9/11 and The Next Great Awakening
(or, “Nic at Night”)

Psalm 121
John 3:1-17


Rockville United Church
Rev. Dr. Duncan Newcomer

February 17 2008

Perhaps you have seen, as I have, a lot of the art work done after 9/11 -- art that tries to picture or interpret that unforgettable series of events. Also, I’ve read some poems. I have not really wanted to read any of the novels that dwell on the terror of 9/11. For me, so far, nothing imaginative or creative has been able to do what art is supposed to do: give rise to a new symbolic consciousness out of, from, the immediate data of our experience.

Since other catastrophes and tragedies of historic proportion have eventually given rise to great and transforming art, the Crucifixion of Christ being an example, then why not 9/11? I think it is because the event needs a story. No artistic representation of the Crucifixion of Christ would raise or transform any one without the story of Jesus also being known. The story of Jesus Christ frames any and all art about Christ.

But we have yet to have a story, know the story, of 9/11. “Story” is more than a report. And certainly the story that our present government cobbled together failed to reach into the truths of 9/11 and raise and transform a nation and the world about those truths. And just to call something “evil,” even when it is, is not a story.

We are still, largely, ignorant of the human drama, suffering and motivation behind this event—on our now “enemy’s” side and on our side of this event. And so we are left with almost no new meaning, and only endless video replays of the events. And a replay is not art. Art may need to be spectacular, but a spectacle by itself says nothing, at least nothing beyond itself.

And yet within the past year, in my daily life, and I wonder if this is true for you as well, I’ve begun to hear snippets of story lines about 9/11. And this story line—there most probably are other story lines that will make up this epic, the stories I’m beginning to put together are the stories of the lives of young people who were formed by the events of that terrorist attack. Kids that were 6 are now 12-13. Kids that were 11 are now 17-18. Kids that were 16 are now 22-23. And those who were 21 are now 27-28.

And what is the story that they are telling? I believe it is that life is serious. Life is very serious and it is crucial that people around the world care for each other. I believe that that is their story!

I know a 9th grader who has already been to New Orleans with his church youth group and his mom to help with Katrina clean-up. The other day he went on line and googled something like, “social service needs in Argentina” and now has joined up with a little foundation called “Project Patagonia” and plans to go to a village he located himself this summer. His older brother, soon after 9/11, suddenly became interested in international relations. He’s now often in China. His conversion to a serious, caring life almost went unnoticed by his parents. His values, after all, seemed to reflect theirs. But when the slow and steady and intense focus on the state of the world continued to drive his choices, they began to connect the dots. This serious caring about the world was not a phase, a hobby. It was, it is, even more than a Peace Corps tour of duty time-out. No, it’s a driving passion, a blue fire. It’s just how he sees his life in the world.

What astonishes me is how happy and normal such serious actors for care can be. These are not joyless, dour missionary stereotypes, but rather just care-bound youths who think making a difference is important and serious business.

I have a friend who does college counseling in New England for private schools, called therapeutic schools. He helps young people who have crashed and burned in every educational effort they’ve tried. These schools of his are in Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. He says he keeps coming across kids from Rockville, Maryland, oddly enough. And he also tells me that a “noteworthy number of these students have a big 9/11 story to their lives.”

Now I’m not presenting hard social science here, but the anecdotes are adding up. I talked with a woman last week who told me of her 19 year old daughter who goes to Catholic University. She also has started a foundation for her debutante-prom-going girl friends to donate their boxed and stored party gowns to children in villages in India where they can be remade into nice new clothes for younger kids. Now this 19 year old also has joined the army to be a nurse, getting a lot of education paid for, and she helps the chaplain at Catholic U. plan the fall student retreats where, when her mother went to C.U., about 10 kids a year went. Last year 150 students went on the chaplain’s religious weekend retreat. And just to round off the stereotypes here, this mother told me her daughter could win any beauty contest in the country.

So what is happening here?

I would say it is a great awakening—and just like the earlier great awakenings in our religious history, it’s about spiritual values, spiritual life choices, and immediately-felt political action and change.

Now most historical turning points are about freedom: The American Revolution, the Civil War, the French Revolution, Civil Rights. But usually something violent, a war, is a part of these freedom-making events. Yet spiritual great awakenings don’t create violence. They react to violence.

When congregational ministers preached the gospel in western Massachusetts in the 1730s and 40s, they were surrounded by what we could call violent terrorists. Native American Indians would even storm a church service and kidnap or kill several worshippers. The terror in New England caused by the French and Indian War was real. Read, if you can, James Fennimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans. But out of the First Great Awakening in the 1750s (ten years later) came devoted, serious activists who started colleges throughout New England and into Ohio. Religious colleges. And whatever we think now of their cultural imperialism, that spiritual great awakening took the story of Jesus to Hawaii and to China.

So what, you may ask? After all I’ve promised to get us out on time today. Well, this is the so what. We here are the mature veterans and keepers of the religious and spiritual and advocacy values these young people are pursuing fervently on their own.

Many people here could tell stories to these young people that would be hero-stories for them to hear. Many people here have built a very valuable life based on real spiritual and religious values and principles. And rather than looking at us as square’s-ville old fogies, these young people would see many here as role models, seasoned leaders for a better world in the name of a spirit we call God.

A church is a community of memory where the elders can still remember what the young people still need to learn.

But they will do it—these serious world changing youths—with or without us. Now there is some spectrum in life which we could measure this way: on one end we’d have “sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll.” On the other end we’d have “poverty, chastity and obedience.”

I think there is a happy middle place called the progressive Christian church.

It is a place where we could meet these young people and they could meet us. But the other day I heard a story that calls out to us to change ourselves, and we will. We will.

A woman was talking here about a 20 something year old man she’d seen at church once. The relative of that man said to her: well he liked it here but he said there was no one here his age, no one here in his age group.

Well before 9/11 that was just the hard truth for most so-called mainline Protestant congregations. Because, we thought, kids didn’t vote, kids didn’t care about social issues, kids didn’t care about spirit, God, prayer, or scripture—or so we feared. So we thought, why reach out to young people with our serious religious values, beliefs, and missions, just to have them laugh at us. Well, what I’m beginning to see is that young people aren’t laughing at the values and the spirit we care about anymore. They aren’t laughing at life. They are happy and smiling but they are the new serious lovers of the world. They know how to make a difference, they may not even know why they care.

I believe we do know. And that could help us guide them, as they lead us. I believe that we know that out of evil comes God. Out of evil comes God. That’s the story of the cross. That may be the story, or one valuable one, from the events of that one September day. A day when something very superficial got knocked out of our society and something very valuable and serious and good touched the lives of the young ones who witnessed it.

I believe we are like Nicodemus. We are older, religiously established leaders. But we have caught sight of a spirit that changes people’s lives—as if they have been reborn, and we want to venture out into the night to ask this young spirit-filled Jesus person—how do you do what you do? And can it happen to me too, even at my age; can I be, as you say, reborn?

Amen.