"In Honor of The LORD", September 11, 2011

Exodus 14:19-31
Romans 14: 1-12

What are we doing? What have we come here to do this day?
On September 11th 2001, we instinctively knew what we were to do. The clergy were gathered for our regular morning together, when word reached us, we prayed, then the Catholic priest and I went to Welch Allyn's factory to console and counsel; while the Lutheran and Methodist ministers went to the schools. That afternoon, we continued with Engineers and Technicians in the local business who had not left their desks all day because they were getting medical equipment to crisis areas. That evening at 7pm the whole community came together in this Sanctuary to worship and pray, to try to discern what faith and life meant now that our former reality had been shattered. In the week that followed, our doors stood open and a constant stream of persons came into the Sanctuary to pray to God.

As much as we retell the story of Crossing the Red Sea, with a Charleton Heston-like Moses raising his arms as the new Nation marched across from slavery to emancipation, from oppression to freedom, the reading of this story is too much like September 11th where we, none of us saw what was coming. God led them all the way around the Philistines, knowing that if this people encountered war, faced an enemy, they would rush back to the security of being slaves. Their human addiction to what they knew would would drive them from their fear to food and shelter even if in the long-run it meant their death. Such is the power of our addiction to what we know. All night-long the East wind blew upon the face of the water creating a dry riverbed like road, as the people of Israel fled, and the army of Pharaoh pursued, hidden by a cloud and pillar, they walked right passed each other. Then like a reversal of Genesis' Creation, God unleashed Chaos upon Pharaoh's army. In the words that follow, the angels began to sing of God's victory, and God stopped them, saying “But my Egyptian children are dead.” Increasingly, in the 21st Century, we need to question, no longer whether you are one of us, whether to fear one another, but rather why this people is any less worthy, any less human than our own.

What are we doing? What have we come here to do? On September 11th 2002, the High School Seniors and Fire Fighters led our community in an impromptu service in the middle of Genesee street, with a flag over the roadway and singing of Amazing Grace.
The last two years, there have been weddings on September 11th, because as the couples themselves described, we want to put that experience behind us and reclaim our future.
A Decade... Ten years... Ten years... is this a Celebration of that day? Is it to be a Memorial of Fear? There were hundreds of thousands of people who were so traumatized by the surreal nature of that morning, they have not flown on an airplane again. There are those who have saved the clothes they were wearing that day, unable to wash off, to wash away, what they remember.

By marking the tenth year, are we closing that chapter? Ten years of terrorism... Ten years of War... Ten years of Economic upheaval... Have we reached the time when we no longer have to take off our shoes at airports, not because the ground is holy but because of exploding soles? Have we reached a time when we can put aside our fear of persons in turbans, people who kneel down to pray to God?

What are we doing? What have we come here to do? This is not the first time, nor tragically will it the last that we have a day like today. From those who survived the brutal crossing of the Mayflower, and the first long year of crop failure, starvation and disease, we created a feast of giving thanks to God. There was the assassination of Abraham Lincoln at Ford Theater, the attempted killing of his Secretary of State and Vice President. There was December 7th 1942, a day that will live in infamy. There was November 22nd 1963, where for a generation who were invited to consider not what was owed to us by the government, but what we could do to serve, who each remember where they were that day.

At that hour, on that day, every citizen became a hero. Every person responded to their neighbor. What I especially remember and want to lift up from that time forever, was that people stopped one another at work, on the street, in the post office and grocery, to listen to one another, to express concern and care. However, we found it hard to live that way, perpetually. For a few weeks, several months, there were occasions of sabbath when we stopped to name that life is now different.
In Christmases past, we thought about what we did not have, now we recognize what we do.
In Christmases past we placed wreaths on doors, now we place them on graves of heroes.
In Christmases past we counted the money in our 401K, now we count our blessings.
The worst tragedy of reflecting upon the last ten years, is that we have become increasingly divided.

Would that we could, live differently, would that we would live with concern for the weak. Writing to the Church at Rome, in these verses Paul never names Jewish Christian versus Gentile Christian, never names Circumcised versus UnCircumcised, Indigenous Greek versus Roman. Instead, Paul describes that in our midst are persons who are strong, and others who are weak.

The issue in ROMANS is not over whether to worship on this mountain or that, whether to pay taxes to Caesar or not, instead of VENUE Romans is a controversy over MENU. One part of the community of faith had been raised according to Kosher laws, not only that there were clean and unclean animals, cloven hoofed and uncloven, not only that in the cooking of foods you did not serve meat and dairy together, but that in the butchering did the butcher pray before taking the life of the animal? Did they pray to the Roman Statues and Caesar, or did the butcher sacrifice this animal to Almighty God. Here, we are not describing offerings sacrificed in Pagan Temples versus a Jewish or Chistian Altar, but something so offensive it was like the food we eat, that we buy in the market... Was that food prepared by one who washed their hands, or by one who had soiled them?

For the last many years our nation has been divided over prayer in school and practices of religion in public places, what if, instead of being concerned whether everyone else was praying, whether everyone else said Debts or Trespasses, we were concerned whether we prayed at the start of the day.

Several years ago, there was a delightful film and book under the title Like Water for Chocolate, in which the emotions, the passions and faith of the one preparing a meal were transferred in the cooking to those who ate of it. Would it matter whether in the preparing of Holy Communion, if the elders prayed before they began, or whether they fought over some divisive issue while breaking the bread and pouring the cups for us to receive the Sacrament?

Paul's response is that as a people of God we cannot condemn another, because they are a child of God and doing so we condemn God. We cannot condemn one another because we then set ourselves up as if we were God.

What we do this day, is not about fear, or celebration; while we pray for those who died, this is not even about their loss. This day, and every day forward we give honor to God. By what we choose to do and what we choose to refrain from doing. We intentionally choose to act as a people of God.