On the day the World Trade Center towers collapsed, and in the weeks following, the church took to the streets of New York City for communal consolation, lamentation, and acts of hope.

At 11:45 a.m. on September 11, 2001, sitting in front of a blank computer screen beyond which was the window framing black smoke downtown, I went public. I wrote, “We watched in horror as both buildings fell into a cloud of smoke and ash. It is unimaginable what happened there.” I ended that first dispatch from our beleaguered city with a verse from Psalm 88: “But I, O LORD, call out to you; in the morning my prayer comes before you” (v. 13). This “going public” on my part expressed a spiritual longing for comfort, a longing to connect. I didn’t intend to start a disaster journal, but my online dispatches “from the front” became a place of comfort, prayer, and information for many around the country and a public outlet of faith, doubt, and vulnerability for me in the hours, days, and weeks to come.

Fifteen minutes later we again went public as the staff of the Interchurch Center gathered in the chapel for prayer. I asked people to name folks on their hearts and in their concern. The chapel rang out with the precious names of loved ones working in Lower Manhattan. Those names uttered in strangled, intense voices became a public utterance of spiritual longing. In the face of tragedy, going public meant, and still means, communal prayer and connection. In going public, we encounter the God already present in human lament, consolation, and prayer.

Praying with Neighbor
Communal prayer is humanity’s primal public spiritual expression. Tsunami, Omaha, Virginia Tech, Madrid, Northern Illinois University.... Our spiritual DNA drives us public, together, in prayer.

The streets of the Bronx, late evening, September 11: One woman, a member of an ELCA congregation and part of the massive exodus from Ground Zero, made it safely home to her apartment in the South Bronx. Tired, covered with soot, and numb with what she had seen and experienced, she encountered many of her neighbors, who were sad, puzzled, and in shock, like the Emmaus disciples. She went up to her apartment and got a candle, brought it back to the street, and invited her neighbors to join her in prayer. They sang, “Precious Lord, take my hand....” They prayed fervently and publicly, gathering every night for two weeks. Those in the neighborhood who went to Ground Zero every day for rescue and recovery told those gathering each night, “Please don’t stop doing this. I can stand being down there if I know you are praying for us.”

Public, Holy Ground
Hurricane Katrina, a fatal fire, a plane crash ... faith bubbling beneath the surface of everyday life bursts forth in public prayer. Imams, rabbis, bishops, pastors, neighbors, and strangers join hands and hearts to pray.

Holy Trinity, Manhattan, September 11 and 19, 2001: This church, each congregation, is public holy ground. On the day of the great tragedy, dazed survivors made their way through those doors for a drink of water, a safe place of sanctuary. Its pastor, Bob Scholz, who is now in the eternal peace of the resurrection, became pastor and chaplain to many people in the days that followed, including neighbors in the nearby firehouse that sustained many losses from among its ranks. Pastor Scholz walked with them on their Emmaus road of grief. Like pastors throughout the church, he became artisan of public ministry, placing the gospel center stage.

To this sanctuary the Lutheran community staggered on September 19. Hundreds of pastors, congregation members, and neighbors from the metropolis gathered here in the afternoon and evening, our first time together since the attacks. On that day I went to Ground Zero for the first time, part of a group that included President David Benke of the Atlantic District (LCMS) and ELCA bishops from around the country. Ours was a ghastly vigil at the obscene pile of death, and we staggered into this sanctuary shaken, our shoes and pants covered in the dust that was our brothers and sisters.

Moving from Lament
In The Plague by Albert Camus, the doctor observes an old man looking into a window at his own reflection. Many people have died in the plague, including the old man’s wife. The doctor reflects, “He knew what the old man was thinking as his tears flowed and thought it, too; that a loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one’s work and devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a human heart.”¹

The sanctuary at Holy Trinity — and each congregation around the nation and across the globe — became public holy ground for laments and for a convening of loved faces. We told our stories of loss and doubt and fear, building a “house for sorrow,” as the book of Lamentations has been called, and yet gaining a glimpse of resurrection peace as we sang together, “My Lord, what a morning,” and strained to see that promised dawn on the horizon of our darkness. At the end of the day, President Benke and I went into the sacristy with ELCA national leaders, and late in the night we formed Lutheran Disaster Response of New York (LDRNY) with the millions of dollars shared with us from around the world. It was a time of lamentations. We did not force resurrection in this sanctuary, yet the promise of peace and new life began to emerge in the very public ministry that LDRNY became.

Peter De Vries, in The Blood of the Lamb has written about “the recognition of how long, how very long is the mourner’s bench on which we sit, arms linked in undeluded friendship — all of us, brief links ourselves, in the eternal pity”²

The long mourner’s bench is the public sinew of public faith. Each pastoral act—baptism, Eucharist, memorial service, prayer, song, social ministry program, act of advocacy — is a brief public link of undiluted gospel love in the eternal pity of a gracious God.