Update: The ChristianPost reports on the sermon here.

The Parish of Trinity Church includes St Paul’s Chapel, which sits near the site of the World Trade Center attacks in 2001 and survived unscathed. “The little chapel that stood” became a sanctuary for the rescue and recovery workers.

This year, the Parish inaugurated a “Reconciliation Preaching Prize competition” that

required all entries to address texts from Isaiah and Matthew — one calling for a future without war and the other instructing people to lay down their spears for plowshares.

While it seems a bit odd to say a sermon won a “prize,” the prize was the honor of delivering the sermon on September 11th at the chapel.

The winner was US Army Chaplain (Capt) David Peters:

“It’s astounding how difficult reconciliation can be … Just like the Marine Corps didn’t just teach me to do war, they taught me to be war, we have to learn to be reconciliation,” wrote Peters, who is working toward a master’s degree in religion at the Seminary of the Southwest in Austin and is an assistant parish priest at Grace Episcopal Church in Georgetown, Texas.

Also at the Stars and Stripes.

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