DISRUPTION

On Sunday, September 11, we are disrupting our regular schedule in order to gather with our community to reflect on what has happened over the course of these past 15 years since the terrorists attacked our country. The community gathering will be on the Green, weather permitting, in our Sanctuary, in case of rain, at 9 am, followed by a community service project in our Auditorium at 10 am. Central will hold one worship service at 11 am in our Sanctuary. We know that this is a disruption to our normal schedule.

And that seems to me to be right. Fifteen years ago, on September 11, 2001, life was severely disrupted. That beautiful Tuesday morning, I had on my schedule a meeting with a Buddhist monk visiting from Japan and an installation service for the officers of the Presbyterian Women in the church that I was serving in Scarsdale, New York. There was a late afternoon meeting about the budget for 2002 on my calendar that day, ending the day with an evening meeting of the Mission Committee. None of those things happened. Instead, we spent the day in that church on the phones, frantically trying to find members and neighbors who worked in Manhattan. We held a prayer service that evening and opened our large gathering room just a few hundred feet from the train station for folks to gather and ran to the platform every time we heard a train coming to experience joyful reunion, deepening anxiety. That entire day was disrupted by the terrorist attacks, as was the entire week that followed, as life has been ever since then in some ways, for some more severely than for others.

And so, we are disrupting our normal schedule this Sunday, September 11 so that we can gather with our community to reflect on what has happened over the course of these past 15 years, because in the disruption, there’s been a powerful lesson. As I see it, that lesson is that we need to put each other first, ahead of our schedules, ahead of our comfortable routines, ahead of our religious traditions, even. Which I think, actually, is what Jesus taught, when he confronted those who tried to use God to make people seem to be less important. “The sabbath”—that central religious celebration in Jesus’ religious tradition—“The sabbath was made for humankind,” Jesus told them, “not humankind for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27). This Sunday, I hope you join us as we honor the disrupter we profess to follow, and change what we do, and put our neighbors—all of them, no matter who—first.

Pastor Don Steele