Over the last three weeks hundreds—nay, thousands of images indelibly scorched our memory banks: the 767 banking into the South Tower, the consequent inferno, the twin tower collapse. We saw firefighters raising the American flag on the rubble heap, recall the President rallying the Congress, witnessed the candlelight vigils, empathize with grief-stricken faces bereft of a loved one. We retain images so profuse, so haunting we wish to savor some and expunge others, but discover them clotting our minds, triggering our anxiety, igniting our fears, eliciting our sympathy. And the rain of images continues.

Among them two remain emblazoned on my heart and soul. The first, appeared in Time Magazine’s edition-extra. There, against the background of the World Trade Towers exploding, there stands a Cross on the peak of St. Paul’s Chapel, barren and weathered, silhouetted against the hell rampaging behind it. The other, again a Cross, another silhouette against those towers, this time standing atop St. Nicholas Orthodox Church, crowning a turret enclosing a bell, testifying sturdily to the love of God, when suddenly, amid that September 11th holocaust, at 9:59 am, as the Russian Orthodox Bishop wrote, “the candles were violently extinguished. The sweet smell of incense was blown away by the acrid smell of senseless destruction. And the walls came tumbling down.”

Why do those pictures sear my memory? Why, amid all the horrific images of cataclysm and fury, do they remain? Because amid the morning’s terror and confusion, the dread and hatred, they convey assurance that our existence rests on a Source and Grounding, a transcendent all embracing Love that under no circumstance—even a fanatical murderer convinced he carries out the will of God—those Crosses carry an assurance, even as they tremble or topple themselves, that the Holy One standing beneath, behind and above them will never let us go.

I believe that message to be the proper theme of every church in every time: the undiscouragable, indefatigable love of God. That message sometimes does not come easy. As Paul reminds us in the passage we read this morning, the message of the Cross seems an obstacle to belief for some people and foolishness to others. In his own time, while Paul tries to persuade his fellow Jews, Jesus represents the messianic presence they hope for, they cannot believe that a criminal, tried and executed, can possibly bear anything close to the communal peace and justice they long for. And as for those Paul calls Greeks—the gentiles— they possess no Messianic hopes at all; they eagerly seek some mystical union in a heavenly abode and an escape from the traumas and fragmentation of human life. The Cross: on the one hand a death sentence, no hope there; and on the other, wishful thinking, a blatant irrelevancy.

Not so, cries Paul. Not so! The Cross really tells the most profound truth about the grounding of our common life. It is neither an obstacle nor an irrelevancy. In moments laden with trauma and tragedy, laced with rage and hatred, savaged with human relationships run amok so much that war of whatever intensity can be contemplated, then the Cross speaks truth about the human condition no other symbol can touch. It is the only adequate symbol for our time.

Let me tell you why with an illustration that jumped out at me the other day. Some of you may be familiar with John Haynes Holmes. Holmes served as one of the great Unitarian pastors of the mid-twentieth century at the Community Church in New York. He composed a wonderful hymn many us grew up with, “The Voice of God is Calling.” The text resonates with social justice. We were unable to include it in the New Century Hymnal because his family would not give us the right to alter it appropriately. In any case, on the eve of World War One, John Haynes Holmes went before his New York congregation and in no uncertain terms announced himself a pacifist. On April 1, 1917, John Haynes Holmes, anticipating the war with Germany, spoke to his congregation as follows:

“War is an open and utter violation of Christianity. If war is right, then Christianity is wrong, false, a lie. If Christianity is right, then war is wrong, false, a lie....” He then attributes the war’s causes to what he labels an “un-Christian civilization,” calling to task, and I quote, “secret diplomacy, imperialistic ambition, dynastic pride, greedy commercialism, economic exploitation at home and abroad.” Essentially, he says, we reap what we sow. Holmes then pays tribute to the honor of honest men and women who enter the service of their country, but goes on to insist that the war itself is wrong, that its prosecution equates to a crime and he believes “there is not a question raised, an issue involved, a cause at stake which is worth the life of one blue jacket on the sea or one khaki-coat in the trenches.” He genuinely confesses his devotion to the United States and his citizenship here. But he continues with his convictions and their consequences. “When therefore there is a call for volunteers, I shall refuse to heed. When there is an enrollment of citizens of military purposes, I shall have to refuse to register. When, or if, the system of conscription is adopted, I shall have to decline to serve. If this means a fine, I will pay my fine. If this means imprisonment, I will serve my term. If this means persecution, I will carry my cross. No order of President or governor, no law of nation or state, no loss of reputation or freedom of life will persuade me or force me to this business of killing. On this issue, for me at least, there is no compromise. Mistaken. Foolish. Fanatic; I may be. I will not deny the charge. But false to my own soul, I will not be. Therefore, here I stand. God help me. I can do no other.”

