I co-host a radio show with Fred Wooden who’s the senior minister at Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids. He’s a Unitarian and he’s probably one of the brightest guys I’ve ever met. Fred knows everything about everything. I kid him about it. He kids himself about it. He calls himself “Mr. Know-It-All” from the old “Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.” Listeners know how smart Fred is. One listener called up a few weeks ago and said, “Well, as you know, Fred…” And I said, “What am I? Chopped liver?” And he said, “Well, no, but I think Fred would know something about this.” A month or two before we got Osama bin Laden, we were talking on the radio about how come it’s taking so long to get him. I said that I just don’t understand why we don’t send a Navy Seals team to take him out. Fred said, “Well, there’s a simple explanation for that Bill. Osama bin Laden is on land and the Navy Seals only operate in the water.” As you know, it was the Navy Seals that got Osama bin Laden on land. I will never let Fred forget that!
I was home sick on that day, lying on the couch, watching television when the news report came on. President Kennedy had been assassinated. They say you never forget where you were when you heard the news on November 22, 1963 if you were alive when President Kennedy was assassinated.
I turned on the computer that morning about nine o’clock. At the time I was the editor and publisher of a little political magazine in Grand Rapids and I wanted to read the morning papers. I was on the USA Today website and there was a little blurb about a plane that hit the World Trade Center. My first thought was, it must be a foggy morning and it was a little Cessna or something. As I went to turn on the TV, I remembered that a few months before I’d taken my daughter to New York City and we went to the top of the World Trade Center during spring break. We saw a video that said the World Trade Center buildings were constructed in a way to take a hit from a 707 and keep standing. As I turned on the Today show, the second plane hit the second tower. Matt Lauer and Katie Couric were saying we could no longer say this was an accident. It was obviously a terrorist act, a terrorist attack. As the day went on, as probably all of you know, we heard about a plane that hit the Pentagon and another plane that went down in a field in Pennsylvania. About 3000 people were killed in those 9-11 attacks. They say you never forget where you were if you were alive on 9-11-2001 when you heard about the worst terrorist attack ever on American soil.
Later we’d hear from loved ones of the victims and their heart-wrenching stories. We’d hear about the heroes and heroines of that day, the police officers and firefighters who, while everyone was running from the buildings, went into the buildings before they collapsed. Some of you may know that I felt called to the ministry on that day, which happened to be my 47th birthday. I just knew that one day I wanted to preach love in a sometimes hateful world. So I moved from the media to the ministry to pursue a path to pastoring. I get the feeling sometimes when I tell people that, that they think I’m bragging or something. You know, mere mortals are called to the ministry on any other day of the week or of the year, but me, I had to be called to the ministry on 9-11-2001, my birthday, the worst attack on American soil. I get the feeling people think that I think I’m somebody special because of that. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Forty years before that, give or take, when I was about seven years old, I set up chairs in my basement and I had my siblings and my neighbors sit in those chairs and I conducted a worship service. If that was my first call to ministry, I ignored it. When I was in high school, I read Norman Vincent Peale’s book, The Power of Positive Thinking. I came away from that book not really impressed with the positive thinking aspects of it, but I was taken by what I now know is called the pastoral care aspects of it. Norman Vincent Peale was the minister of Marble Collegiate Church in New York City and he traveled around the country and made speeches and talked about how after he made a speech somebody would come up to him and say how they needed to talk to him about some personal problem and he took the time to talk to them. I was taken by that, I was impressed by that, I was moved by that. But if that was my second call to ministry, I ignored it. When I was 35 years old, I was sitting in my then church, Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, listening to my then minister, David Rankin, a Unitarian, talk about having just turned 50. He preached about looking back on his life and how he was so grateful that he became a minister because the ministry gave his life purpose and meaning and I was so impressed by that, I was so taken by that, I was so moved by that. But if that was my third call to ministry, I ignored it.
Moses felt called to the ministry when he saw a burning bush. For me it took two burning towers before I finally felt it, after what I think was a lifetime of being called to the ministry. Now don’t think that I think that God caused 9-11 so that I would become a minister. No, I don’t believe that.
In the Hebrew Scriptures King David reportedly wrote Psalm 140. Psalm 140 begins, “Deliver me, O Lord, from evildoers.” But it’s difficult sometimes to know who the evildoers are. Oh, sure, the people who flew those planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and into a field in Pennsylvania, they were obviously evildoers. Osama bin Laden, who masterminded 9-11, was obviously an evildoer. But some people take from that, because they were Muslims, that all Muslims, therefore, are evildoers or terrorists or at the very least all terrorists are Muslims.
But a moment’s reflection tells us that can’t be the case. Timothy McVeigh blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building, at that time the worst terrorist attack on American soil. Timothy McVeigh was a Christian. But we don’t conclude from that that therefore all Christians are terrorists or that all terrorists are Christians.
