Hanging Up Our Harps

Laurie Kraus

Hanging Up Our Harps: Worship and Preaching after Disaster or Violence

On that Friday afternoon in late August, I had just finished outlining the church’s events for the upcoming program year, color-coding everything with permanent markers in our denominational calendar. I reread my sermon, printed it, and turned off the computer. The phone rang not an hour later. “There’s a category 5 hurricane heading directly for Miami, due to hit Sunday night. It will probably turn, they always do, but since there hasn’t been one for over forty years, and you are fairly new to Miami, I wanted to give you a heads up.” “Uh, okay,” I said, trying to remember what “category 5” meant. “Is there something I’m supposed to do to prepare the manse? What about the church property?” “Well, the manse has no shutters—if you are worried, you can go to Home Depot and buy some plywood or tape. We don’t have anything for the church building, never have and never needed it.”

I was ten years out of seminary, four years into my second call, and I had no idea how my life was going to change. I got through Saturday with my young daughter clinging, obsessively watching local news. Hurricane Andrew didn’t turn, and since the manse was made out of cement block and I had both child care and preaching to attend to, I decided to push through the weekend and figure it out later. I didn’t rewrite my sermon or adapt the liturgy. What if the storm “turned,” and I looked like an anxious ninny, blowing everything out of proportion? Sunday dawned, hot and oppressively humid. Attendance was lower than the barometric pressure. I sleepwalked through the liturgy, babbled the words of my sermon, and finally with relief, pronounced the benediction. The only thing I changed was the children’s time, and that, too, felt weirdly disconnected—platitudes of reassurance and trust in God to keep us safe that didn’t even convince me. I left worship unsettled and sad, certain that I had phoned in a service that could, and should have been, so much more. Hurricane Andrew, with winds over 195 mph, struck that night, displacing over a third of our congregation and leaving devastating damage in its wake.

What does it mean to craft faithful liturgy in a season of crisis? How do faith leaders, often themselves survivors of a natural disaster or episode of mass violence, preach, pray, and shape liturgies that engage and connect the people of God, hold tenderly the liminal space of disorientation, and address honestly the questions, hurts, and hopes emerging in the wake of catastrophe? Long years have passed since my first confrontation with worship after disaster, during which time my perspective has shifted from serving as the primary pastoral leader in a crisis through accompanying countless other pastors and communities here in the United States and globally as they make their way through valleys of shadow, leading their congregations with courage, authenticity, and grace. In all these circumstances, the leaders who do it well share one common trait: they show up.

A story is told that the Baal Shem Tov, the late seventeenth-century European rabbi who founded the Chasidic movement of Judaism, once stopped at the threshold of a synagogue and refused to go in. “I cannot go in,” he said. “It is crowded with teachings and prayers from wall to wall and floor to ceiling. How could there be room for me?”¹

We who lead worship and preach make our way into the presence of the Holy with words: we pray, we preach, we sing, we try to point the way into the presence of God with faithful theology and inspiring ideas. When disaster strikes, there is a temptation to fill the room with words: to explain, to soothe, to grapple with the unthinkable, to wrap our arms around the community and hold them safe from harm. Sometimes, it is ourselves we are trying to convince—that we are okay, that our faith and foundations have not been shaken, that God is still near, though we cannot sense the Presence in the midst of our fear, anger, shock, and grief. In the days after catastrophe, make room. Make room to breathe, take time to feel, sit with the event and its aftermath, pay attention. Resist the urge to use words to beat back the disorientation and listen. Then, begin the worship-work. 

Depending on when the event occurs, a worship leader has options. Not every catastrophe happens on a Friday or Saturday, though sometimes it feels that way! On July 13, a Saturday evening assassination attempt on a former United States president upended worship plans for many parish clergy. My Facebook feed blew up with memes of recycling bins, and a vigorous debate ensued about whether to tear up the sermon or to muscle through the following morning’s service without mention. Responses ranged from “nope” to one colleague staying up all night to rewrite his entire sermon and service in response to the event. Most preachers found a middle ground, from including the event in the prayers of the people to an improvised mention of the event and its implications (political polarization, gun violence), linking it to the Gospel of Mark’s recounting of the murder of John the Baptist by Herod or to Psalm 85’s promise that hearing God’s word of peace will permit God’s glory to dwell in our land. One nondenominational colleague chose not to mention the attempt at all, only to find that the (unexamined) first hymn of the day, “Onward Christian Soldiers,” sent a loud, completely unintentional message to his congregation. With only hours to determine how to address a public or local crisis in worship the next day, breathe. You know your own capability and the flexibility of your co-leaders in worship and the congregation. Don’t try to do it all—to say too much, or to draw conclusions too early, may do more harm than good. And if you are exhausted and anxious, your ability to hold liminal space and connect authentically with your congregation will be impaired. Change a hymn. Write a different prayer. Add a few words in the sermon, noting that your offering, like theirs, is coming from a place of disruption, touching feelings that are new and tender. Light some candles, sit in silence. Choose whatever ways seem helpful and possible and show up centered and fully present. 

