Santa Clara University

Hope for Just Peace

September 11, 2002

One year ago, we gathered in this Mission Church, filled with a mingling of emotions: confusion, anger, hurt, anxiety, and grief. I asked: Where is God in the face of such terrible evil? The attacks of September 11 were a powerful evil -- like a dark hole that sucks all that is good, beautiful and human into it.

Yet, in the midst of those terrible images of the destruction of life, we saw the God of mercy and power. We saw God in the innocent victims whose life stories have been recounted to us by the New York Times over this past year. We saw God in the braver and generous people who responded by risking -- and some losing their lives. We saw God in the generosity and goodness of the parents and brothers and sisters, family and friends of the victims. We saw God in the response around the world. And, we saw God in the people who prayed and reached out to each other with love and faith, compassion and hope.

This morning a leader of the Sikh religious community expressed his sympathy on this anniversary by quoting his Holy Scripture: "I see no Stranger, I see no Enemy. Wherever I look, God is All I see."

In the meeting between Jesus and the Woman from Samaria, we see God in All. Jesus teaches us that we are to love people of different national origins or with different religious perspectives. She was a Samaritan, and no respectable Jew would have anything to do with a Samaritan, much less a Samaritan woman. Men and women were not supposed to be at the well together or speak with each other. And Jews and Samaritans were not to share water from the same vessels. She was not even given the dignity of a name by John, who was amazed that Jesus would even talk with her.

Jews and Samaritans were also deeply divided over many other things as well. Their differences over the interpretation of the Torah were so great that they had little to nothing in common. Jews believed that Samaritans were not properly wedded to the true God of Abraham; Jerusalem was not the center of their religion. Nothing was right with this scene when Jesus does the unthinkable.

He speaks first, asking the woman for a drink of water. Their conversation is, at first, a little unpleasant as the woman responds with mocking surprise. Jesus quickly turns the conversation about water quenching the thirst to water becoming a symbol and gift of life from God. No longer is it about water but about love and harmony, faith and justice, hope and peace.

By speaking to this Samaritan woman, slowly but persistently Jesus breaks down the boundaries of ignorance and prejudice, and specifically rejects both discrimination against women and prejudice towards people of other religions and other national origins. September 11 must become the day we rediscover love, forgiveness, peace, justice, and the common aspirations of all good people. We find these virtues in hope, a hope that break down the barriers between people and binds us together as the children of God, as one community composed of people with many gifts, views, and many backgrounds, who have contributions to make for the good of all.

The conversation between Jesus and the woman shows us the path to seeing that we all share the gift of life from the God of all people -- Jew or Samaritan, Christian or Muslim, woman or man, African or American, old or young, rich or poor. We are in this together.

Today, Jesus again teaches that all men and women of goodwill will promote peace, justice, harmony, human rights, and respect for all of God’s creation and all of God’s people. Jesus again teaches that we are to love the God of all people with our whole hearts and minds, and to love our neighbor -- either friend or stranger, family or new immigrant -- with that same love. Then, will hate give way to love, vengeance give way to forgiveness, war give way to peace, maltreatment give way to justice. This is the gift of God we all share on this day of remembering and every day of our lives.

God bless.