The Reverend Dr. J. Barrie Shepherd recently
retired as pastor of The First Presbyterian Church in New York City. Prior to that, he was
pastor of the Swarthmore Presbyterian Church in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. He is a
well-known poet, writer and speaker, and the author of 17 books.
Scripture: Psalm 23; I Corinthians 15:12-19
You know, by the time you get way up into this pulpit you half expect thunder,
lightning, and an angel handing you two stone tablets. Let me first express my thanks to
Barbara and Mark and their splendid staff, to my host families the Clarks and the Owens,
and to so many of you for your friendly hospitality.
Last summer, when I accepted this assignment, I had in mind for this All Saints' Sunday
something related to the historic communion of saints.
Alternatively, with the Covenant Network conference here this past week, I considered
using this moment to advocate approval of Amendment A. And by the way, I do hope we can
finally, next June, become a Church that treats all its believers as equally unworthy of
God's grace - that WOULD affirm the Communion of All Saints.
Finally however, in view of the crisis facing our nation and world, it seemed that this
is a time to preach the gospel in its most basic form, to proclaim, in other words, the
Easter faith. And that surely is what the Communion of Saints is all about.
In First Corinthians, chapter 15, verse 19, we read: "If it is for this life
only that we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied."
We first heard the shocking news in our summer home, on an island off the Maine
coast--an idyllic spot until that moment far distant (we had thought) from all such
menacing events. And then we learned that the terrorists had spent their last night,
withdrawn their cash, shopped, bought gas, and boarded their first plane at the Portland
Jetport, just 10 or so miles away.
While on the island - and we've now spent more than 30 summers there - I become a
Methodist, since that's the only church available. (I guess this should be called a
confession, really). And in their weekly services, as we recite the Apostles' Creed, I
invariably find myself out of step. Oh everything's OK through the first few phrases. It's
when they get to Jesus:
Born of the Virgin Mary
Suffered under Pontius Pilate
Was crucified, dead, and buried...
that's when I trip up; because they never say:
He descended into hell.
Those Methodists simply omit that ancient phrase and march right on into heaven,
leaving me in limbo somewhere, tongue-tied, high and dry. Being, at this stage, an
incurable Presbyterian, I slip it in, anyway, under my breath. "He descended into
hell," I murmur; then hurry to catch up. But, until now, I've never been quite
sure why; why they leave it out; why I feel compelled to put it back.
Then came September 11th, and we saw hell. Right down the street - really, just about a
mile away from my old church, First Presbyterian in the City of New York. Six members of
that church family, including two mothers of young families and a young policeman,
perished in that holocaust. Friends, they were, people I had worked with, laughed with,
prayed with, brought into the family of faith.
One husband and father described to me how, walking down Seventh Avenue to the World
Trade Center (he began work an hour later than his wife) he heard a huge plane overhead.
"That thing has to be lost," he said, then watched it plough into Tower number
one. "It took me just three seconds ..." he told me, "to count down the
floors and know it was Sarah's floor it hit on." He ran a block south to help his
wife, then turned and ran a block north to reach his children, then south again, utterly
confused and lost.
Yes, we saw evil just eight weeks ago, we saw hell. And Christ, our loving savior,
Jesus Christ
... born of the Virgin Mary
suffered under Pontius Pilate ...
if he was anywhere at all that day, he was there, comforting, strengthening, bearing up
in his embracing arms, his own pierced and wounded hands. Yes, Christ was there:
He descended into hell.
That's what they were missing - don't you see? - those optimistic Methodists with their
sunny-side-up view of the world. That's what they were missing. Say what you will about
the gloom and doom of our forefather, John Calvin, his solemn words about original sin and
total depravity ring true again, and enormously realistic and relevant in this
post-September 11th world.
Two months ago I - along with, I suspect, many gathered here - might have argued
against the existence of hell, reasoning that such eternal torment is inconsistent with
the loving God we meet in Christ. But then we saw it; hell exploded across our screens.
Oh, maybe not that theological inferno portrayed by Dante and the rest, but a hell on
earth of such staggering dimensions as to haunt our thoughts, dreams, our imaginations for
months and years to come.
