St. Paul’s United Church Sunday, September 10, 2006

Trusting in God Five Years After 9/11 – Rev. David Mundy

Psalm 125 James 2:1-17 Mark 7:24-30

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Do you remember where you were that day? I mean the fateful day five years ago tomorrow. When I say “9/11" you don’t need an explanation. You are aware that these numbers refer to September 11th, 2001.

I was sitting in my study in Halifax Nova Scotia that morning when a knock came on the door. It was the church custodian telling me that a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Towers in New York City. He pulled out an old television in storage for the rummage sale and the staff gathered around the grainy picture of destruction. A second plane careened into the other tower. Human beings pitched themselves out of windows to flee the flames, falling to their deaths

There was a welter of confusing information that morning but the collapse of both the towers was evidence that North America was under unprecedented attack. Suddenly we were at war, or so it seemed, but who was the enemy, and where would they strike next? Our three children were all teens five years ago and they were troubled by what had happened to their secure world. While we tried to reassure them as parents we felt the uncertainty as well. It was heart-wrenching in those first few days to see the family members of the victims desperately searching for loved ones.

After the initial shock, special services of worship were hastily arranged. The following Sunday thousands of North American churches either dedicated their worship to addressing the catastrophe or included litanies and prayers of commemoration. Here at St. Paul’s an American flag was hung to show solidarity with our friends south of the border. At St. Andrew’s in Halifax we read a portion of the book called Lamentations which opens with these haunting words:

How lonely sits the city

that once was full of people!

How like a widow she has become,

she that was great among the nations!...

She weeps bitterly in the night,

with tears on her cheeks;

among all her lovers

she has no one to comfort her

all her friends have dealt treacherously with her,

they have become her enemies. Lamentations 1:1a, 2

As well as sending up our cry of sadness many of us wanted to understand where God was in the midst of the uncertainty and the fear. Some pundits predicted that Canadians would return to religion as a result of 9/11. That may have been the case for a week or two but churches were not suddenly filled with the faithful. The majority of us returned to our version of everyday life although with a sense of uneasiness about the world around us. Whom could we trust and where would be safe?

Did you pay attention to the psalm this morning? Psalm 125 assures us that when we trust in God we will be strong – rock-solid like the mountain in Jerusalem on which the temple was built. God is with us and among us always. God will not allow the wicked to prevail, so we must continue to do good. Our God is the God of peace.

We could all come up with our own definitions of trust but they would all have something to do with reliability and security in even the most difficult circumstances. In one of my reference books the heading “trust” says see “faith.” To have trust in God means that we have faith in a God of good who will overcome the darkness of our world, even when that darkness seems more powerful than the light.

Do we trust in God more or less five years after September the eleventh, two thousand and one? I hope you will permit me a little musing on the events of these years as we all consider that question. There is little doubt that we no longer take our security and well-being for granted at home or abroad. We have a phrase in our lexicon which wasn’t there before, “the war on terrorism.” It is not just a figure of speech. Our Canadian young men and women are bravely fighting this battle in a distant land, although as more of them die we are wondering if there is value to the conflict.

We have watched as the Americans and Britons have attempted to wage this war in Iraq but there is a collective knot in the pit of our stomachs telling us that the world is actually less safe, less stable, as a result of the invasion. The United States has now been at war in Iraq longer than it was at war with Nazi Germany and there is no victory in sight.

I think it is fair to say that we were complacent about our security in North America. In October of two thousand and one, just a month after 9/11, the CBC’s Rex Murphy was in Halifax for a live broadcast of his radio phone-in program Cross Canada Check-up. The official subject was "How has September 11th changed our world? What do you think of Canada's response?"

Ruth and I were there, and before the taping began Murphy fielded questions from the audience and someone asked whether he felt that the world had changed. In his usual fashion he answered immediately and thoughtfully. He suggested that the bubble of security we took for granted in North America had burst, making us more like the rest of the world. Since that time there have been bombings in Madrid and London and Mumbai, along with a number of other countries. Here in Canada a plot to attack major institutions was thwarted. In fact, no more people have died in the United States as a result of terrorism during these past five years but an estimated 70,000 have been killed elsewhere, a disturbing reality.

Surely we realize that this is about so much more than the actual deaths and injuries which can be totalled by the experts. There are the underlying uneasiness and suspicion, the sense of “what next?”

A week ago I was a tourist in Great Britain, a nation under siege because of terrorist threats. It seemed absurd that when I flew home I was not allowed to take my deodorant in my hand luggage and that my shoes had to go through the x-ray machine. I refrained from joking that I was a dual threat without my deodorant and something covering my feet. It was no laughing matter that during my time there the government announced that it was watching thousands of its citizens the majority of them young and Muslim because of the possibility of violence they represented.

There is a similar mood in the United States where the concern grows that by invoking the terrorist threat civil liberties and the principles of democracy can be suspended. There is very little that is amusing about the effects of global terrorism but I did enjoy the “take” on George Bush by comedian Tim Allen when he was at the Montreal Comedy Festival. He observed that President Bush is often challenged by the English language and refers to terrorists as “terrists.” Allen would like to ask the President what he would call the Canadians who cross the border at Windsor to visit the States but be knows the answer would be “terrists!”

To come back to our psalm, we can appreciate that trusting in God as the source of our strength has never been easy in any age. Five years after 9/11 we probably desire what we wanted on September 10^th, 2001 – a world of peace and justice. Despite our fears and the blasphemous terror carried out in God’s name we are still called to live in faith

I would encourage all of you to ask yourselves what trusting in God means for you five years after the terrorist attacks of September 11^th, 2001.

For me, trusting in God means believing that there can be conversation between religions based on the conviction that God, Yahweh, Allah, is first and foremost the God of peace. As a follower of Jesus, the Christ, I hear the words, “blessed are the peacemakers” and want to be counted among their number.

We know all to well that the perversion of religion has encouraged people to engage in acts of violence. There have been occasions in these past five years when my anger has risen as innocent people suffer. I am inclined to blame Islam as a whole for the atrocities that have been committed by a few. Each time I realize that this anger can only deepen suspicion and that I am called to pray for peace and work for peace in whatever ways possible.

In our gospel lesson this morning Jesus has an exchange with a woman from another culture and likely another religion. It appears that to begin with he is unwilling to respond to her need but he realizes that she is a person of faith and healing happens. As Christ’s people we can work toward seeing and hearing others. We can choose dialogue and openness as a way of healing in a world that needs mending. Last year an Islamic school opened here on the outskirts of Bowmanville and I have visited it several times now in the hope of opening the dialogue between faith groups.

Trusting in God also means finding the alternatives to empire and military might. We can’t be naive and pretend that evil does not exist in our world. It was there before 9/11 and will always be present. Police forces and armies are a concession to the dark side of human nature. Surely we can see, though, that there can never be enough soldiers to ensure peace on this planet. The resources of even the most powerful and wealthy nations are not sufficient to police the world. Unfortunately we are slow to learn this lesson in every generation.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Towers. It is also the 100^th anniversary of a sad but significant event for a young Hindu lawyer named Mohandes Gandhi. Gandhi was forced off a train in South Africa and spent the night shivering in the cold in a dark and empty station. He knew full well that he was the victim of discrimination of the basis of race and religion. Gandhi later identified this as the pivotal event of his life. Rather than living in fear or choosing the way of violence he began a movement which he came to call “Soul Force.” It was the inspiration for Martin Luther King Jr. half a century later.

Perhaps it can inspire us to trust that God is with us, despite our uncertainties and fears. God can be trusted to overcome evil in our world on the anniversary of 9/11 and every day.