When there is more time between event and aftermath, don’t be afraid to name, explore, and sit with the impact of catastrophe on your community and in the world. Just before I was called as the director of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) at the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) denominational offices, I was deployed as a PDA volunteer to a small town in northwestern Pennsylvania where, on the first Sunday of Advent, the disgruntled ex-husband of the church organist had burst into worship, shooting and killing her in the midst of the first hymn, “My Lord, What a Morning.” The thirty or so worshipers and the pastor tried to intervene, disarming and subduing him until emergency responders could arrive. The week we spent together was a blur of shock, anger, and bewilderment. The congregation met to pray, share stories, and grieve. The church property was declared a crime scene, and they learned that hazmat concerns would keep the congregation out of the building for weeks. A candle memorial grew on the steps outside the sanctuary door. The pastor and I, working from a nearby Lutheran church where she also served as part-time pastoral supply, began to develop a service for the second Sunday of Advent, and to think about the weeks ahead. The shocking murder of the organist was a violation of sacred space, of the congregation’s sense of safety, casting their communal faith into disarray. Advent as a season of hope and expectation now seemed impossible; a loving God, remote. Logistically, this service would address two congregations: one of impacted survivors in unfamiliar space, the other, compassionate but mostly unaffected neighbors. Everyone wanted to help; no one knew what to say or do. 

The service that emerged in those difficult days was firmly grounded in the season of Advent, centered in the worship work of lament, and spacious enough to embrace the wide range of feelings, experiences, yearnings, and wonderings that were in the souls of worshipers. It was also hospitable enough to allow the wounded, temporarily exiled Presbyterians to find haven and belonging among their Lutheran neighbors and other “outsiders” who had begun reaching out to the members—incorporating into the prayers the sharing of blessings and notes that had been received throughout the week and a gift of prayer shawls that had arrived a day or two previously. With permission, members of the Lutheran congregation each took a gifted prayer shawl from the communion table, placed it in the hands or on the shoulders of one of the Presbyterian survivors, and murmured a blessing to accompany what truly became the prayers of the people. A simple sharing of the Eucharist completed the service, leading seamlessly into a quiet, shared lunch in the fellowship hall prepared by the host congregation. That evening, and at least once a week throughout the remainder of Advent, other congregations in the area took turns hosting community-wide prayer vigils to accompany and support the grieving Presbyterian congregation. Though the church property was cleared and cleaned well before Christmas Eve, the pastor and her session made a theological and pastoral choice to worship with their neighbors through the end of Christmastide. The day of Epiphany and the Baptism of the Lord felt intuitively like the appropriate moment to re-sanctify their sacred space, renew their baptismal vows, and turn, however tentatively, toward the Light revealed in the Star of Bethlehem and the growing toward wisdom represented by the journey of the Magi. 

Rubrics: A Way through the Wilderness

In the days, weeks, and months following a catastrophic event, it can be difficult to find our spiritual footing as preachers and liturgists tasked with guiding a congregation through the valley of the shadow. The known world has unexpectedly collapsed, and the skills, relationships, and experience we employ in our ordinary-time work seem woefully inadequate to the challenges of after. After Hurricane Andrew, I struggled to locate myself, my faith, and my worship work in the wilderness of the aftermath of catastrophic disaster. The known world had evaporated, and with it, any confidence I had that I knew what to do or how to do it. About six months into a four-year recovery, a friend shared a post-critical study of the Psalms by Walter Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary.² While my attention span for theological reading was seriously impaired at the time, I read the preface and felt immediately an overwhelming sense of relief that I had been seen; and as I read on I learned how the hymnbook of our sacred text could show me, and the congregation I loved, a way through. Briefly, Brueggeman’s rubric for organizing the Psalms suggests three orientations or themes common in human experience. First, settled orientation, in which “human life consists in satisfied seasons of well-being that evoke gratitude for the constancy of blessing.”³ Put another way, life before. Psalm 1 is an expression of this type of faith-poem.

