September 16, 2001
Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
LAUNCH SUNDAY
(Also Sunday after attack on World Trade Center
and Pentagon)
Psalm 100
Since the events
of last Tuesday, I have struggled with Launch Sunday. What kind of worship
service should this be? In the wake of national tragedy, is a Launch Sunday, a
day of celebration, even appropriate? As I struggled with these questions
throughout the week, I recalled a story told by Loren Eisley, the late
anthropologist, who was really more poet than scientist. I thought I would
begin today by sharing his story with you:
He writes: “I
have said that I saw a judgment upon life and that it was not passed by humans .
. . I shall never see an episode like it again if I live to be a hundred. You
may put it that I had come over a mountain, that I had slogged through fern and
pine needles for half a long day, and that on the edge of a little glade with
one long, crooked branch extending across it, I had sat down to rest with my
back against a stump Through accident I was concealed from the glade, although
I could see into it perfectly. The sun was warm there, and the murmurs of
forest life blurred softly away into my sleep. When I awoke, dimly aware of
some commotion and outcry in the clearing, the light was slanting down through
the pines in such a way that the glade was lit like some vast cathedral . . .
There on the extended branch sat an enormous raven with a red and squirming
nestling in his beak.
“The sound that
awoke me was the outraged cries of the nestling’s parents, who flew helplessly
in circles about the clearing The sleek black monster was indifferent to them.
He gulped, whetted his beak on the dead branch and sat still. Up to that point
the little tragedy had followed the usual pattern. But suddenly, out of all
that area of woodland, a soft sound of complaint began to rise. Into the glade
fluttered small birds of half a dozen varieties drawn by the anguished outcries
of the tiny parents. No one dared to attack the raven. But they cried there
in some instinctive common misery, the bereaved and the unbereaved. The glade
filled with their soft rustling and their cries. They fluttered as though to
point their wings at the murderer. There was a dim intangible ethic he had
violated, that they knew. He was a bird of death. And he, the murderer, the
black bird at the heart of life, sat there, glistening in the common light,
formidable, unmoving, unperturbed, untouchable.
“The sighing
died. It was then I saw the judgment. It was the judgment of life against
death. I will never see it again so forcefully presented. I will never hear it
again in notes so tragically prolonged. For in the midst of protest, they
forgot about the violence. There, in that clearing, the crystal note of a song
sparrow lifted hesitantly in the hush. And finally, after painful fluttering,
another took the song, and then another, the song passing from one bird to
another, doubtfully at first, as though some evil thing were being slowly
forgotten. Till suddenly they took heart and sang from many throats joyously
together as birds are known to sing. They sang because life is sweet and
sunlight beautiful. They sang under the brooding shadow of the raven. In
simple truth, they had forgotten about the raven, for they were the singers of
life and not of death.”
I read those
words, and I decided . . . yes, let’s have our music, let’s launch the bubbles,
let’s have our celebration. For in our celebration, we affirm that as people of
faith, we are singers of life and not of death; we affirm hope even in the
midst of tragedy; we affirm light even when confronted with deep darkness.
Another true
story, this one shared by Theodore White in his autobiography, In Search of
History. In the late thirties, before the outbreak of World War II, the
famous German zeppelin, the Graf Zeppelin, made a visit to the United States.
White was a teenager living in Boston when it visited his city. He says that
seemingly everyone in the city went out to Boston Common to see the Graf
Zeppelin fly over. Most cheered and greeted this craft as a new wonder of the
world. However, for White and his friends - young Jews - the Graf Zeppelin was
a reminder of Hitler and of his persecution of Jews which had already begun in
Germany.
He recalls that
after a day of picnicking and fun in the park, as the sun set, the zeppelin flew
overhead, its search lights illuminating the ground over which it flew.
Everyone gazed in wonder. Well, almost everyone. White and his young Jewish
friends all joined hands and in the light provided by a Nazi zeppelin, they
danced a Jewish folk dance. He writes that their dance was a dance in defiance
of the Graf Zeppelin and all it stood for. It was a dance of hope.
A defiant dance,
a defiant expression of hope and joy, proclaimed in the face of another
monstrous evil. That is why, even in the aftermath of a tragedy in which we
have all been touched by unspeakable evil, we still dare to celebrate, still
dare to sing songs and launch bubbles, still dare, in the words of Kathy Mattea,
to “dance like nobody’s watchin’.” For we are singers of life, not death.
