{"id":743,"date":"2026-09-11T09:52:49","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T14:52:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/elcaracialjustice\/?p=743"},"modified":"2026-09-11T09:52:49","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T14:52:49","slug":"living-faithfully-25-years-after-9-11-revisiting-our-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/elcaracialjustice\/living-faithfully-25-years-after-9-11-revisiting-our-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"Living Faithfully: 25 years after 9\/11: Revisiting our stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

In honor of the 25th Anniversary of 9\/11, with permission from Living Lutheran<\/a> <\/em>we share <\/em>the following article. The original post can be found here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\n

\"25<\/h1>\n

25 years after 9\/11: Revisiting our stories<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
\n

Editor\u2019s note:<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0As news of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks spread,\u00a0<\/em>The Lutheran\u00a0staff gathered at the Lutheran Center in Chicago to watch the events unfold. Plans for the November 2001 issue were quickly scrapped to make room for 15 pages of stories about New York Lutherans. As we observe the 25th anniversary of Sept. 11, we look back at that coverage through the lead story by then-editor David L. Miller and selected quotes from the issue.<\/em><\/p>\n

A city not forsaken<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Sorrow and grace weave together in stories of New York\u2019s Lutherans<\/em><\/p>\n

A kind of \u201cnew scripture\u201d is emerging among Lutherans in New York City since the World Trade Center attack, a patchwork quilt of stories revealing how the suffering are connected to God and each other.<\/p>\n

As stories are reverently passed from mourners to the merciful, the quilt grows more colorful and complex, but no less troubling.<\/p>\n

Each story elicits another just as tragic as the last: the empty chair of a family member who didn\u2019t come home Sept. 11, a coach whose baritone will never again be heard teaching kids, a friend whose smile is now only a photograph gently held, the little girl whose mother didn\u2019t pick her up from school.<\/p>\n

As stories are passed, each expands the fabric that now binds formerly disconnected lives into one cloth.<\/p>\n

Pastors have become the \u201cstory-bearers,\u201d says Stephen Bouman, bishop of the Metropolitan New York Synod. And if their shoulders sag beneath the tonnage of sorrow, they are also lifted by the grace subtly sown into each story.<\/p>\n

For whatever else New York is today, it is not a city forsaken. Just ask Bouman.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven while it was going on, I didn\u2019t feel this horrendous dread. I\u2019d like to think that was because of my faith.\u201d\u00a0\u2014Daniel Nigro, then chief of the New York City Fire Department and member of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Bayside, Queens<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Seeing\u00a0<\/strong>faces<\/strong><\/h4>\n

\u201cYou see faces as you look into that blasted pile,\u201d Bouman says, having just returned from the smoldering stench at \u201cground zero.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the faces are visible only in his mind. Still, one stands out: Lars Qualben, president of Trinity Lutheran Church, Brooklyn. Lars had assisted his father, Paul, who presided at liturgy the previous Sunday. But now he is gone, one of about 100 slain church members or parents and relatives of Lutheran schoolchildren.<\/p>\n

Walking among the ashes at ground zero, Bouman recited the committal service for the dead. \u201cI saw Lars\u2019 face,\u201d he says. \u201cI saw all of them in Lars\u2019 face.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou see their faces in there, and you want to say, \u2018Unbind them! Unbind them all!\u2019 You want to say, \u2018Lord, if only you had been here!\u2019 You want to sit in sackcloth in the middle of Broadway and scream.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe break one bread and are one body. Let us together seek the healing of the nations. Evil does not overcome evil; it augments it. Christ taught us that.\u201d \u2014Riad Jarjour, then general secretary of the Middle East Council of Churches<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As he left the site, Bouman pronounced a benediction over this \u201choly ground,\u201d calling on God\u2019s mercy for the dead, for the shell-shocked firefighters laboring there and for all whose grief and fear mingle like a dense cloud quieting the city.<\/p>\n

Across the East River in Brooklyn, Richard Miller, pastor of St. John-St. Matthew-Emmanuel Lutheran Church, also tries to redeem the day. He scoops up a layer of ash coating his deck. \u201cSacred ash,\u201d he calls the mixture of cremated concrete, steel and flesh.<\/p>\n

He used it to sign the cross on the foreheads of worshipers. The mother of a woman who died on the 98th floor of tower one was among those who came forward to be \u201cmarked\u201d with a sign of sorrow and hope.<\/p>\n

Ultimate questions<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Throughout the synod, such liturgies and prayer services have been filled with people hungry for words that will make meaning of tragedy.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one is willing to accept meaninglessness,\u201d says Bill Hurst, pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church, White Plaines, N.Y. \u201cThere\u2019s a hunger to know how to relate to God from people who are only now able to take baby steps in that direction.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also \u201cskin hunger,\u201d a tremendous desire to be touched.<\/p>\n

Members of Generation X, who make up a large portion of those killed in the towers, \u00a0also show up in churches and at makeshift memorials citywide. Many with little or no religious background are dealing with ultimate questions of death, evil and God for the first time, their secular value systems shaken.<\/p>\n

Bouman\u2019s 23-year-old daughter, Rachel, a Sunday school leader, phoned him from in front of the church before she could go in. \u201cI\u2019m afraid to go in,\u201d she told him. \u201cWhat am I going to say? Please pray with me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carla McKenzie, a member of Advent Lutheran Church, Elmont, N.Y., was on the 16th or 17th floor of tower one when the plane hit. She will never be able to forget the faces of rescue squads going up as she was coming down, Bouman says.<\/p>\n

