Sermons After Sept. 11

According to the Rev. Ed Schroeder, Sept. 11 left all Christian preachers with an enduring message to keep delivering: Repent, one and all, for God is clearly angry with America.

“The only way to fight when God is your enemy is to repent,” said Schroeder, a retired Lutheran theologian. “God is merciful to those who repent. It says so through the whole Bible. But if the imperial injustice persists, God finally presses the button: out.”

That might be true, said the Rev. Paul Sangree, but he’s not about to preach it from his pulpit at Bethany Congregational Church in Foxboro, Mass. That’s because the tragedy hit close to home when hijackers took the life of the church’s head deacon.

“I think of what Ed said about this being God’s judgment, but if you’ve lost someone beloved of the church, a very strong Christian, on Sept. 11, then it’s a little bit harder to preach that,” Sangree said. “Would you say to the widow, ‘God took your husband as a wake-up call to America?’ It’s possible that this was God’s wake-up call to America, but I don’t feel comfortable saying that to the family.”

This exchange reflects one of many struggles Christian preachers face in 2002. With so many questions lingering from Sept. 11, three denominations brought 70 preachers together in late April at Acton Congregational Church to examine what they can--or must--say when the faithful gather in the long shadow of that fateful day.

What emerged from liberals and conservatives in Lutheran, Roman Catholic and United Church of Christ traditions was agreement that America has ample cause to repent for sins ranging from pleasure-worship to exploitation of Third World nations.

But preachers also found common ground on a second point: Those who preach repentance will surely face the people’s wrath for seemingly blaming the victim.

Preachers in attendance disagreed about whether to construe Sept. 11 in hindsight as God’s act of judgment to spur repentance.

Schroeder reminded the group that in the Bible, God uses Assyrians and other enemies of Israel to punish and inspire change, adding that God is doing so again today: “It’s ‘apocalypse now’ after 9/11.”

On the other side, the Rev. Scott Spencer said that to attribute terrorism to God would “engender a lot of anger” at his Rehoboth, Mass., Congregational Church. Instead, he said, “I went into my funeral mode” and preached comfort for two months.

Now, eight months after the incident, church attendance has generally leveled off, and preachers see their people living at times “as if nothing ever happened.” Such normality among the flock is disconcerting to shepherds, they say, because it seems that no incident of any magnitude can cause Americans to turn from their ways of overconsumption, indifference to poverty or unfettered self-indulgence.