But just a moment now; hold everything. Before we go reviving those fearful old
doctrines, all those grotesque images from the middle ages of sinners pitchforked into
blazing furnaces, one question must be asked. What is the key, the most crucial thing we
Christians believe about hell, the one fact that transcends whatever else we may know, or
think we know, about that place of horror? Surely it is this, our Savior went there:
He descended into hell.
As that first awful week wore on, I remember I felt thankful that I did not have to
preach that next Sunday, that I would not have to climb into a pulpit and try to make
sense of such atrocity. But as the Sabbath Day approached my feelings changed. I realized
that, if our Christian faith has nothing to say at moments like this, then it has nothing
to say at all. And I almost envied my successor in the Fosdick pulpit in Lower Manhattan,
envied him that moment of supreme challenge.
There are so many things one could say--so many questions still in our hearts. And much
has been said and written; our media are filled with little else. But in this house of
God, at this hour of prayer, beneath all the other issues of policy and security, one
question demands an answer. What about the victims? What about those who died, those
endless names and faces whose fate torments our dreams? Are they lost, gone forever,
snuffed out like so many fragile candles in a hurricane of devastation? That, after all,
is what our 21st-century culture - with its materialism, consumerism, its
have-it-all-now-before-it's-too-late view of life - has been saying to us, drumming into
us these many years.
Yet suddenly that is no longer enough. Suddenly the things we lived for, goals we
pursued, competed for, seem pale, frail and empty. Suddenly, when faced with such crushing
loss, we are ready, yes even eager to hear again an old word, a word that says that life
is not for sale, death is not the end, and that there is a power can conquer fear and even
hell itself.
He descended into hell.
I have spent two weekends recently in Manhattan, participating in, or attending
funerals. And a few days ago I made the pilgrimage downtown for my second, more extensive
visit to The Site. I was wearing my clergy collar, since I was to conduct a funeral in the
early afternoon, and that, plus my ID, got me through the National Guard barricades, past
the gas masked soldiers - the dust and smoke were still horrendous, still clung to my skin
and hair almost 24 hours later - past the gas-masked soldiers, then, and into Saint Paul's
Chapel, that elegant sanctuary which miraculously survived right on the brink of hell.
I had prayed there and attended concerts in earlier, different times, but what a
transformation!
For a start, the whole block along Broadway, at the foot of the sanctuary steps, was
one solid row of portable toilets, some 20 or 30 of them. There's a symbol there about the
church in the world, but I'll leave it alone for now. Inside, after still more security
checks, I was greeted and escorted by a young volunteer from Asheville, NC. The side
aisles were crammed to overflowing with cartons of gift items, snack foods, toiletries,
towels and the like.
"This whole place is an outpouring of gratitude," she told me. A grand piano
was smothered in stuffed animal toys. Volunteer clergy counselors sat in the pews talking
with weary construction workers. In other pews, more workers were stretched out asleep on
blankets and quilts provided there. One dusty workman sat and munched on an enormous
sandwich. MASSAGE THERAPY proclaimed a sign in one corner. CHIROPRACTORS read another,
while the historic George Washington Pew was occupied by podiatrists under a sign reading
FOOT CARE.
Along the back wall was an enormous rack of boots, heavy new workboots. My guide
explained that the workers' footgear is soon shredded by the wreckage and intense heat,
and these boots had been donated by several businesses.
TAKE NEW BOOTS.
LEAVE OLD BOOTS.
FOR IMMEDIATE NEED ONLY.
read the sign. The entire sanctuary was covered in signs, big and small.
TO NEW YORK AND ALL ITS RESCUERS:
KEEP YOUR SPIRITS UP. OKLAHOMA LOVES YOU!!
read one hanging from a balcony.
Another read:
YOU RAN IN WHEN WE ALL RAN OUT.
FOR THAT WE ARE FOREVER GRATEFUL.
GOD BLESS BM LADDER 20.
In the pew rack before me as I sat to meditate was a touching letter from a member of
The Tucson Girl's Chorus: "I wanted you to know," the letter ended, "that
you had a friend in Tucson who was praying for you."
A service began at noontime and some 30 people - workers, police, soldiers - stood and
prayed together. I moved onto the porch under the portico, preparing to head back to my
own service, and there was a cafeteria spread in front of the church doors, hot soup,
sandwiches, fruit, candy, coffee, and weary people sitting at tables in the dusty fall
sunlight talking and eating together.
