There was a direct cause and effect relationship between a very private encounter in lower Manhattan during the mid-morning of September 11th, 2001 and a public event here at this church on the evening of December 14th, 2012, though that connection, that thread is not obvious. For while many of you know my 9/11 story, few know this part, and why it shaped my response the day of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. It is a story worth retelling.
As some of you know, I was the Director of Learning for a small multimedia firm in the city. We served clients like the Federal Reserve, the NYPD, General Motors, Intel, and even MTV. When the planes flew into the towers, I was the senior executive in the office, so I took charge of getting everyone who could go out and on their way to safety. Then I sat with another of the directors for several hours, waiting to see if his wife had survived, for she was last known to be standing on the dock at the World Trade Center complex when the first tower collapsed.
She was okay, on a boat, and I left him, relieved but expecting a long wait before he could find a way home to New Jersey. I began my own long walk across the Queensborough Bridge to my home in Sunnyside, but first decided to stop at a nearby church, where I was a member, to pray.
When I arrived, the main doors were locked. I went down to the office entrance, hoping I could maybe stop in the small Chapel for awhile. But the secretary wouldn’t buzz me in. After several minutes of unsuccessfully trying to convince her that I was not a terrorist, the minister arrived and hit the buzzer. He sat with me for a few moments in the chapel, then left me with my prayers.
I made many decision in the hours, days, weeks that followed. One thing that stuck was this: when people are lost, overwhelmed, confused, the doors of the church must be open. So it was, when a mentally ill and suicidal young man slaughtered children and staff in an elementary school before taking his own life, I opened the doors of this church. I was no more prepared to speak to that event than I had been a decade earlier, than I will be when the next disaster strikes. All I can do is be there, with an open door. And I will.
This story, reminding me of my vulnerability, of our vulnerability, is now part of my spiritual DNA. I could try to wipe these things from my memory, but then I would be less of a pastor.
We want neat endings and a giant eraser to remove the bad times in our lives. But they made us who we are, for good or for bad, and while obsessing over past tragedy can be destructive, past difficulties can also be the fire-forged iron of our new selves. Addicts re-tell their stories again and again, reminding themselves where they were, who they were, as they live into who they can be.
As a nation we retell our stories, emphasizing triumph, but never forgetting vulnerability, D-Day and Pearl Harbor. But no culture is better at telling the old stories than the Jewish people, that very culture that gave form to our own faith, that shaped the majority of our sacred texts. At Passover, they ask “Why is this night different than any other night?†And they tell the story. And somehow, it seems to me, they are better at their stories. Maybe we simply have too many, needing to tell the Hebrew story and the Jesus story and even, if we are really working hard, the Christian story. But those are good stories, even the bad ones. And if we forget them, we risk forgetting who we are.
A perfect example can be seen in today’s ancient story. Ruth goes out into the field to collect the loose leftovers from the harvest. For this is the law of the harvest. You see, no harvest is perfect. Stuff will fall to the ground, be left on the vine, there will be blemished fruit, half-ripe vegetables. And the law said that what was left, the gleanings, were for the poor. And Ruth and Naomi, a widow and her widowed daughter-in-law, no husbands, no children, were poor in the context of that time, especially Naomi, for you depending on your children in your old age. So there is Ruth, in the field, setting events in motion that echo through our faith to this day.
But why this law? Never mind that today this could never happen due to greed and fear of litigation. Why, in that context, why this particular law among the more than 600?
Story. This story through the lens of later reforms through the lens of earlier stories and here, here is the heart of what made the Hebrew cult so extraordinary. Those who made the laws and owned the fields, those who ruled, were reminded by stories.
Be kind to the alien in your land, for you were once strangers in a strange land, you, you Hebrews, were slaves in Egypt. Celebrate the year of Jubilee and release the captives, or have you forgotten when you were captive? Feed those who are hungry, for remember that you were in the desert, and God fed you.
Story builds on story and made them who they were. And it wasn’t just the triumphal parts. It was the hunger and the whip. Those in power, with racial and cultural power tend to look at minorities retelling their stories and say “Get over it.†And I say to you “No, they cannot. They should not.†We must retell those stories, though very much it matters what they do with the story. The story of the Hebrews could have become an excuse for that tribe, in turn, to oppress others. Instead, it became a story that reminded them who they were. It is not just a cry of “Never again shall this happen to us,†though it is that too. It is a cry of “This should not happen to anyone.â€
What is our story and why do we tell it? Must we sanitize it? I can still smell the burning of 9/11, can still feel the chasm of grief after Sandy hook, and I am better for it. The execution of Bonhoeffer, the assassination of Romero, of King… these tragic moments of great pain, they are powerful and can be life-giving.
Do not just tell the stories of the good times. Healing, walking through grief, does not mean forgetting. You do not need to carry old hurts like a badge of honor. They need not be an anchor on your soul. But they are part of your story. Find in them the bright gem of compassion, that iron of strength.
Remember that your own people were hungry and vulnerable. Burden your kids, burden them with stories. That five mile walk to school, barefoot in the snow, tell it, but make sure it is not preceded by “You don’t know how lucky you are.†Make sure it is preceded by “There are kids who don’t have decent shoes, and I know what that is like…â€
Tell the stories of hard times, your own, those of your people, those of people who have no one left to speak for them… Tell the powerful stories of the Bibles, not just the happy ones, but the hard ones too. Tell the story and be changed. Amen.