Vol. 2, No. 1, Fall 2003

Rabbi Scott Glass brings the Jewish tradition's distinct perspective to the events of 11 September. As a supporter of the state of Israel, Glass and his community remain only too familiar with violent acts committed against civilians. As he said, "now people will understand, they will know the rage that fills one's soul when innocent people, in their offices, traveling to work, walking the street, stopping in a restaurant, disappear in a flash." However, Glass brings far more than cynicism to this sermon. In fact, he reflects on the lessons learned by those who [page 9] have suffered in this way previously. He quotes Rabbi Harold Kushner on the hollowness of revenge, saying "The proposal of getting even is seldom worth what it does to us as people." Glass instead offers forgiveness, referencing Hebrew scripture, not because the perpetrators deserve it but because his congregants deserve better "than to be permanently mired in bitterness of the past." Glass calls for healing, not rage, and presents God and their synagogue as a place for them to draw strength, solace, and comfort. His sermon focuses on reconfiguring the expected response, presenting a way through their faith of moving forward in a positive manner. Glass acknowledges the trauma and pain all feel embroiled in, but offers a way to regain control. As he closes his sermon, Glass reiterates the core of their faith and how it can help them at this time. "Our tradition, in its wisdom, is forward-looking. Even at our moments of deepest despair, we are encouraged to look, with hope, to the future, to life."

Imam Arshad Gamiet begins his khutbah with the precarious situation facing many Muslims, the violence and blame inappropriately assigned to their entire faith tradition. He states, "The logic seems to be, if you're a practicing Muslim, you are a Fundamentalist. And if you are a Fundamentalist, then you must also be a terrorist… as if the terms Islam, Muslim, Fundamentalist and Terrorist are interconnected and inseparable." The focus, in both parts of his khutbah, lies in the community's response as Muslims, saying they must "rise to the challenge" presented by the mistreatment and misinformation. He offers three specific modes of action. First and foremost, the community needs to renew their commitment to Allah, to act in every way to please Allah. Second, Gamiet reminds his congregation of their responsibility to give alms to the most needy, to those "who are desperately short of food, clothing, medicines and basic healthcare." He offers several organizations that he believes deserve greater support, including Human Relief International and Muslim Aid. Gamiet's final objective pleads that "we must do everything in our power to counter the negative propaganda about Islam and [page 10] Muslims… we must be models of dignity and excellence of character, that will inspire others and win over their hearts and minds." Gamiet's three-tiered approach seeks to counteract the damaging and destructive representations of Muslims. By emphasizing the positive face of Islam and making that face more visible in the greater society, he hopes to dispel the stereotypes fostering such a negative view of their faith.

The khutbah offers condolences over the events in America, but also stresses the danger his community now faces because of it. However, Gamiet's response-oriented khutbah does leave one obvious issue untouched. Since enjoined not to deal with controversial, divisive subjects, Gamiet never discusses what it might mean to his community if Islamic groups carried out the attacks. At the time of delivery, little concrete information had surfaced as to the perpetrators, yet Gamiet's response assumes they will eventually prove non-Muslim. Through this approach, he leaves his community without guidance regarding their response as Muslims to these attacks being carried out by persons claiming to believe as they do. Instead, Gamiet focuses on their present and future conduct, with little regard to the past. "Our job is simply to persevere in patience and constancy, in speaking the truth and living the excellent example, which is our duty and destiny."

Reverend Peggy Bosmyer handled the 11 September events very differently than the previous three gentlemen. Unlike most of the 9/11 sermons I have heard or read, Bosmyer didn't deviate from the lectionary, the pre-selected Biblical texts assigned by some denominations for each Sunday. While most liturgies still contained those scriptural readings, few made more than a cursory mention of them. However, Bosmyer's choice affirms a sense of comfort through stability that so many preachers/khateebs emphasize in their sermons. This choice imparts more than mere talk. Instead, Bosmyer enacts comfort and stability through remaining connected to a form and process familiar to her congregation.