Eric Robert Rudolph blew up an abortion clinic in the south, killing an off-duty police officer who was a security guard there. Eric Robert Rudolph was a Christian. But we don’t conclude from that that therefore all Christians are terrorists or that all terrorists are Christians. It’s hard sometimes to know who the evildoers are.
Natalie Maines is the lead singer with the Dixie Chicks. Before the war started in Iraq, as you probably remember, she went to Great Britain and gave an interview in which she said she was embarrassed by her fellow Texan, who just happened to be the President of the United States. Immediately country radio stations across America banned the Dixie Chicks’ music. I know this because I called one up just for kicks and requested a Dixie Chicks song. They never played it. Natalie Maines said that after that she received death threats. One woman wrote her and said she hoped that she’d die. It’s difficult sometimes to know who the evildoers are.
On the night of March 20, 2003, I was supposed to be studying for a prophets test in my seminary class the next day. Instead, probably like many of you, I was glued to the television, watching as bombs were bursting in Baghdad. Even though I wasn’t studying for a prophets test, I feel like I was acting like a prophet. I didn’t respond to that attack with shock and awe. I responded with sadness and anger that my country attacked a country that hadn’t attacked us and had nothing to do with 9-11. As the war went on, we heard that thousands of American military men and women were killed and thousands more were wounded and that tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent Iraqis were killed in that war. We heard about how America doesn’t torture, but it engages in something every other country calls torture – waterboarding – but we call it enhanced interrogation techniques. We heard about Abu Ghraib, where our military personnel acted horrendously. It’s difficult sometimes to know who the evildoers are.
When you look back on 9-11, it’s hard not to ask, “Why did they do this? Why would anybody attack us?” In part, it’s difficult to ask that because if you ask it, you’re sometimes branded in some circles a traitor for asking such a question, or at least un-American or unpatriotic, because there could be no reasonable explanation. And I don’t think there is a reasonable explanation why they attacked us, but they must have some reason that they hate us so much. And I’ve got to believe it’s more than just they don’t like our freedoms. I don’t think it’s the other pat answer that you hear. They don’t like our Western way of life; they don’t like our lifestyle; they don’t like our Hollywood movies. Because if that’s why they hate us, then we should put all the members of the religious right on a terrorist watch list, because they hate us for the same reason. They don’t like our Western ways, they don’t like our lifestyle, they don’t like our Hollywood movies either.
It’s got to be something deeper than that. I wonder, along with others, if it isn’t because we have boots on the ground in their countries. We have boots on the ground, as you know, in dozens and dozens of countries. We have hundreds of military bases in countries around the world. How would we react if Russia had boots on the ground in Florida? Or China had boots on the ground in California? If Russian tanks rolled into Orlando or Chinese tanks rolled into San Diego, how would we react? You don’t have to think about that too long or hard to imagine it. We know how we reacted a couple hundred years ago, when the British had boots on the ground in America. In part, we had a revolution because of it.
After 9-11 we came together as a country. We responded to certain voices. I wonder, though, what America, what the world, would be like today if we had responded to other voices, less militaristic voices. Voices like Gandhi, a holy man from India who through civil disobedience convinced the British to turn over sovereignty to the people of India. Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.” What if we responded to the voices of people like Dorothy Day? Dorothy Day was a devout Catholic, co-founder of the Catholic Worker, an activist for peace and justice. Dorothy Day said, “The challenge of the day is to have a revolution of the heart.” What would America or the world be like today if we would have responded to voices like Desmond Tutu? Archbishop Desmond Tutu, as you know, was one of the leaders of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. When the white government was finally driven from power and Nelson Mandela took over, Desmond Tutu was named the head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “Forgiving is not forgetting. It’s actually remembering, remembering that we have the power to hit, but choosing not to.”
On 9-11, after watching all those horrific images on TV, I walked the three or four blocks to my daughter’s school. I thought I could offer some comfort to her and maybe some of her classmates. She was in elementary school. When I got to her classroom, her teacher was wondering whether to turn on the TV to allow the students to see the images that we’d all seen. The teacher asked the students how many of them would be going home to an empty house and therefore to a waiting television set. I think more than half the students raised their hands. So she decided to turn on the television and she and I were there when the students saw the terrible images of that day. It didn’t dawn on me until I was working on this sermon that on November 22, 1963, I was nine years old and in the fourth grade. On 9-11-2001, my daughter was nine years old and in the fourth grade. We try hard to protect our children from the horrors of life, but we can’t always succeed. Perhaps all we can do is be with our children as they face the horrors of life, to help them cope. And maybe that’s all we can do for each other is to walk together, to help each other cope with the horrors of life. Whether it’s on November 22, 1963, or on 9-11-2001, or on 9-11-2011.
No comments:
Post a Comment