He was, on this morning, a young man in a hurry. Preoccupied with an important meeting, he skipped up the escalator two steps at a time. At the top he made a quick left and hurriedly exited the door of the World Trade Center out onto the street. He glanced at his watch: a few minutes past 8:30, Tuesday.

A green light at three intersections. Good! This will help, he thought. He was making his way to his office at Salomon, Smith, Barney on Greenwich Street when the unusual sound of a low-flying jet diverted his attention to the sky. What he witnessed next would never, ever be forgotten -- seared in his memory by a mind that tried to tell his eyes they were lying. He grabbed his cell phone and called his mother. His voice was so excited, she hardly recognized it. "Mom", he told her, "This isn't on the news yet, but it will be! An airplane just crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers!"

Daniel Johnson, son of Len and Lin Johnson, and a member of this church, had just witnessed the first in a quick series of the most catastrophic events in American history. It was 8:48AM, Tuesday, September 11, 2001. A date none of us will ever forget. Daniel will tell his grandchildren what he saw. For the rest of us, the news came over television, or, in my case, over the radio. We glued our eyes and ears. It stunned us, not just once, but over and over again.

A second jumbo jet -- a 767 -- slammed into the south tower of the World Trade Center. A third commercial airliner crashed into the Pentagon in Alexandria, Virginia, outside Washington. Then came news of still a fourth jet, crashing just south of Pittsburgh, amid reports that it was headed for the White House or the US Capital.

But the horror wasn't over yet. First one, and then the other, of the Trade Center towers crumbled to the ground in a hideous cloud of smoke and fire.

The attack upon America by nameless and cowardly terrorists this past week was unprecedented in its destruction, unimaginable in its scope, unyielding in its hatred, unfathomable in its evil and unmitigated in its tragedy and its grief. Its horror staggers the human imagination.

More than 5,000 people are dead, including all passengers and crew aboard four commercial jets, hundreds of policemen and firefighters, including the fire chief of New York City, the deputy fire chief and the beloved chaplain of the New York City fire department -- entire units wiped out. And thousands lie this morning under hundreds of thousands of tons of steel and concrete rubble that was once the proud citadel of American economic power. The World Trade Center, which has graced the New York City skyline since the 1970s, is now only a memory.

The terrorists, not content with that destruction and death, have also assaulted the symbol of American military power, the Pentagon. Nearly 200 more of our fellow Americans are also dead. The President told us yesterday that we are at war, and that justice will be served, that those responsible for this horrendous act against civilization itself, will be, in the President's own words, "Smoked out of their holes" and brought to account and judgment.