A Portal for God's Peace We warmly welcome single persons, people of all races and families of every kind.   Sunday Service: Holy Eucharist at 9:30 am Child care is available   Church of Our Saviour 191 Flanagan Way (Rt 153) Secaucus, NJ 07094 Map and Directions   Tel: 201-863-1449 Fax: 201-863-1474 Mark A. Lewis, Vicar MLewis@secaucus.org Dorothy Fowlkes Pastoral Associate   This page revised 10 Oct 01 http://www.secaucus.org/ oursaviour		The Church of Our Saviour in the Town of Secaucus, New Jersey Home | Welcome | News | Sunday | Bulletin | Sermons Bookshop | Stewardship | Justice | Community | Links ----------------Leave frames---------------------   After the WTC Attack: A sermon in three parts 15th Sunday after Pentecost 16 September 2001 By The Rev. Mark A. Lewis, Vicar   Part One One theme of this terrible week has been the importance of carrying on business as usual -- to the much-diminished extent that's possible. And so we are carrying on here today with the second of our four Sundays of focusing on stewardship -- our consecration of the blessings of time and talent and treasure God places in our hands, giving us an opportunity to make a free will choice to use them well. The message is that making that choice -- and carrying it out -- is one of the most powerfully nourishing spiritual experiences possible for human beings. The only aspect of stewardship I have the stomach to talk a bit about today is the way that our united resources -- sanctified by the spirit in which they are offered -- can make a very powerful kind of outreach to others and to the world possible. Together, we can do things that none of us can do on our own. In addition to whatever prayers and funds and goods you may have offered on your own -- and certainly will be offering in the weeks and months to come -- you were all, every one of you, already a part of serving God's people affected by this week's terrorist attacks before you even knew it. On Wednesday, 12 September, we hastily organized a noonday service. Secaucus 's first after the terrorist attacks. It was our community's first public opportunity to gather, pray, and talk Thursday morning the 13th, I received a call from the Seamen's Church Institute, an Episcopal Church agency serving the ports of New York and New Jersey. We've long supported their work as part of our outreach. Through a series of coincidences, I was eligible to receive credentials for clergy and pass through the barricades and drive a van down to work hands-on in the financial district. Working with St. Peter's, Chelsea's food pantry I was able to haul provisions downtown. (We'll be making a gift so that our congregation will share the cost of the groceries.) On one trip, I came back uptown to fetch candles to light the food canteen set up by the Seamen's Church to serve rescue workers and uniformed service personnel. (There was no electricity.) Candles that have burned on this altar have burned on the dinnertables of workers every night this week. Served food. So far, 35,000 meals have been served out of the 241 Water Street building to rescue workers, National Guardsmen, and police and firefighters. A makeshift poster on a wall there bears a message of thanks to our congregation signed by workers at ground zero. I drove in a van with sandwiches and water to workers. I stood in front of the stock exchange with $75 worth of Tylenol bought with our outreach funds and handed out by someone whose wages your giving pays -- whose time you free up to do things on behalf of us all. Thank you. Stewardship united with outreach and infused with faith is an amazing thing. People who are too weak to clear away rubble, or too young to drive a truck, or too numb to pray are all still equally a part of what we do as a congregation because -- regardless of the amount of giving or praying we do -- we are all equally a part of the Body of Christ here at the Church of Our Saviour. Part Two One of the images that stays with me is that of people standing around -- at the Javits Center, on the West Side Highway, at Union Square -- with photos of their missing loved ones. Hoping they'll turn up somewhere. It's so intensely personal. Real people with real faces -- full of anxiety -- holding pictures of the faces of people they love. Hoping to connect. Hoping to name names. The contrast couldn't be greater with the terrorist fundamentalists who created the catastrophe. And their ringleaders lurking and hiding in the shadows of the world. There is an inconceivably wide chasm between one person loving another and a faceless and anonymous group singling out other huge groups of people to hate in a generalized way. Going down that alley, the people who hate with a broad brush have already dehumanized the "enemy", already started the killing process. And as horrible as it is for us to be so hated, it's also spiritually and morally corrosive to meet this disaster with the same kind of group hatred we ourselves are now victims of. It's way too soon to talk about forgiveness. But it's never the right time to give your heart over to unfocused and bigoted hatred. This is for our own good more than anything else. I don't do a whole lot of denouncing in church on Sundays -- although I do a great deal of it in my own head. But I can't let the obscene remarks made by Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson under the mantle of Christianity stand without some comment. You may have heard of the smug and self-congratulatory statement issued by the Christian Broadcasting Network above the signatures of Falwell and Robertson. In it they laid the blame for this attack on our country at the feet of the ACLU, pro-choice healthcare providers, and lesbian and gay citizens. I believe that such behavior places Falwell and Robertson in the camp of fundamentalists of any persuasion who are capable of any kind of death-dealing destruction. No one condemned their statements in better words than the Bishop of Washington: "To even think, much less utter and then subsequently confirm, a belief that Tuesday's horror in any way reflects God's will is absolutely inconsistent with Christian theology. At a time when Americans are united in their horror, their mourning, and their resolve to support our nation's leaders and the heroic rescue workers, it is beyond shameful to seek to divide us by alleging that some of us are culpable because we hold beliefs different from those of Robertson and Falwell." Part Three It is a preacher's obligation to ensure that the Good News of God's love is made clear in every sermon. And it's often hard to do that when something terrible lies before us. But the good news is there, nevertheless, all the time. For Christians, one sign of hope in times of grief and destruction is that our Savior himself -- the head of the Body of Christ which is us -- himself was destroyed. His body was broken and his followers and friends scattered in all directions. But nevertheless the next step was resurrection and in time the disciples realized that Christ was risen from the grave and lived among them beyond the reach of death. It's still true for us today. Sooner or later, God tells us, resurrection will dawn on us no matter how dark or how long the night. -- Mark Lewis   Your comments or questions are welcome MLewis@secaucus.org. Links to additional "Reflections on Lessons" may be found at the bottom of the Sunday web page. © 2001 -Church of Our Saviour Home | Welcome | News | Sunday | Bulletin | Sermons Bookshop | Stewardship | Justice | Community | Links http://www.secaucus.org/oursaviour Webmaster - DRoberts@Secaucus.org

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