The next movement, disorientation, encompasses so much of the work we are called to do, spiritually and liturgically, in a season of crisis or following catastrophe. It is a space that may be entered gradually or abruptly, crowded with rage, loss, confusion, hatred, and alienation. It is here we are invited into the hard work of lament. Here, where many experience a deafening and disconcerting silence from a God who, before, seemed near and familiar. Here, where we are made to confront our deepest fears that God may no longer be for us or among us. Psalms of disorientation, and the liturgy shaped by their truth, are critical resources for the preacher and liturgist who want to accompany their congregation through what Brueggemann describes as the “anguished seasons” of being human.⁴ Learning how to walk among these stark contours and razor-sharp edges is essential to being able to craft and lead worship that faithfully addresses and accompanies a people of God through these seasons. The Sufi poet and mystic Rumi, in his poem “The Guest House,” describes being human as an act of hospitality where we are meant to embrace the full range of our emotions and experiences, whenever they arrive. Anger, depression, sorrow and other negative emotions associated with trauma often are unwelcome, displacing our more ordered and pleasant feelings, yet Rumi urges us:

still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.⁵

Preparation for “some new delight” is implicit in the theme of Brueggemann’s final grouping, psalms of new orientation, and points toward the wisdom and transformation that emerge as we move from disorientation through “turns of surprise when we are overwhelmed with the new gifts of God, when joy breaks through the despair.”⁶ How we yearn, as pastors and caregivers, to reach the joy and comfort of recovery and renewal, after.

I have seen firsthand how counterproductive, even harmful, it can be when a faith leader tries to move too quickly through the hard work of disorientation to the comfort and familiarity of good news. This may include ignoring or minimizing valid feelings of hurt, confusion, anger, and alienation by focusing too soon on God’s presence, protection, and constancy. Though some may be grateful and ready to rejoice that they, or a loved one, was spared . . . what about those who were not? To dismiss disillusionment and pain may create a feeling of isolation or a sense of unworthiness. It may unintentionally reinforce the language and experience of privilege, especially when communities that are historically marginalized are often harder hit and have fewer resources for emergency aid or swift recovery. When we are willing to linger in the landscapes of disorientation, we learn how to tolerate our own questions and negative emotions; we become able to bear the silence or distance of God; we develop and strengthen our empathy and begin to practice solidarity with those who suffer. Disorientation is difficult, but it is the stuff of spiritual transformation. When we shortchange this work in worship and in our preaching, we signal an expectation to “get on with it,” and we model a shallow faith, rooted primarily in relationship with a God who is always and only blessing. Often, a congregation is more willing to engage the work of disorientation than that leader imagines. Too many times I have seen leaders who felt that their role was to cheer on a congregation to “normalcy” shoulder the terrible burden of reassurance and positivity, never acknowledging their own disillusionment and hurt, only to crash and burn months or sometimes years after the congregation had reached a place of renewed equilibrium and wisdom. 

Framing Worship: After Impact

In the early days following a disaster, worship provides a place of spiritual safety, openness, and community. If time and resources permit, gathering as soon as possible following an event can be helpful for the congregation and others in the larger community. Following the attacks on September 11, 2001, our congregation of around 150 members hosted an interfaith gathering the same evening. Our desire was to provide safe space for mourning, and silence for absorbing the shock and horror, while in the supportive presence of others. We offered this within a framework of liturgy with prayer, sacred text, songs, and simple reflection holding space for what could not yet be said or understood. In many communities I have accompanied after disaster, community prayer vigils in public spaces and/or a rotating series of special services hosted by neighboring congregations have provided a simple way to support those most affected and show up in solidarity for one another. With larger community efforts, remembering the adage “Nothing about us without us” is important. When offering to host a gathering in support of an afflicted community, it is helpful to think of yourself as a guest in someone else’s home. More than once, a well-intentioned community-wide effort to support an impacted congregation or group with gatherings for prayer and reflection has backfired because the affected congregation or group had not been asked for permission, invited to participate, nor consulted about the content of the services. One pastor whose congregation was adjacent to a mass shooting that took the lives of two members of his church among others was asked about the possibility of a community service and was initially appreciative. Upon attending the gathering a couple of days after the event, he was dismayed when the primary worship leader preached about the importance of forgiving the shooter. It was far too soon, he said, and his experience of being pushed prematurely into a theological resolution that bypassed their anger and disillusionment was alienating rather than helpful. Violence rooted in identity—racial, cultural, or religious—is wounding enough without neighbors speaking for them, without them. Services held in early days, whether for one congregation or in the larger community, are stronger and more helpful when they provide space rather than prescription. This is especially true after human-caused disaster, when the intent to cause harm feels personal and malevolent, rather than impersonal, as in the impact of a natural disaster. Forgiveness as a faith practice after harm has been done is important, but so is timing. A call to forgive that short-circuits lament or silences a sustained cry for justice is more likely to cause injury to fester than to heal it.

