It is a day when so many in our churches will feel compelled to address somehow the topic of the attack four years ago. I did not go anywhere today. I was up super late, got up late, had some physical difficulties that took even more time this morning, and also, hidden away in all of those “external reasons” for not going to church , there is the urge I had to stay away today. So frustrated am I at the seeming inability, unwillingness, or refusal to acknowledge the truth of the cross, that the church in America exhibits today, that I am apalled and embarassed.

The call of the Christian to “accept” death rather than “deal death” , for whatever “just cause” (and the “just” definition is , in itself, inaccurate if one includes all the people of the world; all those silently considered as “expendable” such that we do not acknowledge that our country deals in thew currency of the “culture of death”, and those who seem fond of using that term are themselves quick to defend the acceptance of a nation-state’s taking upon itself the mantle of “inifinte justice” (a name they first ascribed and then quickly withdrew under immediate protest, but telling in ithat this was the intiial idea that leapt forth as a name for our “mission” after 9/11.

That this has not been an occasion for churches (except for those who are , well, the exception) to speak the truth about war and the idea that “justice” is ours to impose, is an opportunity lost. It is a lost opportunity; a call that has gone unheeded to be a light to the nations (that is, the church is that light, not “our nation” among the others who “do not see the light as we do”). There will be more in the days ahead on this, but I am not of a mind or have no urge to write. I simply long for an experience of having a community to which I can do nothing else but “be there” and to anticipate being confronted with truth. From where does such a people and such a time to come?