[page 11] More surprisingly, Bosmyer never directly refers to 9/11 until over half way through her sermon. Instead, she focuses on the question "What is God like?" In formulating an answer, Bosmyer also doesn't get stuck in what Kenneth Burke calls "negative theology," the tendency of people to describe God in only negative terms – what God is not: God is immortal. God is infinite. God is unknowable. Bosmyer instead focuses on positive, engaged images of God. First, she highlights God's love for us all, a fact hard to accept during this time of crisis "because it involves realizing that this means everybody – even the people we don't want to love, can't love." Second, she emphasizes that God constantly seeks us out. Bosmyer doesn't fixate on what happened or what will happen, but rather on what is happen-ing right then in the lives of her congregation. Whereas all of the other sermons focus on the future response to the events that had previously transpired, Bosmyer strictly deals with the present state of her congregation.

To the end, Bosmyer forgoes concern about some outside threat or how we as a nation or a faith should respond. She focuses on the individual and, due to the crisis each one now faces, her or his possible separation from God because of it. Bosmyer's engaged God won't allow for such a separation. By offering God living with us in our present state, a God loving and seeking us out, Bosmyer undermines the power of the events of 9/11 to seize control of our lives. "There is nothing- not life- nor death- nor principalities- nor powers- nor terrorists- nor anything else in all creation- not even our own wretchedness- which can separate us from the love of God." Bosmyer's sermon reminds her congregation of God's constant and unwavering connection to each of them at every moment. By presenting God, Bosmyer alleviates the despair and loneliness felt by her community, replacing it with God's comfort, stability, and presence.

While their homiletics, such as Brown Taylor's three-legged stool, point to the community's role in constructing each address, these four sermons equally demonstrate the [page 12] identities of the congregations. They are, in fact, performances of those communities. Construction flows reciprocally. Communities do not only assist in the creation of a sermon; that same sermon serves as a presentation of their identity. In other words, sermons appear as performative expressions of a congregation, preacher/khateeb, and faith tradition. Each of these sermons illustrates what each of these communities deems important. They construct them accordingly then perform that identity back to themselves. This reciprocal connection to the people not only implicates the creation of a sermon, but its delivery and reception as well. In each case the relationship between sermon, preacher/khateeb, and congregation consists of a continuously shifting, yet linked chain of causality. It remains impossible to study one aspect without taking into account the perspective of the other two. The identity of the sermon becomes the identity of the congregation, which remains implicit in its own construction.

In these terms, the construction of congregational identity appears no different than the construction of identity in race, gender, etc. As Judith Butler writes, identity gets "tenuously constituted in time – an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts".(15) Preaching represents just such a repetition of acts, and herein lies a major distinction between religious and theatrical performance events. Unlike in theatre, religious congregations predominantly consist of the same group on a regular basis. This group forms and re-forms again and again, and this homiletical repetition helps to create the identity of those who hear. They build, develop, and modify this identity over time and through repetition, a decidedly distinct environment from traditional theatrical audiences. To truly understand these repetition-based, [page 13] reciprocal constructions, sermons must no longer be viewed as universal to all situations and all people, but as an act, an event tied to space and time.

In addition, phenomenologist Edmund Husserl talks about noesis and noema: the two concatenous yet unified facets of perception. Meaning, for Husserl, appears through the noetic action of perceiving and the noematic act perceived. In other words, noesis represents the –ing, perceiving, while noema represents the –ed, the perceived or perception itself. Husserl relates them accordingly: "The noematic is the field of unities, the noetic is the field of 'constituting' multiplicities".(16) The noematic represents the completed act of perception; the noetic refers to the constantly shifting action of perception. Too often when preaching gets examined, if it gets examined at all, it is as noematic, a completed act. I feel a far more interesting approach lies in its noetic aspects, the way a sermon is not completed once written, nor even once delivered. The notion of performed congregational identity speaks directly to this noetic aspect of preaching. Never fixed or even fixable, congregational identity always remains fluid and developing. For example, a common Christian saying asserts that a good sermon the congregation must finish for themselves, that the preacher should not seek to answer all questions, but to point the congregation to a place where they can continue the journey individually. The end point of a sermon remains elusive and illusive. A common rabbinic teaching concurs stating, "The homily is not the essence but the deed." To examine a sermon in this context approaches its noetic aspects.

The events of 11 September provide an opportunity for just such a performative, noetic examination of sermons because each preacher/khateeb dealt with the same crisis, but did so in decidedly different communities. The distinctions between these sermons not only reflect the [page 14] differences in faith traditions and the differences in individual preachers/khateebs, but also reflect the noetic differences in listening audiences. Therefore, September 11th sermons do not constitute monolithic, theological treatises on the nature of good and evil. They do not collectively discern God's possible role, or lack thereof, in preventing or condoning these attacks. In fact universalist notions of preaching must be refuted and set aside. Each of these four sermons reflect a specific group of people in a particular place and time as well as their relationship with the Holy and one another.

