as our very human desire for vengeance clashes with our knowledge that violence begets more violence. A week of lost innocence, as our sense of security is shattered, as we are made acutely aware of how fragile life really is. A week of questions, existential and practical: how did terrorists get onto our airplanes without being caught, how could anyone be so callous about human life, what is going to happen next, what is justice anyway, where is God, where is hope? Some answers are beginning to emerge; other questions hang there with little hope that we will ever completely know the answers.

I am sure I will never forget where I was when I learned about this horrible tragedy: in my car on Route 9. I know I will never forget that feeling of helplessness as I sat in the office soon thereafter and listened with Linda as the horror unfolded on the radio. I pray I will never forget the things I saw and heard later that day.

About noontime on Tuesday I got a call from the chaplain at Metrowest Medical Center. She was anticipating people coming into the hospital distraught and in need of more pastoral care than her staff could offer. She asked if I could come spend a few hours there that afternoon. I agreed, with some trepidation. I expected to be sent into the Emergency Room, but when I arrived Sister Ursula asked me to go over to the old School of Nursing building and be with the people who had come to give blood: “Just thank them for being here,” she said.

What I saw when I entered that building was an amazing scene—a scene I later learned was being replicated all over the nation. A huge hall was filled with people—people lined up in rows of chairs, people leaning against the wall, people sitting on the floor. A staff member explained the situation to me—130 people were there to give blood, not counting many he had asked to return another day. If the nursing staff worked as fast as they could, he said, they could handle twenty people an hour. Many of the folks in that room would be sitting there for six hours, waiting their turn to give blood.

I went in and began to talk with people. There was an entire dorm of Wellesley College students, and another group from Framingham State. There was a man who gave regularly, because years ago when he was in the service he had been the recipient of other people’s blood. There was the woman who came up from Sharon, another who was visiting from California, and many people who ruefully confessed they had never given before, but wished they had.

Out of all the faces I saw that afternoon, two stand out in my mind. The first was a man who sat alone and silent against the back wall. When I spoke to him, he let loose a barrage of raw emotion—words most people edit out when they know they are in the presence of clergy. His desire for vengeance alternated with his deep despair. He talked about his urge to kill, his longing to destroy even whole nations. But he repeatedly came back to a sense of the futility of life—“what’s the point anyway?” he asked over and over again. “Why even bother?” There was little I could do except just listen. The intense emotion and the harsh language were jarring, but the conversation left me unexpectedly hopeful. This man was filled with rage and despair—and there he was waiting in line to give blood. He was not out on the street wreaking destruction; he was not at home brooding in the dark. He was at the blood drive, waiting hours to do the one thing he could to offer compassion and hope to someone else who was suffering. In the midst of his despair about the meaning of life, he had come to give what they call the gift of life.

The other face that stays in my mind was a young woman who sat at one of the tables. She explained that she had been let out of work and had come straight here—a story similar to that of many of the people waiting in the room. But then I saw her office ID, still pinned to her blouse. She worked for TJX. Only a few hours before, her boss had called all the employees together to let them know that seven of their colleagues were probably on Flight 11. This young woman responded to her shock and grief the only way she knew: she went to give blood.

Rage, despair, sorrow, fear—all those raw emotions present in that School of Nursing room were surely present in the room we read about in our gospel lesson. The disciples’ lives had been turned upside down. They had seen their beloved leader brutally murdered by people in power; they had felt their own hope and faith die with him. Now they sat huddled together in a room, locked in by their fear. And then Jesus came and stood among them, saying “Peace be with you.” The locked door could not keep him out. Death could not defeat him. Hatred and suffering did not have the final word. Christ was alive—is alive. God’s love was—and is—stronger than hatred and despair, more powerful than fear and death.

In that room on Tuesday in the School of Nursing, Christ was alive—a power of love that broke through the locked doors of rage and despair and sorrow. Christ is alive in that human instinct to reach out to one another, in that yearning to make a difference, no matter how small, in our persistent capacity for compassion. Hope is alive in blood banks all over the country, in homes and schools where adults do their best to comfort our children, in the sacrifices of firefighters and police, in the anguished prayers of everyone who seeks divine guidance to know how to respond to this tragedy. Love is stronger than hatred. Hope is greater than despair. Christ is alive and in our midst.

This is a frightening time. I am afraid—afraid of what the rescue workers will find, afraid of escalating violence in our world, afraid for our Arab-American and Islamic brothers and sisters, afraid of facing the reality of our human vulnerability. I identify with the weak hands and the feeble knees and the fearful hearts lifted up in our Old Testament reading. To those whose knees and hands are trembling, the prophet Isaiah says, “Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God.” The strength he calls forth comes not from weapons or armies, but from the assurance that God is with them always, the promise that God will heal their brokenness and restore the wilderness of destruction. “Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God.”

I identify also with the disciples huddled together in fear. To them, the resurrected Jesus says, “Peace be with you.” He goes on from there: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And then he breathes on them, “Receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” The frightened disciples are sent to carry on Jesus’ ministry of love and healing. And they are given the gift of the Holy Spirit—to give them strength and courage to proclaim love in a world filled with pain and hatred and fear.

Our hands may be weak with fear, but by the grace of God these shaking hands will have the strength to reach out to those who are suffering. Brought together with many other hands, they will be powerful enough to build bridges of understanding across chasms of hatred. Our knees may be feeble, but by the power of the Holy Spirit they will hold us up as we walk together on this long journey toward healing. We may be afraid, but we do not have to lock the doors of our hearts. We do not have to be controlled by our fear; instead we can be led by the power of love.

At our prayer service on Wednesday night, many heartfelt and moving prayers were lifted up. One man prayed that our nation might learn from this tragedy—not that we might learn to have tighter security for our airports, but that we might learn, he prayed, “to love our neighbors more fully.” What a memorial it would be to our brothers and sisters who lost their lives in this tragedy of hatred—if in their memory we refused to allow hatred to win. What a memorial it would be—if in honor of them our whole nation vowed to remember what is most precious in life: the gifts of love and community. What a memorial it would be—if in celebration of their lives our desire to make a difference and to offer compassion to our neighbors became not just a response to tragedy but a new way to live every day of our lives.

Let us today begin to build a lasting memorial to those who have died. Not a memorial built out of brick or steel or marble, but a memorial built of acts of compassion, community, and love.

In the name of Jesus, the one whose love can never be destroyed, Amen.