Following our
candlelight vigil last Tuesday evening, a church member embraced me and with
tears in his eyes said, “I think I lost some good friends today.” Colleagues he
had known and worked with for years worked in the World Trade Center right at
the level where one of the jets hit. There is no way we can downplay or
sugarcoat the great tragedy of September 11th. There is a grief, a
sense of loss, that may never go completely away. We are haunted by so many
broken lives, broken families. Their tears are our tears.
I’ve also been aware within
myself of feelings of outrage and anger. I don’t know what to do with them.
But I know that at this point I need to be very careful. The perpetrators of
this act must be caught and brought to justice. And yet, it’s already happening
- hate crimes against Arab Americans, the defacing of mosques. We need to know
that the overwhelming majority of Muslims in this world are not violent
terrorists. And we cannot, we dare not violate our own sacred national
principles. We must be careful that in going after those who are guilty, we do
not bring harm upon those who are innocent. An old proverb comes to mind
here: “Beware when you fight a monster lest you yourself become a monster.”
I’m convinced we have been forever changed. A certain innocence, I suppose a
certain sense of safety, has been lost. Even with our oceans, we are suddenly
as vulnerable as anyone else.
You will find no
denial here today. No pie in the sky, Pollyanna optimism - just think good
thoughts and it will all go away. It doesn’t go away. We weep bitter tears.
But it is right here, in the midst of our weeping, that celebration, worship,
singing become acts of revolutionary defiance. For they say that while we
acknowledge it all, we feel it all - all the hurt, the grief, the pain - still
it will not overcome us. We don’t deny it, but neither do we give in to it.
“Make a joyful
noise to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness.” And why?
“For the Lord is good; God’s steadfast love endures forever, and God’s
faithfulness to all generations.” And elsewhere, Psalm 20, the Psalmist
proclaims: “Some take pride in chariots and some in horses, but our pride is in
the name of the Lord our God. They will collapse and fall, but we shall rise
and stand upright.” Evil may assail us, it may break our hearts, but it cannot
have us. For our hearts have already been claimed by another, one who promises,
“Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age,” one who invites, “Come
unto me all who are weary and heavy-laden;” one who whispers, “Let not your
hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” God knows the struggle is hard
. . . so much pain, so many tears, so often it seems we take two steps up and
three steps back. It gets discouraging at times. But the key is that God
knows, God cares, and God is in this thing for the long haul. “Be a pessimist
with me through the decades,” said Reinhold Neibuhr, “and I will be an optimist
with you through the eons.” We’ve got to be in it for the long haul, for “God’s
steadfast love endures forever.”
In difficult and
painful times in my own life, I have always found a measure of inspiration in
the story of Robert Louis Stevenson. Hopelessly ill from childhood, he lay
awake nights coughing and dreaming and putting his dreams into some of the great
tales of the human spirit. When death was near, he wrote to a friend, “For
fourteen years I have not had a day of real health. I have wakened sick and
gone to bed weary; and I have done my work unflinchingly. I have written in bed
and out of bed, in hemorrhages, in sickness; written torn by coughing, written
when my head swam for weakness; but I think I have won my wager with life . . .
The battle goes on, ill or well is a trifle so long as it goes. I was made for
contest . . And I will not let my medicine shelf be the horizon of my life.”
My brothers and
sisters, I believe that we too are made for contest. We follow a Lord who is
made for contest, who joins us wherever in the world a cross is raised. This is
the ultimate source of our unity, our resilience, our strength. We will not
allow fear and terror to determine the horizons of our life and faith. And so
we celebrate and worship and sing. And so today we will launch our bubbles -
let them be bubbles of defiance, bubbles which proclaim to all the world that no
matter what the circumstance, no matter how discouraging things may be, we will
be here and we’ll stay here and we will continue to do our Lord’s work
unflinchingly - the work of caring and prayer and peacemaking and justice; the
work of reconciliation and love. Oh the powers of death want us. They want us
so badly and they tell us our songs are silly, our hope ridiculous, our faith
futile. But they can’t scare us and they can’t have us. They’ll never have
us. For we are the singers of life, not of death, and our song has only just
begun.