That statement speaks powerfully about the Gospel and the courage it engenders. Holmes’ pacifism inspired hundreds of others. His trustees, to a man, disagreed with his stance, but honored his right to speak and his courage. But I wonder. I wonder if Dr. Holmes and his pacifist claim in the name of Christianity do not veil and mistake the true power of the Gospel. I wonder if the message of the Cross gets lost in his pacifism. You see, his statement, rooted in the law of love, his conviction, eager to bear out the strict principles of what he conceives to be the ethic of Jesus, his approach, admirable though it be, seems to me to miss the deepest, most profound, most releasing most consoling truth the Cross offers us in a messy and threatening time. Friends, the Cross does not demand from us an absolute finely honed perfect adherence to the ethic of love. Quite the opposite. It recognizes, if anything, that we cannot pull such a thing off. It symbolizes the fact that we call the Gospel the Good News, not because it compels us to be pure and good in all circumstances, but it accepts the fact we cannot be. It recognizes and takes seriously, of course, our capacity for good, but understands and takes seriously evidence that our goodness and our perception of it is tainted with self interest, self deception, a parochial myopia, a cultural complacency. The Cross mediates not ethical demand, but divine grace, a love taking into account our frailty, fragility, our limitations. Its very existence shows how cruel and violent we can be to one another. But it shows as well that amid the blood and the violence there reigns a grace and love bearing with us through it all, and like a parent with a child, bails us out time and again, pursuing us, cherishing our freedom, weeping over our stupid and willful ways, desiring finally that we might come to ourselves and find a way back home.

And in this context, how do we make our ethical decisions? As we enter what our political and military leaders indicate will be a long, fierce and frequently surreptitious war, how shall we make ethical choices about war and peace?

I believe the law of love as John Haynes Holmes articulates it will not suffice in a world riddled with sin and evil, with injustice and conflict. We dare not claim perfection ourselves, but we know in an interdependent world decisions we make as Americans bear consequences for better and for worse on others in God’s world. Yet even in our fallen condition, we trust we can discern an outrageous distortion of religion embracing suicide and murder in God’s name, singling out as objects of a Holy war peoples of particular ethnicity and national identity—indeed, though we dare not claim ourselves innocent in this world, we do know that these grave, xenophobic distortions, these seductive religious ideologies, these inhumane ethical blasphemies must be encountered, argued over, struggled and battled with and then in humility, with courage, sought out, constrained, defanged, and in concert with others sensitive to the danger threatening everyone, we must gather the resources to prevail against them.

In other words, the Cross we set at the center of our lives illustrates on the one hand the cruelty we can dish out to one another. But on the other, it shows that through all of our capacity to misread, misunderstand, and take arms against one another, that this God can love all of us through it, and yes, that with ethical clues provided by Moses, Mohammed and Jesus we can discern and act collectively on the relative good in a world where evil dons a religious mask and mounts a xenophobic and blasphemous crusade. In reflecting on John Haynes Holmes, I believe the church could be, but is not, pacifist. The Cross of Christ recognizes a world where peace comes through the careful weighing of good and evil, of variable justices, of terrible risk, of the discontinuities and contingencies of unintended consequences, of sin—of sin—and then holds us accountable as we proceed through the murk and the muck, the propaganda and lies, the anger and cowardice, and through the tragedy and pyrrhic victories of civil war. The Cross provides the grounding for the strength and forgiveness, the compassion and endurance, the wisdom and perseverance, the tenacity and transcendent vision, the necessary humility and patience needed to move through tenuous, tortuous times. In this time we dare lift high the Cross and live by it.

