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"On Preaching" by Scott Hoezee
Reflections on Preaching from the Center for Excellence in Preaching.
Ten Years Later: Thoughts on Preaching on Sunday, September 11, 2011 (Posted on August 29, 2011)
It’s been a decade since preachers everywhere wondered what in the world to preach about on Sunday, September 16, 2001, five days following the Day of Terror that shook the world and most especially the United States. I recall being disappointed that I did not preach that momentous Sunday—I had been scheduled to be in Chicago for a conference (which was cancelled, of course) and so a colleague preached on September 16 as scheduled, and he did a fine job, electing to do what many preachers did that day; viz., preach a sermon based on Psalm 46. When next I preached, I chose Psalm 10—its descriptions of evildoers and its closing line about pining for a day when people “may strike terror no more” fit well. (And OK, there was also sufficient imprecation in that psalm to give voice to our mutual and white-hot disdain of terrorism as well!)
My purpose in this column is not to provide advice on text selection—the sermon starters for September 11 in the “This Week in Preaching” section of this website will likely make some comments relative to the Common Lectionary texts assigned for that Sunday ( http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/thisWeek/index.php ). Rather, I want to muse aloud here as to some things to do and maybe some things to avoid in case any preacher is considering using the 10th anniversary of 9/11 as a touchstone for the sermon.
If there is one thing I have noticed in the years since 9/11 and then all that followed in the Iraq War and the like, it is that in general (and in the United States specifically) the atmosphere in also the church seems far more politically charged than it used to be. That is a difficult claim to quantify and so to substantiate—and there are those who will claim that things are not that dramatically different after all—but it has felt to me as though people have listened to sermons (and sometimes to pastoral prayers) with political antennae extended in ways that did not seem to be as true years ago. The divide between the political right and the political left has deepened such that in the years following 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, I had people criticize things I said in sermons merely because they detected the possibility—however faint—that I was grinding some anti-George W. Bush axe or aligning myself with Kerry or Obama. (In the 1990s, by contrast, I don’t recall anyone’s ever wondering if I was trying in a sermon to prop up some Clinton agenda or be critical of Bob Dole, for instance.)
I mention all of that simply to lead to my first musing: whatever preachers say on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, it seems to me that it will not well serve the gospel to engage in any overt politicizing to either the right or the left. The Gospel is Good News meant to provide hope and grace and joy in the midst of a broken world. Such good gifts rarely emerge out of sermons that devote much space to caterwauling about the horrible mistakes the United States has made since 9/11 or to the shoddy state of our politics today as a result. Yes, this anniversary could be a time to confess our sins as a people but then it has to be clear that we are confessing the sins of all of us and not just select individuals to whom a finger could be conveniently pointed (in ways that would ostensibly let others of us off the penitential hook).
But that then leads me to a second, more constructive thought. If we preachers really are called to preach the gospel in every sermon—including a sermon that happens to fall on an anniversary such as September 11 represents—then that may well suggest a sermonic direction that could bear good fruit; viz., a proclamation of God’s tender, gracious faithfulness to us across all the seasons of our lives, including dark and sad seasons.
This 10th anniversary of a day of terror will mean many things to many people but chief among the feelings people may have are ones of sadness, remembering the dead. And some of us will preach to people who knew someone who died that dark day in 2001. Perhaps, then, a sermon on September 11, 2011, would be the perfect opportunity to declare that at a time when one TV special after the next is focusing on how much the world has changed since 9/11, the Good News of the Gospel is that God has not changed. That bad day when the towers fell and when upwards of 3,000 lives were snuffed out so senselessly knocked a lot of us off our stride, but it did not knock God off his plans for this creation. That grim event transformed a presidency and made an entire nation think differently. But it did not transform God’s kingdom or change the way Christians properly think about where our true comfort in life and in death lies.
We cannot answer all the hard questions that an act of evil raises. We cannot tell any loved one of a 9/11 victim why a son, daughter, father, or mother had to perish so terribly. What we can know—and what we preachers were ordained to proclaim—is that God is faithful, God is loving, God is full of grace and is here for us now and always. If 9/11 reminded us of what rotten shape our world is in—and if in some ways the world seems to have gotten even more rotten since then—this is not news to God. God knows how rotten the world is—in fact, God knows this better than anyone because it cost God the death of no less than his only begotten Son to turn things back from darkness into light.
The world does frequently strike us as being vaguely insane with evil. My wife just finished reading a book about World War I and as she read various passages to me now and then, we were both aghast all over again at the ludicrous squandering of millions of young lives, many of whom were mowed down systematically as military commanders sent one wave after the next up over the lips of trenches and into the nearly certain fatal barrage of machine gun fire that awaited each young man who followed his orders to leave the trench. It was crazy. Senseless.
But it’s nothing God is not already well familiar with. That’s why God has a plan. You can read about it in the Gospel. Preachers keep on proclaiming that message because it’s finally the only story we have to tell. And even on September 11, 2011, it is still the story we have to tell, to proclaim, in ways that will be generative of hope and joy and—where needed—of lasting comfort as well.
Those preachers who turned to Psalm 46 years ago were wiser than they perhaps knew. Because God is our refuge and strength and so even though “the earth should change,” we need not fear. God does not change. The Gospel does not change. That is Good News indeed.