Six Years and a Day

Yesterday was the sixth anniversary of 9/11. The Cathedral became quiet, stood still and noticed. The noon eucharist was celebrated in the Great Choir, rather than in St. Martin's chapel as it usually is. What this means, to those who have never been in St.John the Divine, is that we who attended were not nestled in a small room, but rather gathered in a space that is has a larger-than-human scale. One sits in the choir, under the high vaulted ceiling, and feels very small, like a child.

The congregation included uniformed firefighters and policemen, and families and friends of some who died  under that day's clear blue sky. Together we listened to Revelation 21:2-7, about the holy city, the new Jerusalem, and heard God saying he will be with us, and will take away our mourning and crying and pain, and he will wipe away all our tears. As one does for a child.

Then we heard the gospel of John (11:21-27): Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him." Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again." Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise up again in the resurrection on the last day." Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?" She said to him, "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world."

I had noticed, as the liturgy began, that a young woman was sitting behind me with her two small children, a boy and a little girl with a feathery voice. When, in the reading, the question was asked Do you believe this?, that little voice behind me said, "Yes."

This morning I reread the sermon Tim Keller preached last year at the 9/11 memorial (full text is here). He quoted J.R.R. Tolkien: "In the last book of The Lord of the Rings, Sam Gamgee wakes up, thinking that everything is lost and discovering instead that all his friends were around him, he cries out: "Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead! Is everything sad going to come untrue?"

I can hear that small voice I heard behind me yesterday.

Yes.

Comments

[Susan Jaffer]

These are beautiful posts. My dad lived at St. John the Divine when he was a small boy. His parents were opera singers, and at some point when he was little he became a choir school resident while they went back on the road. He had a head of blonde curls and a clear boy-soprano voice, and he led the youngest choir into the church. He was born in 1903, so you can see how long ago that was.

I can hear the "feathery voice" of the little girl, and in the same way I can hear my father's angelic soprano . . . although by the time I knew him, he was a baritone.

You write so well.