II

But more, I think the Cross offers you and me a unique confidence in the integrity of our existence which is found nowhere else. I don’t know how many of you made it into this church or some other church during the course of the five or six days from September 11 to September 16. We counted hundreds of worshipers here during the week. Sunday seemed almost like Easter. What was going on? Why church? One of my friends remarked that we all felt as if we were in free fall, our footing torn out from beneath us. Where could we find safety? Where did our security lie? How could we trust anything anymore? William Safire captured the mood in a Times column on Thursday. He makes reference to the dread haunting us. “No more sense of security in skyscrapers or airplanes; no more carefree days cheering at the Superbowl; no more driving on a bridge or through a tunnel without a frission of fear that the truck ahead may be driven by a suicidal maniac. Confidence in our personal safety is supposedly a thing of the past.”

And he continues, suggesting that “this loss of our sense of security about our very lives spreads to worry about our livelihoods. As the fallout from fear curtails travel, will I lose my job near the airport, or making beds at the resort? Will the ebb of consumer confidence depress the stock market and plunge us into deep recession and snatch away the security of my retirement funds? Do I dare start a new enterprise, or even bring a new baby into this vale of tears?” Well, friends, I dare not make promises about peace and prosperity or a return to normalcy and optimism. But this I can say, that finally the foothold we can trust, the source of our ultimate confidence in this contingent world, lies not in the flag, not in the stock market, not in the Pentagon—they are all made with our hands, they are all vulnerable to free fall. The true source of our confidence and trust can be gathered at the foot of the Cross.

Talk about free fall! There goodness goes right down the drain! There the best we know gets bloodied up and dies. But yet, — and here I cannot explain, I can only confess—here we experience love we can trust; here solidarity grasps us; here, a presence undergirding, embracing, hanging onto us, reaches out and promises in the most miserable of circumstances to never let us go. As the Barbarian stood outside the gates of Rome, St. Augustine could confess: “Thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.” Indeed! Believe it. Trust it.

III

And just once more, as we come to grips with the Cross as a guarantor of grace, even as we anticipate plunging into the grosser sins of war, as we acknowledge the Cross as the guarantor of security even as we try to catch footholds elsewhere, let me conclude with one more word about this church and its commitment to lift high the Cross. You have heard me say on a number of occasions as I cross the Longfellow Bridge, I love the image of our church against the background of the steel and glass of the towers in the Back Bay. We see our own tower there. It is not a Cross as on those churches in lower Manhattan. But our tower means the same thing. It conveys a particular testimony amid the cacophony of voices echoing among the homes and storefronts, the offices and watering holes of this neighborhood and city. To lift high the Cross here, to remain true to the meaning of our tower, means we inform our children about the presence of Jesus, the radiance of his life and the goodness possible in our world. We send you for Christ’s sake into community settings where the citizens of this wonderful city wrestle with questions of health care, public education, fair housing, job opportunity, prison relief, hunger. Like those Manhattan crosses against the setting of towers in collapse, we seek to find ourselves at the juncture of urban reconciliation and restoration. We know that taking on the world for Christ’s sake means gathering here to encourage one another, to share the poetry and music of the Spheres; to witness and celebrate infants and their parents as through Baptism they plunge into the newness of the Christian life together; to find joy in intimate and hope-filled conversation with one another; to appreciate the versatility and openness of this grand edifice, providing a home not only for us, but for hundreds of men and women, aesthetically enriching our city, striking out for social justice, providing space for quiet and contemplation. We gather beneath this edifice to wrestle with the challenges and illumination of scripture, preparing each of us for courage and integrity in faith as we disperse into the world where we pray in God’s good time, all things will be made new.

So friends, on this so-called Stewardship Sunday, I offer you the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I pray you appropriate it, live it, stand up for it, identify with it, cherish it, study it, share it, support it, joyfully live and serve it. Yes, as the hymn so beautifully puts it, in all that we are, in all that we do, “Lift High the Cross, the love of Christ proclaim; Let all adore and praise that sacred name.”

Scripture Reading
I Corinthians 1:18-25

For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.