9/11 MEMORIAL HOMILY
by Forrest Church
September 11, 2002
One year ago many of us gathered in this sanctuary in shock and grief to light a candle for the victims of an unimaginable act of horror. Tonight 9/11 brings us together once again, much as a family comes together to commemorate the anniversary of a loss. We don’t gather to forget; we gather to remember. To close the book of death is to close the book of life. Tonight we open both. We remember humanity at its worst and humanity at its best and weigh our own lives in the balance. We remember awakening twelve months ago and awaken once again–not, this time, because we have no choice. Those of us who gather here this evening have consciously chosen to remain awake, perhaps having found ourselves already drifting back into repetitive patterns that mute the promise of our days.
According to ancient legend, a woman died and arrived on the banks of the River Styx. She was greeted by Charon, ferryman to the underworld, her guide across the waters to the realm of departed souls. Upon arriving on the other side, Charon invited her–should she so wish–to drink of the waters of the River Lethe, which banked the Elysian fields. These were waters of forgetfulness, whose magic powers would erase all memory of her years on earth.
She asked the boatman, "If I drink this cup, will I forget how much I suffered and the tragedy I experienced?"
"Yes," he replied, "you will forget all sadness, together with your every moment of joy."
"Will I forget my failures?"
"Yes, your failures will evaporate into the mist of oblivion, and your triumphs as well."
"Will I forget the people who neglected and abused me?"
"Yes, those who hurt you will vanish from memory, as will the people who loved you and those you loved in return."
She thought for a moment and then shook her head. "I cannot do that. I will not drink of the waters of forgetfulness. I choose to remember everything."
Tonight, I too choose to remember everything. I choose to remember our worst nightmare, because I must not and will not give up dreaming. I choose to remember and thereby honor my grief, for grief as a measurement of loss is no less a measurement of love. I choose to remember on this solemn evening the perfect sky on that perfect morning. To remember the silver planes on tilted wing. To remember the instant of impact and the billowing dust clouds of implosion. To remember the sacraments of courage and emblems of kinship throughout this great city. Not–though tears are precious– to remember that I might weep, but to remember that I might once again awaken to life’s preciousness and also to its fragility.
Religion, by my definition, is the dual reality of being alive and having to die. We are not the animal with tools or the animal with advanced language, but the religious animal. Knowing we must die, we question what life means. We seek insight sufficient to redeem our days. The purpose of life is not to get through our allotted span of years without disruptive incident or accident–both are outside our control. The purpose of life is to live in such a way that our lives will prove worth dying for.
One year from the day that terror transfigured our skyline and cast its shadow over our shared future, there are few harbingers of hope on the world’s horizon. With the pounding of war drums under threatening global skies, how easy it is to succumb to sophisticated resignation. Knowing so well the world’s troubles, how tempting it is to retreat into walled gardens. To drink the cup of Lethe. Unwittingly to flirt with oblivion. Resisting that temptation, tonight we kindle lights in the darkness.
That surely is one reason why so many of us have gathered here this evening. There are other reasons as well, each of which underscores the importance of community in our lives. When we feel alone, it is good be alone together. When we feel like crying, it is good to see our tears in one another’s eyes. When we are numb and uncertain, it is good to be lifted–if but for a moment–from our estrangement by soaring music or by lighting a candle of memory and hope. What gifts these are, simple, saving gifts. Human joy and human pain are sacraments to be shared. Even here, in this liberal religious community, tonight we perform the ancient work (or liturgy) of redemption that connects us to a deeper source.
But first, we must remember: remember how our lives quickened together with our pulses in those vivid days of fear and reckoning; remember how we weighed our priorities in the balance, life’s deeper moment made manifest to all, not only to those suffering from cancer or smarting from failure or recovering from recent loss. It is not simply that 3,000 people died a year ago today, interrupted forever in the middle of a conference call or while securely fastened by their seatbelts on a transcontinental flight. Seatbelts fastened or not, more than ten times that number die on the highways every year. 9/11 is not an exception to life’s rules. It is a poignant and memorable reminder of them. Whatever your theology or lack thereof, God is no more at fault here than when a child falls to his death from a window or a young woman gets hit by a drunken driver.
Yet, one year ago today all of us together suffered something very like a death in the family. My brother-in-law lost his wife six weeks before 9/11. In mid-September he told Carolyn that the strangest thing had happened. All of a sudden everyone seemed to understand just how he felt. He found this comforting, just when he needed comfort. Needing empathy, he met empathetic people everywhere he turned.
We actually did become one family in the days after 9/11, mourning as one, comforting each another, intimate in our shared grief. An act intended to divide us instead brought us closer together. Together we reawakened to how slender is the thread by which each life hangs and how essential it is that we weave those threads together while we can. One year ago today our humanity was both blasphemed and heightened. If the first is a tragedy, the latter was a blessing. Humbled (not by the terrorists but by our own temporary powerlessness) we became more humane. Humility and humanity are etymological kin, stemming from the same root, humus–from dust we come and to dust we shall return. If taken to heart, such reminders can temper human arrogance with saving humility.
Does this make 9/11 a good thing to have happened? Of course not. No more than suffering should be sought because it builds character. Suffering does not build character, by the way; but it does prove character. Surely 9/11 proved the true character of this city and its people in a way surprising not only to once-skeptical outsiders but also to those of us who live here and love New York. We can best honor those who died a year ago today not only by recalling their sacrifice, but also by remembering how we rose to its occasion, with kindness and gentleness and unaccustomed patience. Only in this way can death bring us to life.
So when you say a prayer tonight or light a candle, pray not only to God, but also to the better angel of your own nature. Pray to live in such a way that your very life might itself be the answer to your prayers.
Remember, there is only one thing that can never be taken from us, only one human monument that cannot be rent asunder. The one thing that can never be taken, even by death, is the love we have given away. To honor the innocents who died on that September morning, we must redeem this September evening and tomorrow morning and the days before us, redeem them the only way we surely can: by gifts of love and works of love; by loving our neighbor as our ourselves; even by daring to love our enemy. Remember, each of us only builds one lasting monument over the course of a lifetime. We build that monument in one another’s hearts.
Amen. I love you. May God bless us all.