Worship After 9/11

On Sunday morning, September 16, 2001, people crowded our church, as most other churches, like we only see at a holiday like Christmas or Easter. This non-holiday, precipitated by the unholy events of September 11, was a scurrying to God. The mood was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. People were subdued and sober. They spoke sparingly to each other. People came with a kind of chasm in their hearts. We could all sense it. Not only were hearts blasted open, but we could sense what was really inside: where there was strength where there was weakness.

If ever there was a time to worship–this was it. And the time-honored, tried and true practice of worship was exactly the pattern we all needed: the singing of praise, the reading of Scripture and teaching of its meaning, prayer, offering, the Lord’s Supper.

One of the most important lessons I will take away from those days is the longing that we have for the voice of God. The power of the words of Scripture–the ring of its truth and the energy of its life–asserted itself on us. In all the special prayer meetings and in worship services, whenever the voice of God in Scripture was sounded, we listened like people whose attention is arrested by a trumpet.

We read many Psalms in those days. I have heard from people that they instinctually turned to those treasured pages in the center of the Bible. Why was that? Was it because many of the Psalms are prayers voiced by people like David whose hearts were torn wide open, their treasure and their chasms revealed? Was it because the Psalms cry out to God in a plea for moral certitude and for the assurance that God is with us? Probably that and much more. God’s voice gives us a voice when reality exceeds our ability to form words.

People did want to raise their own voices in praise. The singing of praise came from somewhere deep. People used worship as their opportunity to shout out their convictions about truth and righteousness and the holy love of God. Far better than writing a letter to the editor of the local newspaper, worship was and is an opportunity to publish what you believe, to assert it solidly for others to hear, for God to hear, and for ourselves to hear. There is true praise and there is false praise (“those who forsake the law praise the wicked,” Proverbs 28:4), so the action of adoration is an act of moral and spiritual discernment. Praise is a way of tracing and retracing the lines of moral definition. It establishes in our minds and hearts the specific patterns of spiritual character.

We were so glad that communion was going to be part of that worship service. What better way to review the truth that God is with us than to take the bread and take the cup which is Christ’s own assertion that he intends to dwell in our lives, that he will go with us into every circumstance, that his presence is a pure gift to us. We had pastors and elders and their wives positioned throughout the sanctuary so that people got up out of their seats to come and receive the bread and the cup from the leaders who loved them and wanted to support them. It was a moment I will never forget. The looks on people’s faces were so longing, so broken.

Worship on the weekend of September 16, 2001 was unlike any other time. But on any given week there are people in worship who are going through their own tragedies and losses–their own 9/11.

(We’d love to have you join us on Facebook or follow on Twitter.)