Commemorating the 25th Anniversary of September 11, 2001

O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, our shelter in the stormy blast, and our eternal home. In the name of God. Amen.

It was a beautiful early autumn day. The air was crisp; the sky was robin egg blue. People after summer vacations had returned to work. Kids were in school; and I was in my home office working when, a little after nine o’clock, the phone rang and it was my mother. “Jan, do you have the TV on?” I replied no. “Turn it on. Our nation is under attack. Stay safe.” Then I like so many around the country and frankly, around the world, turned the TV on, only to watch the horrific events of that day unfold. Unimaginable death and destruction. Extraordinary courage. It was all so surreal. Eventually, I had to take our Labrador retriever out for a walk and I heard F-16s flying low over my head, scouring the skies around Washington.

A little bit later that day, the phone rang again, and this time it was the then Episcopal Bishop of Washington, Jane Holmes Dixon. “Jan, I want to get a message to the President to offer the Cathedral to hold a service for the nation.” Well, of course, we didn’t know where the President was. You may recall that he was being flown around the country from safe location to safe location. The Bishop called me because she knew that I’d served on the senior staff in George Herbert Walker Bush’s White House and that I had friends in the current White House. But I didn’t know how to reach anyone. But then I remembered I had volunteered on the presidential transition and had a White House directory that had some pretty important fax numbers in it, which will tell you how long ago this was that we were using fax machines!

I knew that even though the White House had been evacuated, there would be some staff there monitoring the situation. So, I told the Bishop to write out her invitation and to fax it to a particular number that I knew would be monitored. Three days later, this cathedral hosted that service for the nation and truly the global community.

I was here. Perhaps many of you were as well. In so many ways, the Cathedral­, chartered by an act of Congress to be a great church for national purposes, a house of prayer for all people, and a spiritual home for the nation, lived deeply and fully into its calling. On that day, this place served as a sacred crucible for the grief and fear of a nation. I recall Billy Graham preaching on Psalm 46: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” And I remember President Bush, serving not only as our commander-in-chief, but our comforter-in-chief. He said some important things on that day:

“It is said that adversity introduces us to ourselves. This is true of a nation as well. In this trial, we have been reminded, and the world has seen, that our fellow Americans are generous and kind, resourceful and brave. We see our national character in rescuers working past exhaustion; in long lines of blood donors, in thousands of citizens who have asked to work and serve in any way possible. And we have seen our national character in eloquent acts of sacrifice. Inside the World Trade Center, one man who could have saved himself stayed until the end at the side of his quadriplegic friend. A beloved priest died giving the last rites to a firefighter. Two office workers, finding a disabled stranger, carried her down sixty-eight floors to safety. A group of men drove through the night from Dallas to Washington to bring skin grafts for burn victims. In these acts and in many others, Americans showed a deep commitment to one another and an abiding love for our country. Today, we feel what Franklin Roosevelt called the warm courage of national unity. This is a unity of every faith, and every background.”¹

Today is a day for us to remember. I remember that unity and sacrifice. For those of you who are old enough, do you recall how you felt? We all have our own stories, and it’s so important for us to share them. Of course, they weren’t just about acts in this country. Our NATO allies, our friends across the globe were there for us and probably no country more so than our beloved neighbors to the north—the good people of Canada. This is a personal story for me. You’ll remember that all the flights were grounded. For people coming across the Atlantic who were already halfway here, those planes landed in Newfoundland, Canada—most of them in Gander. Two of the people on one of those planes were what I call my second parents, John and Marie Unkle, whose daughter Patty is one of my dearest friends and a beloved member of this cathedral congregation.

The people of Gander—7000 of them—welcomed 7000 strangers. They opened their homes. They opened their schools. They provided places for people to sleep. They provided food, showers, and clothes. They embodied what Jesus means when he says, love your neighbor as yourself. I will never forget the kindness of our Canadian friends, and I will be eternally grateful.

