It has been eighteen years, more than a generation, since September 11th 2001.
We are reminded to never forget. That has been the refrain and the litany of this past week. Never forget. To always remember. How do we do that?
In the shadow of such dark history it is a good time to be reminded just why we study the gospel and shape and form our humanity with the gospel.
It is about much more than raising moral children and being productive citizens.
What we are doing is repenting of the violence of false idols, turning away from the golden calves that destroy our humanity, and turning toward the redemptive power of the image of God. x2
Sept 11th is a memorial to the dangers of false idols and the false logic of violence that they justify.
How to confront evil without becoming evil is the Gospel question.
That is why we have Sunday School, naming the idols that destroy our humanness and created-ness, and worshiping the image of God that redeems all creation.
It might seem cute and innocuous, but Sunday School is about training for God’s revolution, a revolution of humility, of love, of servant hood, of forgiveness, of modesty, kindness and radical hospitality to the stranger.
I have friends who spent weeks and months sifting through the devastation of the World Trade Centers, the Pentagon, and that field in Pennsylvania. I have heard their stories of searching for fragments of human flesh to honor, carefully sifting the burnt earth, to redeem the violence and degradation that was endured.
How we honor our dead says everything about how we live life.
That image of searching for the lost fragments of human flesh to redeem and honor, is an image of God.
We see that image in Jesus’ two short parables in Luke’s Gospel today.
We see God’s image as the shepherd searching the wilderness, and the woman sweeping, holding up a lamp, going over every nook and cranny searching for the lost.
Then gathering friends and rejoicing over finding what was lost.
Searching, finding, gathering, rejoicing: that is the image of God that redeems our humanity, that pulls us back together, raising us into a new creation. In remembering the scattered fragments of our humanity, we are re-membered.
Searching, finding, gathering, rejoicing. That is the good news of God.
We are all lost sinners, both victims and perpetrators of the power of sin, the golden calves that trample us down. God searches us out, pulls us back together and breathes new life into our breathless souls. Raising us up from the burnt dust of the earth.
The apostle Paul, called himself the chief of sinners, the foremost of sinners, God using his fallen -ness and violence as proof of the power that saves and restores. If even Paul can be saved, if even Paul can repent and forsake his abusive ways, if even Paul can change then the rest of can as well. That is the gospel according to Paul.
Jesus is the shepherd calling out in the wilderness.
Jesus is the light searching the dark places.
Jesus is the woman meticulously sweeping and searching.
Jesus is the re-membering of our forgotten humanity.
This is the Gospel and it is a gospel of tremendous power.
The good news of God searching out the broken fragments of our lost humanity and bringing us back to life with rejoicing.
This is who we are about, the one who was broken so that we may be gathered back together. Searching, finding, gathering, rejoicing. x2
Never forget.
We are being re-membered.