My people will abide in a peaceful habitation
Isaiah 32:18
Then justice will dwell in the wilderness;
and righteousness abide in the fruitful field.
The effect of righteousness will be peace,
and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.
My people will abide in a peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings,
and in quiet resting places.
Isaiah 32:16-18
(These passages and sermons, presented immediately following
the September 11 disaster, are as apt and uplifting now as
they were when first delivered.)
Litany of Healing
Led by Reverend Carletta Aston, The United
Methodist Church
Wednesday, September 12, 2001
Leader: For those who lost their lives
in senseless tragedy: God grant them peace.
Congregation: Heal us and make us whole, O
Lord.
Leader: For those who were injured through yesterday's
meaningless violence: grant them healing of their physical
and psychological wounds.
Congregation: Heal us and make us whole, O
Lord.
Leader: For those who mourn the loss of loved
ones: comfort them and grant them peace.
Congregation: Heal us and make us whole, O
Lord.
Leader: For those who feel the stress and guilt
for surviving while others died: help them accept the
gift of God's grace.
Congregation: Heal us and make us whole, O
Lord.
Leader: For those who serve as God's instruments
in healing physical wounds: bless and guide physicians,
nurses, emergency medical technicians and all others who work
for healing.
Congregation: Heal us and make us whole, O
Lord.
Leader: For those who serve as God's instruments
in healing our psychological wounds: grant them wisdom
in their work.
Congregation: Heal us and make us whole, O
Lord.
Leader: For those called to guide us spiritually:
anoint leaders of all faiths to help us be constantly aware
of the presence of God.
Congregation: Heal us and make us whole, O
Lord.
Leader: For all those who serve as police and
firefighter: be with them as they take daily risks to
ensure our safety.
Congregation: Heal us and make us whole, O
Lord.
Leader: For our President, leaders of the country
and our armed forces: light their way that they may make
decisions and take actions that further the cause of justice
and mercy.
Congregation: Heal us and make us whole, O
Lord.
Leader: For our broken world, torn apart by hate:
may a time of peace and love loom on the horizon.
Congregation: Heal us and make us whole, O
Lord.
Call to Worship Offered by the Reverend Dr.
David C. Lawrence on Sunday, September 16, 2001
Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served
her term, her price is paid. Isaiah 40
It is a huge irony that last Tuesday morning
was so clear and bright, full of beauty and full of promise.
It is a huge sadness, borne by all of us, that in the midst
of the beginning of that beautiful day we were confronted by
an ugliness seldom witnessed before in our national life, that
in that early light, the darkness of embodied evil stole the
life of thousands of our fellow citizens. This morning, God
calls us to speak tenderly to the city, to tell her and her
inhabitants that she has served her term and paid her price.
God calls us to hear words of comfort and then to "comfort my
people."
Isaiah continues: A voice cries out: "In the
wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the
desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted
up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground
shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then
the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall
see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken."
Last Tuesday morning, from every and all strata
of society, Americans just like us boarded planes and entered
the buildings in which they would face their last moments of
life. When the group of terrorists had fulfilled their original
evil ends, another group of Americans who have given themselves
to protect, to defend, and to rescue became this evil's additional
victims as they rushed to aid their American sisters and brothers.
And long before midday, we who worship the God of Creation were
overwhelmed by the destruction. "Wilderness" hardly describes
the scene of smoke and searing heat, of flames and enveloping
dust and ash. But in this wilderness that was once farmland
and financial center and corridor after corridor flanked by
the offices of industrious citizens, a voice cries, "Prepare
the way of the Lord."
It is a voice which calls us to seek God's creative
Spirit in the rubble, which calls to us to remember that we
are sheltered in God's goodness even in the face of evil, which
calls us to be encouraged by God's hope even in the hour of
our despair.
Isaiah concludes: Why do you say, O Jacob,
and speak, O Israel, "My way is hidden from the Lord, and my
right is disregarded by my God?" Have you not known?
Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the
Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or
grow weary; his understanding is
unsearchable.He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the
powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the
young will fall exhausted, but those who wait for the Lord shall
renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.
Our God does not forget us or leave us in times
of distress. Though, filled with worry and uncertainty, we struggle,
God does not grow weary. God sits with us, God stands with us,
God abides with us, that in the death and destruction we might
find Life; and that in the darkness, we may be comforted and
shown the way by God's light. Let us worship God.
Lost and Found
Preached on September 16, 2001 by
The Reverend Elizabeth D. Morrison
Text: Luke 15:1-10
In our Wednesday noon service this week and also
in the special Friday noon service that was held, many worshipers
took turns voicing their personal witness in this time.
One person reflected on his experience in making his way back
home, having been stranded in Boston on Tuesday. He said that
everywhere he went on his journey, by train and bus, through
waiting rooms, hotel and restaurant areas, in all those places,
it was like being in church. Everyone he met seemed solemn,
respectful, even worshipful. It was as though people had awakened
to a holy presence that had previously been unseen, unrecognized
or perhaps just dimly glimpsed in passing.
"Out of the depths I cry to you," wrote the Psalmist
some three thousand years ago and we, too, all of us, are crying
out from the depths of our being, seeking God's help to get
us through. For some of us, it is an unfamiliar experience
to be seeking comfort and strength and hope from God.
