At the end of an awful week, we gather together.

With many differing viewpoints and experiences, but just glad to see each other, we gather together.

Some of us have had to deal with losses and crises unrelated to the events of Tuesday, while others of us have thought of little else.

Some of us have taken the time and chance since Tuesday to gather with folks, maybe several times already. For others of us, this may be the first time we’ve had a chance to speak of our feelings, and hear others do so, too.

Some of us are hoping our country will retaliate strongly and soon, others are hoping that we won’t, and others still are in the middle, hoping there is some action the country can take that will make a difference without sacrificing yet more innocent lives.

Some of us knew people who died, or were injured, or who escaped a great peril. For others of us, the stories are at greater remove, though nearly all of us have stories, stories about others, stories about our own lives that day and since, of how the events have touched us and how they move us still.

With all our diverse experiences and feelings, we gather together. That’s what people do. It’s part of what churches and chapels and temples and mosques are for.

You may have seen a colleague of mine quoted in the New York Times yesterday in an article about the response of religious leaders to Tuesday’s terrible tragedies. The Times noted that “clergy members have the ability to provide an open, welcoming space for people to gather as a community, to share the shock and grief.

“‘The deep hunger to be together is palpable,’ said the Rev. Forrest Church, senior minister of the Unitarian Church of All Souls in New York, which held a special service on Wednesday evening. ‘About 400 people rose up during the candlelight service and lighted candles for friends and acquaintances, for loved ones who had died or were missing.’

“Men and women came to the sanctuary’s front and recited the names of the dead and missing. ‘I have never had the privilege of participating in a more profound worship experience,’ Mr. Church said.” [9/15/01, p. B6]

I have heard similar responses to the services here on Tuesday evening and Friday noon. We had the meetinghouse open all week, and people did come by, and were in and out of the office a lot, to talk, to share their emotions, and just to gather together. And here we are today, the Sunday morning worshiping community together again for the first time since it happened, since Tuesday, since our world became someplace new and uncertain and more tragic and frightful.

It is what people have been doing here at First Parish for 361 years, coming together in times of distress. There was a war here in 1676. The parishioners not only came together, many moved into the minister’s house, it being the most secure place in town. There have been wars since, and the more common causes for grief, like the losses of loved ones, like Barbara Bowens or Priscilla Stoneman, both memorialized in this room yesterday.

Of course there have been happy times, too, weddings and child dedications and Sunday morning services like last week. And there will be happy times ahead. Whatever calls us, we will gather together. It is what people do.

It’s interesting – the article about what the clergy can do talks about presence and making space and the like, but it doesn’t talk much about people wanting help in knowing what to think or how they should feel. Maybe that’s because some of my conservative colleagues who have raised their voices have offered such nasty messages. Some have even been willing to try to exploit deaths of thousands of Americans to stigmatize millions of others.

For example, the Rev. Jerry Falwell said, on TV, that we Americans have made God mad by pursuing policies Falwell disfavors. “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the A.C.L.U., People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen.’”

He was being interviewed by the Rev. Pat Robertson. Mr. Robertson replied, “Well, I totally concur.” [9/15/01, p.A15]

I have good news to anyone new this morning: here, we do not concur. If we get to pointing fingers, why would it not be at the spirit of intolerance, hurtfulness, and hatred that so plagues our splendid but sorry species? If there is a God, isn’t that the force on the other side, the love and courage and caring that are the best part of every faith?

If religion has something to offer along with the opportunity for company, comfort, and counsel, it ought to be that message. We are not alone in offering it, of course, praise be. The Protestant minister Peter Laarman said he had had “to fall back on the most basic information I have about God,” a lesson “he had learned in his youth: God wills the death of no one and invites people into abundant life.”

And Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Washington, put the message into its most pressing, practical form: “It’s important that we pray with our Muslim brothers [and sisters]. There are some people that are really starting to take the wrong attitude, and looking at [Muslims] as lesser or hateful people. I think it’s important that we put our arms around our Muslim brothers and sisters right now, and they know we love them, and they know we care.”

Religion, which can be such a force for ill at times, has that positive aspect, too. Along with providing the comfort of our company, this community is part of our engagement with the forces of goodness and evil outside us as well. It’s both, and it has been through the generations – providing both a voice for our values, and safety for our spirits in tumultuous times, a haven for our healing. Life gets really rough sometimes, and we gather together.

So I offer this open, welcoming space in the time that remains for your sharing what thoughts and emotions, what hopes and fears, what stories you bring with you as we gather this day.
 
 

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