The United Church Youth group at our church doesn’t meet regularly during the summer. We have a lot of summer programming for children and youth, but it takes a different shape during the school year than it does during the summer vacation. Big programs like Vacation Bible School and summer camps are designed around the school break. Now that the youth are back in school, we resume regular Wednesday evening programs. Tonight is the first meeting of the fall of the fellowship group that will meet Wednesdays until the end of the school year in May. Like many other ministries of the church, there is an element of presence in what we do. We agree with the youth that we will be there for them, every week, even when we know that the attendance of most of the youth will be much less regular.

There is symbolism in the fact that the first meeting this year falls on September 11. This year’s sixth graders are the youngest children who were alive when the attacks of September 11, 2001 occurred. Next year we will have 6th graders who were born after the attack. For the youth in our group, however, there are very few memories of the world before those attacks. Only the oldest of our high school youth have active memories of what the world was like before the attacks.

Most of us adults see the attacks on the World Trade Center, and the Pentagon along with the crash of United Fight 93 near Shanksville, Pennsylvania as a turning point in our experience. It is one of those “I remember where I was when . . .” events. Most people over the age of 20 can tell a story about that day.

But none of us can stop the passage of time. Our stories are less passionate, our memories less palpable, than was the case in the first days, weeks and years following the attacks. For an increasing number of children and youth, the attacks of September 11, 2001 are an item of history, not of the present.

Many of the youth in our group have no conscious memories of a time when the United States wasn’t engaged in a war in a foreign land. Receiving the news of deployment of troops, and death of US troops in foreign lands is simply a way of life for them. For them, the concept of a war between two nations is something that happened in former times. Their experience of war is that the enemy is far more difficult to define. The war on terror involves direct military action in foreign countries, but it also includes forays into the lands of allies, the use of drones in a far wider range of territory than a single nation, and a continual re-definition of who the enemy is and how that enemy is pursued.

Because there are so many threats in the world, it is uncertain if we will know when the war on terror is over. Some have proposed that the war on terror is perpetual and never fully over.

The children we are raising today will never know the kind of victory celebrations that VE Day and VJ Day for their great-grandparents.

Not all of the changes in the world have equal value, but it is important for us to remember that experiences we take for granted are not a part of the stories of our youth. There are things we have seen and known that exist only in the stories of others for them.

Not only can they not remember phones with dials, they can’t remember phones with cords attached to them. Not only can they not remember a time before personal computers, they cannot remember a time before handheld devices were in common use.

The Troubles in Northern Ireland, Apartheid in South Africa, the wall in Germany – all are relegated to the history books for these youth.

They have no memory of a time when divorce was rare. They don’t know a world where most families attended church every week. They have no experience of homes with only one television, and a daily newspaper is not the way news gets into their homes.

Of course change has always been a part of our world. In a sense there is nothing new about recognizing that our youth will face a different world than the one we have known. In the days when I was a youth member of my church, popular culture spoke of the generation gap and there were songs and slogans urging youth to not trust anyone over 30. It’s too late for that in my case. I don’t even have children under the age of 30 anymore.

This evening, as we meet with the youth, there will be a special prayer in memory of the events of September 11, 2001. I have prayed special prayers for 9-11 each year since those attacks. These days I have a collection of more than a dozen such prayers. Each year, however, deserves a fresh prayer – a new expression of how faith interacts with the events of daily lives.

Our people have always been shaped by the stories of what brought us to this place in time and space. The most ancient of our scriptures tell of how our forebears left the land of their ancestors in quest of a new place and in the process discovered that God is not limited to a particular place. For generations we have taught our children the stories of the escape from slavery in Egypt and the quest for a new home in the midst of the wilderness. We have steadfastly maintained that we are shaped by events that occurred long before our births. We belong to a people that did not begin in this generation. Those lessons are still relevant to the children and youth of today, even as we are aware that the chain of stories is longer and the events we deem important more numerous than ever before.

So we tell our stories first hand and face to face. The journey of faith continues and what we teach our children and youth is as important as it has been for every generation of our people.

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