On Thursday of this week we will mark the seventh anniversary of that September day when planes began slamming into buildings. On about as beautiful a September day as they come, nineteen Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four jets – one plane slammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, another into the South Tower, a third into the Pentagon, and a fourth crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Almost 3,000 people were killed in the attacks, and scores of others injured. In this area the odors of the fire that burned for nearly a month could at times be smelled, and one just needed to drive to The Hook to witness that same fire burning. We carry the images of pictures posted throughout New York City, as families searched for the missing. The cries of that day will be remembered as the same kind of grief recorded in the book of Jeremiah: "A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children: she refuses to be consoled, because they are no more."

In this post 9/11 world, as it has come to be called, … we, the church, are being called to remember:

In the face of all the world's terrors and horrors it is to ask ourselves: What will define us … will we allow terrorism to shape our behavior, or will we cling to God's love as the defining value of our lives and behave accordingly.

It is in that context that we find ourselves drawn into our Gospel reading: "If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one." Remember that the whole of Matthew's gospel was written to teach the early church community how to behave, to give guidance to this persecuted community as they struggled to learn what it meant to live together as a Christian community and what it meant to live as that community in a world that was hostile to them. In this morning's text, the first step is how we behave towards one another in the church community. We receive our training for behaving in a hostile world, when we learn to live together with people who are as difficult as we ourselves are. There's not a whole lot of wiggle room in what Matthew's gospel says to us – go and talk to the person – alone. Don't hope that by sharing your problem with another party, the issue you have will get back to that person and somehow get dealt with. You know what happens then – next thing you know The National Inquirer is running the story, and what might have been a minor issue now involves the whole congregation and everyone is talking because "inquiring minds want to know." In Eastern cultures much is made of allowing people to "keep face," a strategy that allows individuals to preserve self respect and dignity. When we follow Matthew's guidance we have allowed that to happen. Of course, given that we are still on the road to perfection, things don't always work out, and we might have to follow the next step in the Gospel prescription. But you get the idea: how we model behavior within the church community will say a lot about how we will behave in the wider world community. Our internal behavior is the training for our worldly behavior.

The second part of the passage deals with the power of the church community. At a clergy gathering during the usual opening devotions, the worship leader laid down a challenge about what we believed. He asked: "Do we really still believe in the power of God's authority and our ability to act in God's name? Do we really feel there is power in the body of Christ?" He went on to suggest that maybe there is more doubt there than we'd like to admit – that we get caught up in fear and bogged down by feeling like we have to get approval and work through too many committees to get anything done. Matthew reminds us: "Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them." The power of the gathered community of Christ is like the concept of critical mass in physics. Critical mass describes the conditions needed for a molecular chain reaction that begins once a certain atomic weight is reached and an atom splits. Once that happens, the process is unstoppable and energy is released for good or for ill. When we gather in the name of Christ, we become the critical mass … bringing to the world the Good News it so desperately needs … and, if we take seriously the idea that we are "critical mass," then there is nothing that can stop us. Look around you this morning and see in your neighbor the body of Christ. Take seriously the command of the Gospel to make right what is wrong, to follow Matthew's prescription for behavior. Then, turn to face the world and remember what defines you. It is the love and power of God, embodied in this gathered community that will have the strength to reach out to those devastated by the storms of the world, and the power to define how we will live in this post 9/11 world. We will live the prayer of Desmond Tutu: "Goodness is stronger than evil, love is stronger than hate; light is stronger than darkness; life is stronger than death. Victory is ours through God who loved us, victory is ours through God who loves us!"

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