New York: Night, September 11, 2007

A reflection by Bishop Stephen Bouman, MNYS

This morning I drove along the West Side Highway toward a Dean’s retreat on Staten Island. Nearing downtown in the dreary rain there were people lining the highway with signs: “never forget,” “to all the heroes,” “remember my brother Anthony,” “give peace a chance,” “don’t turn your backs on the sickness of our heroes,” you get the idea. They were few and wet and they tore me apart as I lurched in traffic past the huge scar in our landscape. A couple of days ago the New York Times had an article about the divide in the psyche of our metropolis in which some are saying “enough with the obsession with something that happened six years ago” and others saying “we will never get over this.” I’m somewhere in the middle, but not today.

I drove past the sacred ground where fifty one parents of children in our Lutheran schools are buried, where so many other dear souls, some friends to me and our family, many others linked to our Lutheran communion in six degrees of separation or the person who used to sit next to you in the pew, await the great getting up morning of the harvest of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. This past Friday evening Lutheran Disaster Response New York hosted its annual dinner for our friends and partners in this ministry. This is all of you, the Lutheran family. You are the only faith based group still fully attending to the wave effects of this disaster. I had a moment of pastoral conversation and prayer with several dear friends who are leaders of the associations of the families of the victims of 9-11 in New York. Each of them lost a loved one. I am their bishop and pastor because the Lutheran community across the country and around the world responded so generously and faithfully. Without the support of LDRNY there would be no family associations today. We said thank you to case managers, donors, FEMA directors (who really did a helluva job!), camp Noah directors, therapists, and so many more.

As I drove past the people bearing their signs along the West Side Highway I was remembering my first journey to Ground Zero, along the same highway six years ago. It was days after the attacks and President Benke and I were taking Bishop Anderson and President Kieschneck to that obscene wreckage. We had a police escort and were with an FBI chaplain and all along the highway to hell were throngs of citizens of New York, holding signs hailing heroes and applauding every fire truck, rescue vehicle, police car, uniformed person, with something like hosannas entering Jerusalem. As I passed Ground Zero in the rain I thought about the wars fought, the Strangers hunted, haunted and blamed, the global open window of solidarity slammed shut by unilateral hubris and I confess to a moment of hopeless anger and sorrow.

The retreat with our deans on Staten Island was wonderful. I had to leave twice to do radio interviews. As I shared stories from Ground Zero, especially with some wonderful evangelicals at station WORD in Pittsburgh I was again captured by an overwhelming gratitude to the thousands whose prayers, support and solidarity in Jesus made this bearable. And then when I put the phone down and took a breath my heart went out to those dealing with tornados in Wisconsin, Katrina, the Tsunami, and places of hurt and hope all over the world, in a time when attention span is short and in which politicians and others commodify and take advantage of such communal vulnerability.

So anyway, after the retreat we held our synod observation at Messiah Lutheran Church in Staten Island, where a son of the congregation, Eric Olsen, a firefighter, was remembered. He had just gone off duty in the morning when he heard about the attacks and did a u turn with his truck and barreled down the same highway I was on today to do what he was born to do. And he was killed when the walls came tumbling down. Gary Squire is the pastor and he preached a sermon which lifted up heroes and then delivered the gospel: our hero died and rose again so that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Around the corner from the church is Fresh Kills, a waste site where most of the debris, and the remains of children of God were brought. We began the liturgy outside at a flagpole dedicated to the memory of a son the congregation who lost his life in World War II. The flag was given in memory of Eric Olson, hero of September 11, 2001. As the flag was raised, then lowered to half mast we sang the national anthem. It seemed so appropriate. Dozens of boy scouts from the church’s troop were the color guard. Fire trucks and fire fighters ringed the assembly. At the eucharist we also prayed for peace and confessed the hubris of nationalism and our inability to link our sorrow with that of the rest of the world. We lit candles, sang hymns from the heart. Folks from throughout the island showed up, honored that their bishop was with them, and shared many stories. One woman, president of one of our congregations, told me about her brother, whose office was probably the first impact of the first plane. She told me they found his wrist. As she held her wrist telling me this we just embraced and cried.

It is almost September 12 now as I write this. And what I am feeling along with the sadness is an overwhelming sense of gratitude. Gratitude to my grandfather, a pastor, who told me when we were fishing in Wisconsin when I was a little boy that “you know, Stephen, the only death you have to fear is already behind you in your baptism,” and then went on fishing. That came to me the first time at Ground Zero six years ago. We are all already buried: “do you not know that you have been buried with Christ in baptism, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the father, so you to may walk in newness of life.” Gratitude for the twenty million dollars sent from across the ELCA and beyond, so that we could still be in ministry of comfort and renewal even today when many are saying “get over it.” Gratitude for the sturdy mooring of the Lutheran narrative which allows us to live in tension and ambiguity without easy answers but with the enduring presence of the crucified and risen Christ. Gratitude for what Peter DeVries (in his novel The Silence of the Lambs”) has called “the long mourner’s bench on which we sit, each linked in the eternal pity.”

Six years ago our hearts were broken. Open.

Stephen