Billy Graham fixates on the power of nation and the abilities of our leaders to solve and correct injustice. Graham portrays an audience constructed to believe that God works on the side of America, directly through the person of George W. Bush. He goes so far at one point as to speak for God, stating: "I want to assure you that God understands these feelings that you may have." Graham's performative act equates the justice of God with the justice of the government of this country. The noetic action of this sermon merges the religious and the political, supports their interdependence, and allows for their future involvement together. In this way, the sermon did not end when Graham sat down that day, but rather its repercussions had only began.

Gamiet presents an audience of unknown victim, the congregation as a site of ongoing and future tragedy. By constituting his congregation in this manner he then becomes able to performatively stress the acts required by their faith in response to the expected treatment. His local knowledge of the violence and persecution faced by Muslims both constructed his sermon and helped to communicate the audience to itself. It shows the community they can no longer remain passive. The khutbah's noesis extols an activist response. If they want to counteract the stereotypes around them, they must assert positive notions of their identity into the greater [page 15] society. "We must not behave in any way that compromises the good name and dignity of our faith." Gamiet uses his khutbah to create a turning point for his congregation, reflecting a community ready to change and move forward.

Bosmyer expresses an audience found solely in the present. By relegating the 9/11 events outside the dominant aspects of her sermon, she performatively constitutes an audience focused on where they are as opposed to where they've been or where they are going. Bosmyer does not offer explanations or guides for conduct. Instead she says, "we stand together to affirm what we cannot always understand." Her impetus restores focus on her positive, engaged image of God. What is God like? God loves us, seeks us out, and remains with us always, even grieving with us at the pain of our lives, of our world. Reconnecting that notion of God to her congregation constitutes the true noetic movement of her sermon, and it offers a sense of how it might continue after the service ended.

Glass communicates an insider audience, an audience with previous intimate knowledge of events such as those of 9/11. He uses this type of knowledge to performatively persuade his congregation to move beyond the expected revenge born of the shock and anger of the moment. His construction of the audience seeks to performatively move them "to embrace life with fervor, to find greater meaning in all that we do, to appreciate what we have all the more, to love with greater passion." Glass offers the perfect example of a sermon not intended as a noematic, completed act. The true work of the sermon only begins after the service has ended. As a community construction and performance, the sermon performatively stresses the noetic. Glass' sermon offers a call-to-action, whose effects ripple back through the community that created it.

I titled this article "The Performance of God," but, in the end, I do not believe that represents an accurate description of what I have found. These sermons instead reflect the [page 16] presentation of how a particular community understands and desires God – the performance of God as I want or know God to be. God becomes a communal experience, even a construct, expressing the ways in which each community engages in an ever-developing relationship with the Holy. God remains with you always for Bosmyer and her community. God also scrutinizes the actions of Gamiet and his community. God can align with political leaders or focus on the future. We cannot understand the total mystery of God, as Bosmyer states, yet each community can latch onto to what they need. Reciprocal, evolving constructions highlight the role of sermons in constituting and performing the identity of religious communities and their notion of God as well.

The events of 11 September affected an increased attendance and interest in religion. Many people in crisis turn to religion for comfort and for answers. Preachers/khateebs across faith traditions dealt first hand, often on a daily basis, with people's responses to the tragedy. Their sermons illustrate the enormous power and influence of the pulpit. Preaching/khatabah, long overlooked within cultural studies as revealing only religious doctrine, I believe reflects entire communities – sermons as facets of local knowledge. I feel preaching/khatabah deserves more thorough study, and although this present project deals solely with sermonic texts, a fuller study should include actual performance analysis of the moment of delivery and reception. Performance paradigms and methodologies such as dramaturgy offer valuable tools for an examination of religious addresses, presenting a fresh approach to this overlooked form of cultural discourse. Preaching/khatabah shows how communities constitute themselves and perform themselves to themselves, a valuable site for further exploration.

Endnotes

Peter is a doctoral candidate in Theatre Studies at Cornell University. He is currently working on his dissertation, an ethnographic exploration of religious addresses across faith traditions. He previously delivered a version of this paper at the ATHE 2002 Religion and Theatre Emerging Scholars Panel.