The planes hit on Tuesday morning. I had to teach a Christian Worship class at 8:00 on Wednesday morning.
The Twin Towers had been reduced to a mountain of smoldering rubble. My lesson plan had been reduced to an ember, a single glowing question: “What shall Sunday’s worship look like?”
Sundays came around every week, and most of my students had responsibilities of some sort for their congregation’s worship. That made the course title relevant and each class period’s focus, at least in theory, immediately applicable (or not).
But on this Sunday, this course and class session would be tested. Maybe even the whole seminary project would be tested. Will what we taught “stick to the wall,” even in the time of shared national crisis?
I turned on the lights in the First Baptist Church, Waco classroom, where Truett Seminary was still meeting. I wrote the questions on the board, but I was not in charge that morning.
“Holy Spirit,” I prayed. “This is big; You are big; the students’ expectations are big. Fear and uncertainty are big. I am small, our nation seems smaller now, and the students will come in, they will read the board and then begin to read me. Much is on trial here. Lord have mercy. Christ, have mercy.”
The invincibility of the continental United States has been shaken; how about the invincibility of divine protection? The United States was wounded, but the kingdom of God wasn’t.
Can these seminarians bear and communicate this “news,” navigate these questions in worship? Where was God Tuesday morning?
Will God be embarrassed to show up on Sunday morning? Why had God been silent and inactive?
We now would see with certainty that worship is theology on the half-shell, raw for the chewing and swallowing.
Attendance, we opined, should be up on Sunday out of curiosity, if nothing else. Maybe out of fear.
Maybe to put the pastor and worship leader to the same test that the professor faces this stark Wednesday morning. Maybe to put religion and faith to the same “break-the-glass” test as seminary education.
Pulpit and pew will hold the same question in equally shaky hands: “What shall Sunday’s worship service look like?” Will we learn something new about God? That’s a little unnerving.
How big must a catastrophe be before God steps in to prevent or to tame it? The question crumbled with the towers. For 9/11 revealed the critical mass immensity of “Immanuel,” God with us and of Christ in us and of the Spirit riding our every breath.
The students entered. “Help us” was written across every face. “Help us help them” had not yet occurred to most of them.
It was my job on that morning to reveal to them the new and greater weight of their preparation. It was my job to help them grasp the reality that worship is something far more than they had imagined.
I don’t remember details of the class discussion that heavy morning. I do remember the students’ openness to and expectation that the Holy Spirit would pump oxygen back into our day, our class, our lungs, our hope.
We humbled our hearts, our ears and our imaginations to receive guidance from the Holy Spirit. Sunday would be like their first funeral, but on a national, even global, “real-life level.”
Fear before spiritual leadership could now be discussed openly. It was being experienced corporately, in real time and with a forced freshness of faith.
Simple faith did not fear ridicule. It was what was left in the heart now that all other clever and clichéd religion had crumbled in New York City.
Faith was real, newly strengthened and it had come to us. We didn’t have to dig through sad debris to find it.
Where was God on that Tuesday morning? With everyone who feared for their life, who willingly risked their life, who gasped at the fragility of life.
Where was the love of Christ? With everyone who lived the terror and with everyone who could not believe the news.
Jesus wept…for the victims, for the families, for the brave first responders, for the nation, for the world. And yes, I believe Jesus wept for the hardened, wayward hearts of the perpetrators.
We learned that afresh and anew on 9/11. We learned more about what worship should look like on Sunday.
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Terry W. York, D.M.A. is Emeritus Professor of Christian Ministry and Church Music, George W. Truett Theological Seminary, Baylor University.