Anniversary of September 11th

I had a student a few years back, some of you might even remember her, she came here to help with Vacation Bible School that summer, Courtney Weller. Anyway she was my student for the summer at the parish, placed there to experience pastoral ministry as she discerned whether she might be called to serve in the same way. Before she started we met to talk about what she hoped to learn from our time together and what she was apprehensive about. She told me that the thing that she was most nervous about was the work that a pastor does around funerals. After talking a little about that we decided then that is a funeral happened to come our way during her time we’d make sure she was involved so she could know how she did and what not.

Well that summer we ended up having a funeral nearly every week that she was in the parish. It was fascinating. Two were for people who had passed away many months before and the family lived in other states so they stopped up for a burial during summer vacation. A couple were from the outside community, several from the parish. Courtney learned a lot and it was uncanny how those eight services grouped themselves into the 10 weeks she was with me. There were none before or after for a great period of time.

It told her when it was all said and done that sometimes the Holy Spirit forces your hand and helps you to do what needs to be done or learn what needs to be learned whether it seems to make sense or not.

Sometimes the Holy Spirit forces your hand.

That is all to say that though this is the tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks I really intended not to spend much time at all talking about them in my sermon today. I thought we’d mention them in the prayers and that would be enough. Then I read the lessons for today and they are all about forgiveness and hardship. But still I thought I’d avoid much mention.

But then the more I read over the lessons and thought and prayed the more connections these lessons made with that tragedy and well sometimes the Holy Spirit forces your hand.

So here we are on Spetember 11th, ten years after a shocking and tragic attack and in our gospel lesson Jesus is telling his disciples that they are to forgive a wrong that is done against them seventy-seven times. And in our Old Testament lesson we hear about a man, Joseph, against whom terrible wrongs have been committed doling out great mercy to those who wronged him.

Joseph even explains that though evil was meant for him by his brothers, God was able to use him and that negative experience for good.

I think that there a many examples of the positives that have come since the September 11th attacks. Stories of forgiveness, reconciliation and hope. I bet you could find several in any newspaper in America today. I bet you eve have come yourselves about that event or another one in your life where good as come from something that at the outset looked only bad.

And what’s great about those stories is that they teach us about God. They teach us who God is.

In Joseph's story it worked like this, he was his father’s favorite, the youngest son and his brothers were jealous, so Jealous that they tried to get rid of him.

First they tried to Kill him.

Then they threw him in a pit

then they sold him

Then they tried to fool him

Then they made up a guilt trip for him about his father.

And Jospeh forgave and forgave and he used the rational that God had done good with what the brothers intended for evil.

All throughout our lives we find ourselves in pits and palaces like Joseph, sometimes it seems like all good, good has gotten us there, good will come from it, sometimes it seems like the opposite and the real lesson from today about sept 11th. About your own tragedies, about your present life situation, whether it seems like a pit or a palace or both is that God knows, better than we ever could, how to draw good out of the bad, how to overcome evil with good, how to sow new life where there is death and destruction.

But what we learn about God in this story is more about where God is in the midst of the whole journey from pit to palace and back again. For Joseph it went like this:

First they tried to Kill him.-And God was there

Then they threw him in a pit-And God was there

then they sold him-And God was there

Then they tried to fool him-And God was there

Then they made up a guilt trip for him about his father.-And God was there

As Christians we forgive and we move through hard experiences because we are called and commanded to do so but the strength that gets us there is looking back and knowing that God was there so that every time we look forward today, tomorrow and on the last day we know that God will be there. This is good news. Thanks be to God. Amen!