“To live in the twentieth century is to wear the stitch of horror on one’s heart, so close are we to the edge of violence.” — Martin Marty

Marty wrote those words in the shadow of World War II, the Korean Conflict, and the Cold War. I was born in the twentieth century but I didn’t come across his words until the twenty-first. And yet, the words still ring true. No matter what century we live in, we wear the stitch of horror on our heart. We have seen or have experienced violence and we will continue to as individuals and as a collective whether that collective identity is that of the church or a nation. 

The day after my sixteenth birthday I was home, intending on sleeping in because my high school, with some regularity, had late arrival that Tuesday. Someone yelled down to me in my basement cave, “turn on the TV, something’s going on.” I turned it on, unsure of what I was seeing, I recognized those towers because I had seen them often in my favorite film. In that film they go dark because of a blackout, but I always knew that was just a movie. What I was seeing on the news broadcast was not just a movie. The smoke and damage was jarring. Then I saw the second plane hit. I had no conception of what I was watching. I sat there, transfixed, for the rest of the morning and throughout the day. I didn’t go to school. I watched. I watched from afar as the towers fell. I sat there, effectively alone in my room, not really understanding the stitch of horror wounding my heart and the hearts of so many. 

In the days that followed I remember the other things that so many do too. I remember the skies being quiet. I remember the packed churches. I remember the anger that had no where to go but against people who looked close enough to the actual perpetrators, regardless of if they were radicalized Muslims. I remember all of it, which is why for years I haven’t watched films about it, I haven’t watched anniversary specials, I haven’t gone back to the footage I remember seeing with my own two eyes for years because every time it was brought up I was taken right back to that basement, right back to the stitch. 

I watched from afar and I carry this. I wasn’t there, but many were. People I would come to know in college, they couldn’t get a hold of their Dad (he turned out to be just fine). Someone who is part of the congregation I now serve was traveling that day, some of her colleagues on another plane never made it home. I didn’t know my paths would cross with any of these people, each of us with a different size stitch of horror on our hearts, each of us close in our own ways to the effects of violence and hatred. My story is like my wife’s in a way, we watched it on TV. That’s what we told our ten year old this morning when he brought it up. He brought it up because for him it isn’t as real of an event as it is for those of us who actually remember it. My wife and I carry the memory, but our stitch is far less noticeable, far less cruel and heartbreaking than the stitches that mar the bodies of so many others who carry the hurt and pain decades later.

“We who wear the stitch of horror on our hearts can also wear the stitch of honor.” — Martin Marty

I was sixteen. I went to youth group but I had no intention of being a pastor, no intention of serving a church, no intention of being with people in the midst of their pain and tragedy. As I watched it on TV, pastors in my church body who I now know were there— in New York, boots on the ground—coordinating and encouraging pastoral care even as smoke poured out from the towers. One of them, who was there as the towers collapsed, who watched it happen, had driven into the city because he wanted to be with people and offer the care. He didn’t know the buildings would crumble, he knew that people needed hope in the midst of despair, he knew they need stability in the midst of chaos. After the towers crumbled, he was there, with nothing but a prayer book and some chrism oil. (Chrism oil is sometimes used to anoint people at baptism, it is fragrant, truly the aroma of Christ as sometimes it even contains myrrh.) The first responders and others who had been in the building, who didn’t have their friends alongside them anymore, who had seen the people jump, Bill walked up to them in the midst of the chaos and pain, and gave them the stitch of honor. He prayed with them. Anointed them with oil. Put them in memory of their baptism. He reminded them that the stench of death is not as strong as the aroma of the Christ who conquered it. 

Whenever I think about that day, I think about my experience, I wonder about the experience of others who were far closer to it all, and I think about Bill. I had known at seminary the care he provided in the aftermath of it all, the chaplain he was to people who identified loved ones. I didn’t know he was there that day (this was something I only learned recently but not because it’s been a secret), I didn’t know that in the valley of death he was walking with people, pointing them to their shepherd whose rod and staff were the only possible comfort. Bill gave the only thing he had, he stitched honor right alongside the horror. The honor was not his own (but if you ask me he should share in some of it), it was the honor that belongs to the one at whose name every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, it belongs to the one whose name every tongue will confess. And it is his honor not because Christians show up at ground zero, not because they went up the steps, helped people down the steps, protected and defended, ferried and gave quarter, comforted and walked with people, but because he looked death in the face and left it in a borrowed grave. Though, to be fair, the empty borrowed tomb is the reminder of who owns it all anyway, the Lord of it all, life included. 

Bill was shrouded in the midst of the stench of death anointing with the aroma of Christ. He was there as horror after horror was being stitched upon hearts, stitching the honor of Christ right next to it. If you suffered that day, if you have a stitch or two or three of horror, the stitch of honor is yours too. Not that you survived, but that the Christ who defeated death has done so in anticipation of your suffering, of your pain, of your horror. And that may not dry the tears, it may not relieve all pain, but it does speak to the hope that comes alongside the horror and honor. 

Those are the stitches we need to be sewing today, not more horror, but of hope and honor. We are still not far from violence, personally and collectively, and we have choices to make, we have stitches to sow in our homes, our workplaces, our church body, our country, and our world. The question isn’t if we will sew them, it is what kind of stitches we will sew—horror or hope and honor. Regardless of what we do, this day and every we do well to remember that in the midst of all the horror, hope and honor are always there. When the stench of death is overpowering, the aroma of Christ always pierces through.