Framing Worship: The Order of Service

For many of us whose worship life is shaped by a more or less fixed pattern of worship, approaching the service outline through the lens of disaster or violence can be a helpful way to support a congregation in the aftermath of adverse events. In the congregation whose Advent expectation was shattered by the shooting of their organist, the pastor’s first inclination was to move away from mention of the liturgical season or Christmas in the first service following. But as she considered, she realized that themes of expectation and hope were only part of the theological breadth of Advent. The texts of Advent also address themes of apocalypse, darkness, adversity; framing hope in the context of God’s willingness to experience humanness in all its anguish and possibility. Pivoting away from the culturally supported, warm fuzziness and joyful hope of the pre-Christmas season allowed this pastor to embrace her people’s hurt in the strong arms of tradition and familiar narratives of Christian faith. Our liturgical seasons have so much more breadth and resonance than we customarily employ; in seasons of desolation and recovery they can be a rich resource. 

Order of Worship 

In the Presbyterian tradition that has shaped me, a usual pattern for a service has three or four movements. Gathering incorporates a Prelude, a Call to Worship or Invocation, Confession of Sin, Pardon, and hymns or sung responses. Listening or Word contains a Prayer for Illumination, Scripture, Sermon, Affirmation of Faith (which might include baptism or baptismal renewal), and Prayers of Intercession. Eucharist or Communion may also include Offering or a Prayer of Thanksgiving (without the Lord’s Supper) and/or the sacrament. The final shift in the service is Sending, which includes acts of commitment, a hymn, and a closing Charge and Blessing as participants return to service in the world. Any and all of these elements in the service can be shaped by or shifted in response to an event that has impacted the community. 

For example, what does “confession” and “pardon” look like, after disaster or violence? Is it helpful to use words that focus on the worshiper’s personal sinfulness and recalcitrance? Or is this a time to confess our brokenness, our hurt, our fear, anger, and lack of understanding, and to seek the reassurance that Jesus walks with us in our full and anguished human experiencing, that God holds us even if we cannot perceive the Presence? Perhaps a prayer for illumination might be a plea for light in the darkness, a time of stillness and breathing, a lighting of candles, a gentle centering of the community so that space can be made to hear a word from God, whether in sacred text, preaching, or shared communal reflection about what has happened and how we are experiencing it in community. While a spoken affirmation of faith or creed is not used by every congregation, selecting texts from your tradition’s confessional documents that resonate with how the community is experiencing a crisis can deepen the spiritual conversation, even beyond worship. A pastor whose church was the site of a double murder-suicide used words from the Apostles’ Creed that her own childhood pastor had excised from their church’s weekly recitation—“he descended into hell”—and spoke powerfully about how much those words meant to her now that the congregation she served had descended into its own hell of loss. She shared how speaking those words helped her to believe that Jesus was with them, and that one day they, like him, would also be raised to newness of life. Each element of the service supports—or undermines—the worship-work you are trying to do, after disaster. The tone of the service music, hymns and responses is critically important to supporting the mood and intention of worship in these times. Familiarity is helpful, as are sung pieces that involve repetition, like songs of Taizé or other choruses. 

In the days and months that follow these events, remember that impacts are lingering, and, in some situations, other events will trigger and potentially re-traumatize a community. In one church, a mass shooting in the town was addressed in the days after it happened, and then again when the shooter was arraigned and sentenced. The Sunday following, the pastor made a creative choice to incorporate the opening words of the sentencing judge as part of the Call to Worship, saying “Today, this is why we are here.” Other markers—the first year “anniversary” following a catastrophe, the dedication of a memorial, reentry into a church destroyed by storm, arson, or violence, the times of arraignment, trial, and sentencing of a perpetrator, a similar event in another community—all these may deserve liturgical notice and provide an opportunity for a faith community to continue to reweave its narrative, incorporating trauma into sacred story.

