First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan
Three times I have been in Prague. Three times I have followed the bend in the river to the Jewish Quarter. And three times I have made my way to the Pinkas Synagogue….which, while not the loveliest of the synagogues, nor the most practical (given that Jews seldom worship there), may be the most touching, in that it contains the memorial to all Czech Jews who lost their lives in the Holocaust.
As memorials go, it’s really quite simple….a pair of rooms with names inscribed on the walls from floor to ceiling. There is tasteful art there. There are lovely windows there. But it is the names that one goes to see there. Since they are inscribed alphabetically rather than chronologically, the sequence is easy to follow. Each time, I search the R’s till my eyes stop at the name Ritter. Forty-four Jewish martyrs, half a century removed, share my name. Two of them share both my names. It is strange to look at a Holocaust memorial and see a pair of Villem Ritters.
The last time I was there, the music was haunting. It was not taped, prerecorded or canned in any way. It came from the bow of a solitary cellist, seated in one corner of the memorial. As hard as it was to pull my eyes away from the names, it was harder still to pull my ears away from the music.
All of that came back to me this morning when I watched the opening half hour of the memorial from the World Trade Center. Again, there were the names….read aloud from a microphone. Again, there was musical accompaniment by a changing cadre of musicians. But when someone began to read the A’s, the accompaniment came to us, courtesy of a lone cellist.
With that in mind, drop back with me to my first Christmas Eve in this sanctuary. I talked about Sarajevo that night, not because it is located in a part of the world that sent your people to America, but because it is a part of the nation that sent mine. In December of ’93, they were fighting a war there….as wars used to be fought….hand to hand….house to house….street to street….in the most brutal manner imaginable. So unspeakable was the carnage, that Sarajevo wrote for the world an entirely new primer on violence. At one time or another, everyone in the city became an enemy of someone else in the city. None were safe. Thousands died. And some who lived, wished they had died.
Which is when I told you about Vedran Smailovic. Picture him dressed in formal evening clothes….sitting in a café chair….in the middle of a street….directly in front of a bakery. Weeks earlier, in front of that same bakery, a mortar barrage killed 22 hungry people standing in a bread line. It was to the middle of that street that Vedran Smailovic returned, daily, to play a cello for 22 consecutive days, braving sniper fire to play the profoundly moving “Adagio in G Minor.”
Since he was a member of the Sarajevo Opera Orchestra, he probably knew that his “Adagio of choice” was reconstructed from a manuscript fragment found in the ruins of Dresden after World War II. The music survived the firebombing once. History now tells us that it survived the firebombing again.
In time, the site where Smailovic played became something of a local shrine. People went out of their way to pass there….take friends there….kiss lovers there….get engaged there. Flowers continue to be placed where his chair and cello once stood. I suppose that flowers and music have always been used to express the kinds of hopes which never die.
Eventually, his picture appeared in an issue of the New York Times Magazine. An artist in Seattle saw it. She promptly organized 22 cellists….to play in 22 public places….for 22 days. On the final day, they played together in front of a store window, wherein were displayed 22 burned out bread pans….22 loaves of bread….and 22 roses.
This is September 11, one year removed….a day when we remember things that shouldn’t have happened, but did….even as we express relief for worse things that could have happened, but didn’t. But tonight is not simply a remembrance of evils perpetrated or evils spared. This is an evening to celebrate the reign of the Holy Spirit and the resilience of the American spirit. It is also a night to give thanks for counterpoints to the world’s madness, wherever we find them. Somehow, with God’s grace and courage, people still break bread and plant roses, even as lovers kiss in once-violent streets, and singular cellists play the songs of the spirit that cannot be silenced by gunfire or buried in the ruins and rubble of this world’s lunacy.
One cellist in the World Trade Center is not enough, of course, unless we also sing the song that is played there. Just as one Savior, birthed in the land we call “Holy,” may not be enough, unless we pass on the love that once laid there. But each time we feel the love and hear the music, it reminds us that the world doesn’t really need to be this way….and we don’t really need to be this way. My friends, when we stop believing this, the music will surely die and Christ will haunt the earth no more. Till then ….
Note: This homily was shared at the conclusion of a 6:30 p.m. service on September 11, attended by 540 people. It featured all of the First Church clergy along with the Chancel Choir. At the end of the homily, a cellist played unaccompanied in the chancel.
