Today has been heavy, hard for many of my friends; weighty for the rest of us. We’re remembering a moment when this nation changed, when the world order changed and neither for the better – at least not that we can see with the light given us today.
We took a long moment of silence and reflection in Morning Prayer as we gathered around the altar in diocesan house. We started spontaneously sharing stories; where we were, what we remembered, what the impact had been on that ominously beautiful September day 25 years ago. We remembered people we lost, friends who have never been the same, and a sense of trust in the future has not returned.
Lunch was more of the same. I sat with a group of friends outdoors, and we listened as the bells were tolled all across the city of Providence, marking the anniversary. And we started sharing memories. And there was silence, though this silence was unbidden, a response to the stories and the memories that had been evoked by the bells.
In my office, there’s a picture that was painted by a friend and former parishioner at Trinity Cathedral in Phoenix, Arizona, Vada Smith Roseberry. Vada was an artist’s artist. She had an extraordinary eye for color, shape and texture. But the things she created weren’t simply beautiful because of the technical mastery she demonstrated; they were beautiful and moving because of the emotion that she communicated in them.
Over the years she gifted my family with a number of her watercolors. (We have a for-real gallery in one of the hallways of our home filled with her art.)
But towards the end of my time in Arizona at the Cathedral and towards the end of her life, I got an unexpected phone call from her husband Gerry. Vada wanted to see me: immediately. Could I come right away?
I misunderstood what was happening and grabbed anointing oil and a stole and walked down the block as fast as I could.
When I got to her bedside, there she was, curled in on herself and smaller than I had seen her in weeks, but still filling the room with presence. She gestured toward a wall, and Gerry explained that she had decided to part with a favorite painting of hers, one that she had painted not long after the events we’re remembering today.
She and Gerry told me the story behind the painting. After the collapse of the towers and the emotional devastation that followed she was filled with a need to see “Ground Zero” in Lower Manhattan. She and Gerry had flown across the country and somehow managed to talk their way through the barriers to stand in the midst of the rescue workers who had turned St. Paul’s Chapel, an Episcopal Church that was just 100 yards away from the base of the two towers. The darkness, the dust and destruction were devastating to her. But she told me, as she explained the painting, that she found a profound message of hope there too. It was the banners that the church hung on the church gates and the flags of our nation and our church that flew above them.
What she saw in that moment became the painting above. It was a painting she had painted for herself, one that she looked at from her bed as she fought a long battle with cancer. It was a reminder for her that even when things were terrible, when there was no good and happy ending, there was still hope and courage to be found.
She found her courage in those banners. That courage helped her keep moving and living – and creating more art – in the years that she had left. And that courage is what inspires me today as I remember her story on this 25th anniversary.
Things changed that morning. They changed for the worse. Maybe we’ll get back to something like we thought of as normal before that morning, maybe not. Not all stories have happy endings. But there is always joy to be found. And courage to be shared.
May we continue to find both in our midst as we strive to be faithful to our call – both as a church and as a nation. That would be an excellent way to mark the day.
It’s August and that means the best part of the summer is upon us. (I’m a big fan of the latter part of summer.) I’m going to be off for much of this month, and otherwise occupied with some weekend events for the rest.
The Gospel reading for this week has a parable and its interpretation once again – just like last week. And once again, the reading skips over part of the narrative that St. Matthew is constructing. Given that it can seem like parables are just a funny sort of rhetorical device that rabbis used in Jesus’ day to teach their disciples, whereas in truth, the hard work of trying to unpack the meaning or meanings of a parable is how the path of wisdom was shown to the hearers.
This week’s Gospel reading skips over the, to my mind, most interesting part of the reading. In between the parable of the sower and its explanation is a vignette where the disciples take Jesus aside apart from the crowd and push to know why it is that he teaches in parables rather than speaking the truth plainly.
This Sunday’s Gospel (Matthew 10:40–42) is only three verses long, but it quietly rearranges the way most of us keep score. We’re trained to read résumés: titles, degrees, the things a person earns and accumulates over a lifetime. And we tend to assume God reads us the same way, tallying up what we’ve managed to make of ourselves.
We read the Bible as though we are always meant to be focused on Isaac, the chosen one, the child of the promise, the one the story is about, the one who is the ancestor of Israel. But this story is also, quietly, about the one who gets sent away, the one who exits the story at this point in Moses’ account of his people. God says something remarkable to Abraham: do not be distressed about the boy. As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring.
This Gospel, The Gospel, is not about the people whom God will accept, who God wants to accept, who are outside the walls right now, waiting to hear the Good News. It’s as much about us, the good people who have come to worship God. We are the descendants of Gentiles, we are not the Children of Abraham, but because of God’s love and compassion, and in spite of everything that we have done, we are now adopted into the family of the insider, we are the Daughter, the child of God.