Framing Worship: Theology

A pastor whose congregation in Syria sustained catastrophic losses to life and property during the war described the brutal collision between the cherished and settled faith he and his congregation had nurtured and the realities of war. Why did you allow this? Where are you, God? Do we deserve what is happening to us? We have a lady in the church, a widow 30 years old, with two children. She doesn’t work, she doesn’t have a degree, her father is dead. Her husband was killed by a sniper. She asks me, her pastor: Why has God abandoned me? We reach places where we are depressed, lost, without peace, down. Before, preaching was an art, a part of ritual, a tool to change a small corner of the church. But suddenly in the crisis we are demanded to answer universal questions, difficult questions. We are like Jesus in the garden, praying that God would take this away from me. . . . ⁷ 

No preacher yearns for moments like these, but in an increasingly disaster-prone and violent world, all preachers will have to face them eventually. Preaching during crisis or after disaster is a good time to practice preaching the questions, leaving certainties about God’s intentions and God’s will for another time. My friend in Syria put it eloquently when he said that he much preferred preaching wisdom—which he understood as a Psalm 1 and Proverbs kind of worldview, where good is rewarded and evil punished—but he knew in the war that it was apocalyptic preaching to which he was called, namely, that evil and suffering are part of life, and we are called to find the presence of God in the midst of it. 

The Sunday after Hurricane Andrew was different. There was no electricity, so we met in Fellowship Hall, which had windows that opened. The roof of the church was damaged, other windows were blown out, tree debris everywhere, including, to everyone’s sorrow, the sixty-foot-high spreading ficus known as the “coffee tree” under which fellowship after worship had been held for twenty years. The winds had ripped it from the earth, roots and all, crushing the property’s fence and leaving an ugly, deep gash of bare earth behind. For hospitality this day there was only cold water and a basket of apples on the back table—and small piles of items displaced church members had brought for safekeeping, or others had brought to share. While cleaning debris and checking in with members, I had pondered how to craft a service that would reassure, provide space, and allow the beginnings of the story of the hurricane to be woven into our faith narrative. The text that came to me was Deuteronomy 26:1‑10, where the Israelites came into their new land, bringing an offering of first fruits while reciting their own history of displacement and disaster—a wandering Aramean was my ancestor (Deut. 26:5).

The congregation began arriving with the choir at 10:30 a.m. and continued to pour into the hall as people reconnected with such a cacophony of tears, hugs, laughter, and stories that I could not get anyone’s attention to begin the Call to Worship. The music minister solved that dilemma: above the noise and the din, he crashed the opening chords of the doxology: Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Conversation stopped; a deep common breath was drawn as we sang with full voices and fuller hearts. 

I cleared my throat and spoke: God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble. That is who we are. I didn’t preach but used the text from Deuteronomy to suggest that experiences in the wilderness, like those of our ancestors, deepen the narratives of our faith and shape the community we would become. The “sermon” time, then, was for any who would bring their witness as sacred text to our gathered community. This new way for a word to be preached in that congregation was embraced wholeheartedly. Their words were tender, halting, fraught, and faithful. Thread by thread, the weaving of a new story for the congregation and the community was begun, culminating in the words of one young father: 

The roof of our house was torn off, except the bedroom, where we stayed. Now at night we can see the stars through our living room roof. The children were frightened, and Ximena did not understand. She asked me, “Papi, why did God make this hurricane happen to us?” I . . . I guess I felt I needed to protect God’s reputation. I told her that I didn’t know, that I didn’t know if it was God who did it. But now, I say to you all that I don’t know what God had to do with this. I think maybe God sends both good days and bad days. I don’t know. But sometimes, you have to lose the roof in order to see the sky.

Notes

1. Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim: The Early Masters (New York: Schocken Books, 1947), 73.

2. Walter Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 1984).

3. Brueggermann, 19. 

4. Brueggermann, 19.

5. Jalaluddin Rumi, trans. Coleman Barks, https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/guest-house/. 

6. Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms, 19.

7. Spoken by Mofid Karajili, from the National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon, as heard by the author in Beirut in 2017.