For others, the newness is in the soul-searing intensity of
this present need. But all of us are facing the reality
that we have lost our familiar ways of thinking and feeling
about the world and our place in it. We are lost, lost in grief
and confusion; some of us still are numb with shock, others
struggling with seething rage in the face of so many innocent
persons slaughtered at the hands of unspeakable evil.
Do you know the Old Testament passage from Ezekiel,
in which God promises to find the sheep that are lost?
It reads, I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them
out. As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are
among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I
will rescue them from all the places to which they have been
scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness…. I will
seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will
bind up the injured and I will strengthen the weak, but the
fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.
Ezekiel was a prophet of the exile who encouraged
a broken-hearted people to trust in God's love and justice as
the basis for their future as a nation. These words speak to
us too, and they undergird the parable Jesus tells about the
good shepherd whose love for the lost is so strong that ninety-nine
sheep are left in the desert while the shepherd seeks until
he finds the one who was missing. Then, as we also heard, Jesus
tells a parallel story of a woman who sweeps and searches and
refuses to give up until she finds the coin that was lost. Both
the sheep and the coin are found, because someone is determined
to find them--- someone who treasures them, someone who rejoices
when they are recovered and restored.
Can it be that these two parables are a lens
through which we glimpse the heart of God, the love that will
not let us go?
In a painting by Alfred Soord called The Lost
Sheep, a robust shepherd, muscles straining, is leaning
over the edge of a rocky cliff. This is not the soothing
portrait we usually see, of Luke's Tender Shepherd joyfully
rejoining his flock, with the rescued lamb draped safely over
his shoulders. It is instead the moment within the story
when the shepherd risks everything, even his own life, for the
sake of the one who is lost. It is a moment of danger,
fear, uncertainty--- suspended between the initial loss and
the eventual recovery.
We, too, are suspended between the unspeakable
loss of Tuesday morning and the path toward healing and recovery
that lies ahead. In this scary and vulnerable place, we
need to know that the Good Shepherd can be trusted to catch
us and hold us and not let us go.
Peter Gomes has written, "God's love is
the only thing that makes sense out of suffering, conflict and
tragedy. God's love does not do away with it, God's love
is the thing that makes it possible to bear it, to see it, to
share in it, and to pass through it. That is the truth
of the Gospel."
I thought of this statement as I read an email
from a Lutheran Bishop in Lower Manhattan to his church friends
across the country. After describing his visits to hospitals
and local churches, including a tearful Palestinian congregation
in Brooklyn, the bishop wrote, "All of us are feeling so
very inadequate and frustrated. What can we do? Where should
we go? And so we are driven to our knees in prayer.
I am going now to St. Paul's Church to do just that." And
his closing words to his readers were these: "It would
be unbearable without your presence and prayers."
It struck me that this bishop is a wise man because
he is reaching out of his own helplessness to find the help
he knows he needs, through his own prayers and through the support
and prayers of others. I don't know how it is for you, but for
me in these last few days, one of the greatest helps has come
from hearing many different voices bringing before God their
own heartfelt struggles and convictions, sources of pain, and
hope and strength. Many among us are struggling with the Christian
teaching on love of the enemy; some are heartsick and fearful
after witnessing rocks being thrown at an Arab-American business;
others have shared personal stories of rescues and close calls.
I hope that you will write just a few words of a prayer that's
on your heart, and add it to the prayer wall in the sanctuary
to form a clear sign that although we may each feel lost now,
we are not alone.
There is a remarkable story from Reverend John
Thomas, President of the United Church of Christ, who describes
being at a conference in East Berlin this past Tuesday, when
news came of the unfolding tragedies in New York and Washington,
D.C. Within hours, several thousand Berliners overflowed the
protestant cathedral for an ecumenical service that brought
together all of Berlin's religious and political leaders. Thomas
writes,"I was welcomed as a church partner and as a kind
of representative of the American people in this remarkable
outpouring of grief, tears and consolation. As the Cardinal,
Bishop and I moved from the sanctuary to the crowd outside,
we were met by hundreds of mostly young people, singing songs
for peace, a moment made significant and poignant by the fact
that one was in Hebrew, and another was our own, 'We Shall Overcome.'
Countless strangers took my hand and said, 'We are so sorry.'"
"We had gone to a part of the world that
many once feared would be the place World War III might begin,
only to watch terrifying destruction in cities close to home.
We had come to express the support of our church with its partner
church as it struggles with the largely atheistic, post-socialist
context of the former East Germany, but instead we received
the care of that church in the face of our own national tragedy.
We woke up to a city heavy with ominous historical meaning;
we went to bed embraced by Berliners gentle in their care and
extravagant in their compassion."
Worshiping together, praying and
talking together, finding ways to care for and support and connect
with one another, we are led gently, lovingly, into the presence
of Christ, the Good Shepherd, who has been with us all along,
calling each of us by name, calling each of us beloved, never
giving up on us but giving us himself, promising to restore
our souls, lead us in paths of righteousness, and kindle the
light of hope and courage in our hearts. Amen.
