Keith Battarbee's sermon on 9/11 2011

 Sermon for Awareness Sunday 2011-09-11

+ In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen

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Ten years ago, on this date – the 9th of September 2001 – four civilian airliners were hijacked for use as piloted firebombs, against targets in New York and Washington DC.

And today has been designated by many churches in the English-speaking countries as Awareness Sunday: an opportunity to remember the victims of violence, the conflicts that underlie it, and to pray for peace and reconciliation.

How can we react and respond, as Christians, to events such as 9/11?

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Responding to another terrible September, 72 years ago, – the outbreak of the Second World War – the poet W H Auden wrote one of his most powerful poems, 1st September 1939:

Waves of anger and fear / Circulate over the bright / And darkened lands of the earth, / … /

The unmentionable odour of death / Offends the September night.

In this poem, Auden recognizes that we do need to try to understand such events:

Accurate scholarship can / Unearth the whole offence /…/ That has driven a culture mad …

but that on one level, the answer is very simple: What all schoolchildren learn: / Those to whom evil is done / Do evil in return.

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And 9/11 was, truly, evil: a deliberate plan to inflict maximum hurt, targeting high-profile and mainly civilian populations.

In military terms, it was a brilliant plan, very efficiently and effectively implemented.

The fundamental idea was not new, though; nor was it the worst firebomb attack in human history. 9/11 was way smaller than the firebombing, during the Second World War, of Hamburg, Pforzheim, Dresden, and Tokyo – let alone the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And it should humble us to remember that all of those attacks were carried out by the Western Allies. Evil is not only done by ‘others’ to ‘us; it is also, all too often, done by us to others.

But our reaction to those wartime events, even when we are horrified at them, tends to be more ‘apologetic’, so to speak. As one RAF pilot said about a particularly coldblooded operation he had taken part in: “Horrible thing, but we were told to do it and we did it. That's war."

So why was 9/11 different? Perhaps, above all, because it was so unexpected. Both literally, and metaphorically, the 9/11 attacks came ‘out of a blue sky’. In wartime, people know that terrible things will happen. No one, outside al-Qa’ida, knew about 9/11 in advance, at all. The victims didn’t know that they were at war. And so, it hurt.

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And Auden was right: evil in one direction generates evil in return.

9/11 was an instance of what he meant when he said “those to whom evil is done”; for it was a response by al-Qa’ida to what they see as a prolonged attack by the capitalist West on their values and their societies.

And in retaliation, the invasion of Iraq, – which had played no part in planning 9/11 – was against international law, and was justified by deliberate lies about ‘weapons of mass destruction’. It was, in fact, another example of precisely the kinds of action that al-Qa’ida is a response to. And the resulting, on-going conflict in Iraq has so far led to the deaths of over 4000 American military – significantly more than the total death count on 9/11, which is around 3000 – and to the appalling figure of over 100 000 Iraqi civilians killed.

The cycle of evil is maintained.

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But: we can also respond to evil with good.

During the past week, my wife and I have watched some of the many documentaries that have been produced to mark the tenth anniversary of 9/11; and we were tremendously impressed, in particular, by two that focused on the medical personnel and the firefighters of New York. 343 firefighters died at Ground Zero, and 34 paramedics, and one priest. These men and women we can well describe as martyrs, not all them necessarily in a Christian sense, but certainly in a humanitarian perspective: for they were acting out the basic principle of human solidarity, not human revenge, in face of terrible danger: love in action.

And as Christians, our response to the memory of 9/11 must not and cannot be a desire for revenge. Revenge is an all too understandable response to hurt: but it is neither Christian nor humane, and it merely leads to an on-going cycle of hurt and destruction.

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As we confront the profound differences that exist between us in our world – in our social and cultural values, in our economic systems, and in our religious and spiritual and secular beliefs – we need, we really need, to recognize and follow three fundamental principles: solidarity, respect, and integrity:

solidarity, as we recognize and respond generously to our fellow humans’ needs – for example, at this time, in the Horn of Africa;

respect, as we acknowledge that however profoundly we hold our own views and beliefs, the beliefs of others are also held legitimately and profoundly, including those views and beliefs which we find very difficult to understand or approve of;

but always maintaining our integrity, – that is to say, even while we respect the difference of others, we do not abandon or ‘fudge’ on the essentials of our own beliefs and values.

And as Christians, that means – and must always mean – that above all else, we are called to respond to, and act out, the love of Christ. And I would suggest that here, in Turku Cathedral International Congregation, we have a special and specific calling in this respect. We are an International congregation: we come from many different countries. And although in our worship we are Lutheran and Anglican, we are also, in our membership, emphatically an ecumenical body of Christians: we come from many different Christian churches.

And we are called to act out, in our lives and in this world, today and always, the same Gospel that underlies the ending of Auden’s poem:

We must love one another or die. // Defenceless under the night / Our world in stupor lies; / Yet, dotted everywhere, / Ironic points of light / Flash out wherever the Just / Exchange their messages: / May I, composed like them / Of Eros and of dust, / Beleaguered by the same / Negation and despair, / Show an affirming flame.

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And so we come to the end of another, naive sermon telling us to ‘be good’.

But is it easy? Heck no. + And so may God the Father, our Creator; God the Son, Jesus our Redeemer; and God the Spirit, our Comforter and guide, strengthen us in the power of the divine Love. Amen


Ps. The photo above was placed by Keith in the niche above the altar, and used on the flyer for the service. It shows Fr Mychal Judge OFM, Chaplain to the New York Fire Department whose body  is being carried away by firefighters. This link tells a little bit more about him.

 Thank you Keith for offering to preach and for pointing me to the materials available for congregations who wanted to respond to the tragedy of 9/11 by holding an Awareness Sunday service yesterday. And thank you for not only talking about 9/11.