It was almost a holiday scene except for the dust, and the absence of laughter. The
smiles were there though. A constant stream of workers, helpers, police and soldiers came
and went, and all with a quiet, very gentle courtesy and consideration for each other.
They knew they were in God's house. They knew they were welcome. They knew they belonged
there. And there was a sense of peace, true peace. It was the communion of saints. It was
the Church of Jesus Christ being itself, its own true self. It was the presence of the
risen Christ, the Christ who had descended into hell and defeated all despair and death
there by a power even stronger, even greater, and far more awe inspiring. As long as I
live, I'll never forget it.
In my farewell sermon last year at First New York, I tried to sum up 35 years of
preaching in these words:
"To put it at its simplest, we live with two realities, two towering cosmic facts
that stare us in the face, dominate our living, either by their presence or their absence.
The one is love, the other, death; and all the rest is strategy. Love, then, and death.
And the question is, the question always is, the only question is, which one wins? Which
one triumphs in the end? Which one is God?"
If death is God, then those fanatics, those so-called Islamic militants whose
despicable beliefs belong to no religion worthy of the name, if death is God - don't you
see? - then they won. Then, in a very real sense, there's nothing left to live for. Then
you, your precious life, however many days are left before the light bulb hits the
concrete floor, before the towers come crashing down, these are the only things that
count; and everything else, everyone else, becomes negotiable - if death is God.
If love is God, on the other hand, if love is the power that wins out in the end, then
everything is possible. If love is God; if nothing is to fear but fear itself, and if we
have One who has conquered fear, even death itself by his own broken body given for our
sakes; if love is the power that holds this universe together, and moves it - moves you
and me - not toward a frigid, bleak extinction of eternal winter, but toward a springtime
destiny beyond the stars, unimaginable in its radiance and promise; if that love that
Jesus demonstrated on the cross, a love that told us in immortal words: "Whoever
would save their life will lose it, but whoever will give life away for my sake will find
it full and free forever." - if a love like that beats at the heart of everything
that is, then we are ultimately, cosmically liberated, set free for living, pouring out
our lives as He did for the sake of others, and thus discovering, perhaps for the very
first time, just who we really are, our own true and best yes, our immortal selves.
If it is for this life only we have hope ...
Saint Paul reminds us in our text - and writing to us, never forget, not from a
comfortable, book-lined study somewhere, but from a Roman jail, and later from the
condemned cell itself - If we have hope only in this life we know now, then we are of all
people most to be pitied.
Because this life - don't you see? - this life inevitably ends. None of us, no matter
where we were that Tuesday morning, not one of us is getting out of this alive.
But in Christ who loved us - loved us far more than ever we can love him back, believes
in us far more than ever we can believe back - in Jesus Christ, who descended into hell
for us, and who took flesh and blood again eight weeks ago, and still does so in all those
thousands upon thousands of tender, courageous, magnificent gestures of compassion that
far outweigh the savage acts of 19 cruel men, in Him we have been given, not just this
life, this fleeting and all too tragic life, but life abundant, life overflowing, life
everlasting in the loving presence of our God.
This is the faith we hold to, the faith that, in the days and months ahead, can carry
us through, can bear us up across the valley of the shadow to those green pastures, still
waters on the other side. This is the faith in which, for all our heartache and tears, we
can commit ourselves, and all those loved and lost a while, into God's eternal keeping.
For in Him we live, in Him we die, in Him we rise to life eternal.
In closing I would lead us in a prayer that has supported all of my now 37 years of
ministry. Its words are splendid poetry, but there is more than poetry here. It sings to
us, and welcomes us to a faith that has stood the test of time, a faith that has sustained
countless millions in every human situation across the ages, a faith that holds us and all
those whom we love safe in the everlasting arms until that glad reunion, that breaking
fast around God's heavenly banquet table, when every tear will be wiped away, every hope
fulfilled, and every earthly love perfected and complete.
Now let us pray:
O Lord, support us all the day long of this troublous life until the shadows
lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, the fever of life is over
and our work is done. Then in thy mercy grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and
peace at the last, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
