Episcopal Presiding Bishop at St. Paul’s on September 11:

["Neva Rae Fox Episcopal Church Public Affairs" <publicaffairs@episcopalchurch.org>]

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Episcopal Presiding Bishop at St. Paul's on September 11

Episcopal Presiding Bishop at St. Paul's on September 11:

"When we can love our enemies enough to see a different
possibility, our own hearts have indeed begun to heal – and God
's kingdom is coming"



Note: The video of the Presiding Bishop's sermon is available on
the home page of the Episcopal Church website, www
.episcopalchurch.org

[September 11, 2011] At St. Paul's Chapel in the shadow of Ground
Zero, Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts
Schori said at the 7:30 am service: "When we can love our
enemies enough to see a different possibility, our own hearts
have indeed begun to heal – and God's kingdom is coming

The following is the text of Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori's
sermon.

________________________________________

St. Paul's Chapel of Trinity, NY

11 Sept 2011

We gather here today in peace, yearning and hoping that peace may
come in this land and across the world.  We gather to remember
those who died violently and senselessly ten years ago today.
We gather to reflect on lives lost, families devastated, and
hopes dashed.  And still we gather in hope for hearts that will
grow and learn and change, so that no nation will study war any
more.

I saw a pickup truck a couple of weeks ago with a waving American
flag painted on its rear window.  As I walked through the
parking lot, I realized there was something written on the
tailgate – the word ISLAM stood out first.  Finally I saw the
whole sorry slogan, "everything I need to know about Islam I
learned on September 11th."  How will we change hearts that seem
closed to learning more about peace?

Are we willing to recognize and then proclaim that as children of
Abraham, Christians, Jews, and Muslims share that vision of a
healed world that Micah paints for us?  God's world is meant to
be a holy realm where nations forge tools of peace out of former
weapons, where people no longer threaten or wage violence, where
leaders learn peace instead of war – where all the world's
people "shall all sit under their own vines and under their own
fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid."  Take that piece
of Micah home and put it on your mirror where you can see it
every morning.  See if the world around you begins to change.

The Hebrew word for that vision is shalom.  Shalom, salaam, and
Islam all share the same root.  The children of Abraham share a
religious understanding that peace is only possible when our
hearts are aligned with God's intention for peace.  That is the
word that God has spoken.

When Jesus says "love your enemies and pray for your persecutors,
" he's challenging his listeners to turn and change their hearts.
He's speaking directly to people who are being victimized by
capricious power-mongers addicted to violent methods of control.
His own eventual public execution was only one example of the
terrorizing used to keep people in line.  Yet the ability to
align one's heart with peace eventually changes reality.  Jesus'
ability to say, "your will be done" and "forgive them, for they
know not what they do" changed the heart of reality.

How do we love our enemies and pray for those who do us evil?  A
friend tells the story of a man imprisoned and tortured by the
Japanese during the Second World War.  Years later, someone
asked him how he forgave his torturer.  The man said, "I
imagined him as a babe in his mother's arms."  Changed and
healed hearts seek not vengeance but greater life, even for
victimizers and dealers of terror.

Pray for those who perpetrated the violence of September 11th.
Picture their mothers holding them as babes, filled with hope
for their future.  Pray for those who have sought vengeance for
the terror of September 11th or earlier terrors, and pray for
all the torturers and terrorists among us.  Imagine them sitting
in a vineyard, feasting in the late afternoon sun, laughing and
making music with former foes, in a land where no one is afraid
any more.  Pray for families and friends of those who died ten
years ago, and envision them as living memorials, bringing
greater life and healing in this world, building peace among
strangers.

Can we recognize the hopes that all parents have for their
children?  Are we willing to look for the reflection of those
infants on the faces of our enemies?  Can we recognize the
common desire of all the world's faithful peoples for peace in
their own day?  Will we claim the same human yearning in our own
hearts?  Those are all choices we can make – they are not
accidents.  When we can love our enemies enough to see a
different possibility, our own hearts have indeed begun to heal
– and God's kingdom is coming.

Amen.  So be it.  May our hearts be turned toward our enemies.
Shalom, salaam, may your peaceful kingdom come, O Lord, in our
hearts and in this world.  Inshallah.  God does will it, for
this is the only road to peace.

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori

Presiding Bishop and Primate

The Episcopal Church



On the web:

Episcopal Presiding Bishop at St. Paul's on September 11: "When
we can love our enemies enough to see a different possibility,
our own hearts have indeed begun to heal – and God's kingdom is
coming"

[http://www.episcopalchurch.org/newsline_129729_ENG_HTM.htm]

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