Memories are important. A recent Harvard Health article I read underscored this point:

“In many ways, our memories shape who we are. They make up our internal biographies, the stories we tell ourselves about what we’ve done with our lives. They tell us who we’re connected to, who we’ve touched during our lives, and who has touched us. In short, our memories are crucial to the essence of who we are as human beings.”²

I speak about memory fully recognizing that one third of Americans living today have no memory of 9/11. They weren’t born yet or were too young. Telling our stories is so important because we witnessed at that time that seeing and embracing our common humanity, even with all our differences, made all the difference.

On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, this cathedral had a full weekend planned—offering healing, hope, compassion. But a few weeks before the commemoration, the earthquake happened and the Cathedral was closed. Our concert was transferred to the Kennedy Center. Our Vigil and Sunday Eucharist were transferred to Washington Hebrew Congregation. Let me repeat that: Washington Hebrew Congregation. Our interfaith relationships were and are so important.

One aspect of that anniversary remembrance was providing a pastoral presence to victims’ families who had come to be with us. As a priest at the Cathedral, it was my sheer humbling privilege to do that. There were so many stories shared by the many people who came. But there’s a mother and son who made a profound impact on my life. The son was just two when his father died in one of the towers. So, he was twelve when I met him. He and his mother evidenced such resilience and strength—leaning into their faith—that I was so humbled by their example. There was so much on my heart as we were approaching this twenty-fifth anniversary, that I decided to try and reach the mother if I could.

It was a miracle—she still has the same AOL email address! I wrote to her. She quickly and lovingly wrote back to me. I had written, “Your son must be twenty-seven now, and I’ve been thinking so much about you.” She admitted that this anniversary celebration is really hard, and I know that it has to be. They’ve been living a happy life as best they can to honor her husband’s life. She’s so proud of her son. He has a good job, a beautiful apartment, and most importantly to this proud mother, he has his own relationship with God—active in a Bible study and has a church of his own.

She included a phone number on her reply to me, so I picked up the phone and called her. I wondered, “I know that you’ve avoided any media interaction, but could I share a bit of your story with people today?” She said yes. Then I asked if there was anything that she would want to share with the people gathered today? She hesitated for a moment, and then replied, “Well, yes.” When she spoke at her husband’s funeral, she talked about the importance of loving one another, not hating anyone. She had already witnessed firsthand Islamophobia raising its ugly head. The message is important to her: that we love one another; that there is no room for hate. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. memorably said, “I’ve decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

That brings us to today. In our remembrance, we think back on how united we were on 9/11. I ask you to reflect on that unity and sacrifice that we also experienced in the early days of Covid-19, when young people reached out to elderly neighbors asking if they could get them groceries or help in other ways. And when medical personnel on the frontlines risked and, in many cases, lost their own lives to save others. We’ve seen and felt and experienced what that unity and love and self-sacrifice is like.

Now, more than ever, I think we’re called to choose a better way, particularly in the face of the divisions in this country and our frayed relationships around the world. We know how to do this. Jesus has taught us the way. At the tenth anniversary service, Dean Sam Lloyd reflected:
“Ten years after that terrible day people are being called to live out their faith in a new global context, plumbing the depths of their own tradition while embracing with humility the vast variety of God’s world. And they are being challenged to live by the deepest convictions in all their traditions that compassion, peace, and caring for the other are at the heart of what it means to be human.”³

Friends, we all have choices to make with our lives and how we live them in the circumstances that we encounter. We can make choices to reflect that love that surpasses all understanding. As Gandhi is purported to have said, be the change you want to see in the world. On this day of all days, remember what that looks like. Remember how it feels. Be the change you want to see.

Compassion, not cruelty
Mercy, not malice
Generosity, not greed
Kind, not callous
Benevolent, not brutish
Reconciliation, not revenge
Love, not hate

Bishop Curry famously said, “If it’s not about love, it’s not about God.” I think the best way that we can honor the memory of those we lost on 9/11, and in the years since, is to choose a better way. We’ve done it before. We can do it again. And with God’s help, we will. Amen.

¹Remarks by the President: President George W. Bush. https://cathedral.org/sermons/remarks-by-the-president-president-george-w-bush/
² https://www.health.harvard.edu/topics/memory
³ Samuel T. Lloyd III, Sermons from the National Cathedral: Soundings for the Journey (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 130.