Saturday, September 13, 2008

Today’s text

John 3:13-14

As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

Reflection

It is almost seven years ago now. I was in New York City in the wounded aftermath of September 11, 2001, when terrorists crashed planes into World Trade Center towers in New York.

During the days, I traveled with the bishop of the Metropolitan New York synod. We visited congregations, prayed with the mourners, hugged cops and fire fighters, and listened to stories, hundreds of stories of brutality and beauty.

At night, I went to Union Square, in lower Manhattan. I always waited until after dark when 10,000 candles and more twinkled in the darkness.

Silent souls walked the paths of the block-long park. They came singly or in pairs, holding each other in the darkness.
They stopped every few feet to read the handbills attached to every tree along the walk. They knelt to read others by the light of flickering votive candles in the gathered darkness.

Thousands processed in a silence fraught with pain and hope, fear and sorrow. And I walked and watched and waited with them each night. I never spoke to even one of them. Yet, I was one with them, knowing a unity with human souls that can be shared only in moments of wordless wonder or senseless pain.

Long scrolls of paper stretched along the sidewalks almost the entire length of the park. The scrolls were filled prayers, blessings and words of comfort, often from the Bible. Grieving hands scrawled out their pain and memories of those they feared were cremated and mixed with the incinerated concrete dust that coated every tree, deck and window frame.

Literally thousands of handbills covered tree trunks, walls and fences in the park. Each handbill bore a single face, most often a young, fresh face, of someone missing. Each sheet carried the description and last known whereabouts of someone’s beloved.

I remember one handbill I captured in a photo. It had the picture of a bright, young woman. ‘WE MISS YOU!’ It read across the top. Beneath the picture was a name: ‘Mary Lou Hague, WTC 2 -- 89th floor, 26 yrs. old, 5’6”/125 lbs.’

At the bottom of the handbill were a name and a number to call. Two votive candles burned on the ground just beneath it.

We all passed by in the darkness, gazing at the images and reading the messages and prayers of wounded souls.

What struck me then and now is the absence of anger in the words we read. There were no calls for revenge and retaliation. The rhetoric of war and words of violence were totally absent.

Those who posted the handbills and wrote on the scrolls lifted up their pain and their hope, their sorrow and their blessings. They lifted up loss and love for all to see. And we who walked by were drawn in, our hearts captured by what we saw.

We became part of a great prayer, a holy hunger for healing and peace. No one here wanted war. Gentleness and care passed among us as we brushed by each other in the dark. We all felt how fragile life is, and we handled each other with care.

We had seen what cold-hearted hatred can do, and we wanted no part of it. We gazed into the love and beauty of the faces and words on those handbills, and we became love on which on which we looked.

“As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14,15).

What does God lift up? What is held up before our eyes?

God holds up Jesus, a dying man, who loves his own and loves them to the end. God lifts up the one we call the Son of God, the face of God, the holy presence of God. And what is held up is not am image of strength or power, not an ensign of anger or retaliation against those who hate.

God holds up the image of self-sacrificing love--of pain, not strength; of giving, not taking; of seeking to convert not to destroy or diminish the enemy.

Look upon this suffering love. It will convert your heart from your angry ways. This one will show you what violence of hand and word can do. And we have all done, received and know that violence. We have been crushed and had our wholeness destroyed by criticisms, carelessness and hastiness of loveless words and deeds.

Look on this one whom God raises up and know two things: The great destruction of anger and hatred; and the unceasing giving of God, who loves even the enemies of God … and you. And always will.

Pr. David L. Miller