I asked the parents of the little boy who is named for me, and not yet four, how much he understood of September 11.  And they said, AHe asked us before he went to bed, "What happened today that made so many people sad?" What did happen is beyond words to describe.  But the words you just heard in the gospel challenge us to really believe -- that the lost are found.  The dead live.  And the coin clutched in the woman’s hand is really the beloved in the embrace of God.  We cannot replace our sorrow with the jubilation of which the gospel also speaks.  But we can achieve some kind of peace, not just resignation but peace, and at least a holy hope if not a firm faith, that there will come a time -- already true for them -- when tears and mourning are no more, and life is fulfilled, undiminished by the terrors of the night.  Or day.  

Two questions come from the horror of last Tuesday.  How could God allow this?  And, how could people do something so evil?  Both have theological answers.  The first -- how could God allow it -- is connected with love.  If God created us to love Him -- and each other -- He had to endow us with freedom.  And that is a terrible risk, because we can choose evil, not good.  But how could anyone choose evil like this?  One answer has to do with the perversion of religion.  And one solution has to be the right understanding of religion.  

What is the perversion?  Anything that turns believers into fanatics.  Usually this comes from fundamentalists, people who interpret the entire Bible literally.  When they do this with the Genesis story, they conflict with science.  When they believe there is only one version of truth or salvation, and all others are wrong, they may kill those others or persecute them.  Christians did that in the past, killing Muslims and Jews in the name of Christ.  When Muslim fanatics now seek to kill us and do so in the name of Allah, any true Muslim will tell you this is blasphemy.  There is no madness like that of religious fanatics because they think they are doing God's will.  

But there is another answer as to why they choose evil and turn our own technology against us.  Many commentators have put it well:  it is the clash between our way of life and theirs -- those countries of the Middle East and the Third World.  They are poor, sometimes desperately so, and we are materially well off.  That results in envy, but also hatred, especially if they think we manage our economy to profit from their misery.  There has to be justice in the way we make money and we have become the world's richest nation.  But those are economic as well as ethical problems, and my hope is that solutions are found that enable all people to live human lives.  There is also a statement now being quoted from George Kennan, so much a part (and a critic) of our foreign policy in the past.  He wrote some years ago, "I do not think that the United States civilization of these last 40-50 years is a successful civilization.  I think this country is destined to succumb to failures which cannot be other than tragic and enormous in their scope." And he added later on,  "For Americans] to see ourselves as the center of political enlightenment and teachers to a great part of the rest of the world [is] unthought-through, vainglorious and undesirable."  We may not all agree with that statement or its scope, but we should think about it.  

What response do we make to this monstrous evil of last Tuesday?  One answer is to punish, to destroy, and as we prepare to do that we have to refrain from hatred.  Hatred of all Arabs.  My Indian friend, a distinguished musician, was stopped while passing through South Station in Boston by a man who demanded, "Are you one of them?"  He answered, "No, I am one of you.  One of us."  Worse, my student assistant was aghast at what she heard in her political science class.  She said some of them thought we should bomb Kabul and the whole of Afghanistan into nothing.  Another student said, "That will only kill the poor, the leaders are already leaving."  They are right.  There is no way to justify, now or in our past wars, obliteration bombing.  That does not mean no military action is justified.  Of course it is, but what else?  The answer may seem helplessly idealistic, but in the end it is the only realism: we must, whenever we can, replace evil with good.  When the house is dark, you do not sweep out the darkness, you turn on the light.  There are many ways to do that, and many people working on it now.  Working on what?  Creating a livable and enjoyable world -- for everyone.  And this is where religion, the real thing, can be a powerful motivation.  Christianity has two great commandments, and one of them is to love your neighbor as yourself.  All the great religions express that.  Jesus made it plain that the neighbor excluded no one, and love should seek the good of the neighbor, even those different from us -- think of the parable of the Good Samaritan.  
 
It seems as if darkness has won the day, but it hasn't.  I believe very much in what Gandhi calls soul force.  He said that every day the actions of goodness and love by ordinary people far outweigh the actions of evil in the world.  Immediately we think of what is happening in New York right now, that extraordinary outpouring of compassion and humanity.  But what Gandhi meant, and I would emphasize this, is that to a large degree the acts of goodness go on every day.  Without this “soul force” all society would break down and life would be impossible.  You love your children and each other; you do good work, you sustain lives and bear burdens in so many ways we cannot count them.  Gandhi is right, wonderfully right, but I would call it the presence of God in each of us, urging us every day to love and bear with each other.  

We talked recently about eternal life; do you think the promises of Jesus are a comfort now to those who have lost, by the thousands, their loved ones?  Yes, it is, or can be, but we were not put on earth to take our lives or to see them taken suddenly; that is a perversion of God's plan.  But yes, there is comfort.  It was put so simply by the woman seeking for her husband lost in the rubble.  Perhaps you heard her -- she said, "I must find him.  If he is in a hospital and alive, he's okay.  And if I only find his body, if he's dead, I know he's okay."  Think about that.  I spent thousands of words on that subject with you, on heaven, salvation, eternal life.  And she put in one sentence.  

And think how many of those final messages spoke of love.  I told you once that love is really the clue that death does not destroy us forever.  But here is an awful thought that some have exploited: what if many of those suddenly hurled into eternity were sinners?  I don't want to say  "so what," but so are we all.  And it is monstrous, a totally wrong kind of preaching to declare that all this is a judgment upon our sins as a nation or individuals.  The God of mercy does not work that way; think what you just heard from Jesus in the parable of the prodigal son.  I am absolutely convinced that when someone dies in this kind of agony, the compassionate God immediately brings them from darkness to the light.  

Here is a prayer -- Gaelic -- very old, for this moment:  
 

 As the rain hides the stars,
 as the autumn mist hides the hills,
 as the clouds veil the blue of the sky,
 so the dark happenings of my life hide
 the shining of Thy face from me.
 Yet if I may hold Thy hand in the darkness, it is enough.
 Even though I may stumble in my going,
 Thou dost not fall.  Thou dost not fall.

16 September 2001