But he can\u2019t forget her faith. As bodies fell from the sky and people fled, screaming, a woman kept asking, \u201cWhere is God?\u201d McKenzie, stopping to care for the woman, quoted Romans 8: Nothing can ever separate us from God\u2019s love. \u201cShe had the faith to say God was with them even as they fell,\u201d Bouman says.<\/p>\n

Then McKenzie tried to get to her congregation\u2019s school to support teachers as they ministered to children who would soon receive horrible news. About 40 Lutheran schoolchildren lost a parent or grandparent, said Marlene Lund, executive director of the Lutheran Schools Association in New York City.<\/p>\n

Grace in the pain<\/strong><\/h4>\n

That theme, that God will be found in the pain\u2014not by avoiding or minimizing it\u2014echoes through the stories and sermons of the city\u2019s Lutherans. Easy assurances and glib talk about closure and healing are rejected as falsehoods\u2014or as an unwillingness to be faithful to what the times require.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had groups of people ask me to pray for them right there while they\u2019re working [with the remains at the Pentagon]. And I\u2019ve had people ask me \u2018why?\u2019 questions. As chaplains, we can\u2019t give answers, but we can help folks grow in their faith.\u201d\u00a0\u2014Gregory Hager, then a chaplain at Dover Air Force base<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Kathy Carpenter, the city\u2019s deputy director for WIC, a government program serving needy women and children, watched with colleagues as the towers collapsed a few blocks from their office window. \u201cThe wail came up from the street,\u201d says the member of Advent Lutheran Church, Manhattan. \u201cWe were all sobbing and screaming. We knew people were dying in the most horrible way as we watched.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a beautiful fall morning, and here we were holding onto each other knowing people were being vaporized before our eyes. But now what echoes in our heads is the sound of our own screams.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not ready to hear words of comfort. The most wonderful thing about our pastors is that they didn\u2019t try to make it all better. They didn\u2019t say we\u2019ll all heal. They respected the situation. I don\u2019t know if it will ever come back to normal. I don\u2019t think we\u2019ll ever be the proud, carefree city we were.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need time. We don\u2019t need people telling us it will be OK in the morning. Clergy need to listen and provide a framework where people feel safe to breathe and feel what they feel.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHelp us pray for our enemies, because if we cannot do that, we will never be able to love them. If we are pregnant with hate and revenge, we will surely birth hate and revenge.\u201d \u2014Arlyn Tolzmann, Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Wheat Ridge, Colo.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Carpenter worries about the children, especially those she sees at Advent\u2019s Sunday school.<\/p>\n

Advent\u2019s children made a quilt for hope and healing, and they visited a nearby firehouse with flowers. Carpenter said she couldn\u2019t tell who got the most out of the visit and the hugs\u2014the children or the firefighters.<\/p>\n

Bearing the weight of these stories takes a toll. \u201cI phone our pastors,\u201d Bouman says. \u201cAnd the crying starts almost as soon as they hear my voice. But these people are magnificent, so present to what they must attend to, so trustworthy with the stories.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat they are receiving is a psalm, a lamentation, a kyrie or a gloria\u2014whatever is being experienced. And they add the name of Jesus to it and lift it up as holy story.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not wasted<\/strong><\/h4>\n

They \u201cshare the heat of the day,\u201d he adds, being faithful to what this time is, not what they might want it to be.<\/p>\n

But what this quilt of sorrow and grace\u00a0will be\u00a0<\/em>remains well beyond the horizon. This unfinished story will be shaped in part by millions of prayers, by the faithfulness and ingenuity of New York\u2019s Lutherans\u2014and by the depth of commitment of Lutherans far beyond the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last thing we are is abandoned,\u201d Bouman says. \u201cIt astounds us, the level of care we are receiving from around the church.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe city at its best can be a sign of shalom [God\u2019s peace]. So we will keep pestering God. \u2026 God is not the destroyer, but we know that God wastes nothing\u2014and God won\u2019t waste this.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In honor of the 25th Anniversary of 9\/11, with permission from Living Lutheran we share the following article. The original post can be found here. 25 years after 9\/11: Revisiting our stories Editor\u2019s note:\u00a0As news of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks spread,\u00a0The Lutheran\u00a0staff gathered at the Lutheran Center in Chicago to watch the events unfold. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":744,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17118,17052],"tags":[17119,17058,17056],"class_list":["post-743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-9-11","category-crosspost","tag-9-11","tag-crosspost","tag-livinglutheran"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLiving Faithfully: 25 years after 9\/11: Revisiting our stories - ELCA Racial Justice<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/elcaracialjustice\/living-faithfully-25-years-after-9-11-revisiting-our-stories\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Living Faithfully: 25 years after 9\/11: Revisiting our stories - ELCA Racial Justice\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In honor of the 25th Anniversary of 9\/11, with permission from Living Lutheran we share the following article. 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The original post can be found here. 25 years after 9\/11: Revisiting our stories Editor\u2019s note:\u00a0As news of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks spread,\u00a0The Lutheran\u00a0staff gathered at the Lutheran Center in Chicago to watch the events unfold. 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