Steadfast Love: Remembering September 11, 2001
On September 11, 2001, we experienced a crisis of epic proportions, as four suicide bombers crashed planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and a rural field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people and scarring thousands more for life. We all watched in horror, most of us by way of television, as first one and then a second plane crashed into the twin towers, smoke billowing out of the buildings and then, unimaginably, witnessed the collapse of both towers and the death of thousands of folk who worked that day in those towers.
In those hours, no one knew for sure what was happening and many believed our nation was under attack, wondering where and when the next terror would be visited upon us. We woke up in one world that morning, preparing for a day just like any other, and went to bed that night, in a different world haunted by fear and uncertainty and grief.
The trauma of 9 – 11, was not the first time we as a nation have been brought to grief. Some of us can remember the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, and many of us remember the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. We have known fear before and no doubt will know fear again.
Every crisis we face – and I would here invite you to remember not just national crises but the many personal crises we all have had – every crisis we face confronts us with a decision. One world or way of life has passed away and we must choose how to live in a new world, a world we did not ask for, but which has been given to us. September 12th marked the beginning of a world that was not like the world we awoke to on September 11th. The familiar and the certain had passed away and we were confronted with a strange new world, a world haunted by terror and fear.
What we saw on September 11th is the capacity we human beings have been given to work both great evil and great good. On that day we witnessed both the triumph and the tragedy of humanity. On that day, we saw human beings kill thousands of innocent fellow human beings as well as watch others, risk their own lives to save their fellow human beings. What was very clear on September 11th was that we live in a world that is haunted by evil, yet rich with possibilities for goodness and love.
The power to do good and the power to do evil is given to us as human beings and we each are accountable for what we do with our power. Every one of us, every day, must make choices and none of us are spared the truth of our humanity – every human being throughout all time has both the power to do good and the power to work evil. No one born into this world is all good or all evil, but everyone born into this world can be instruments of life and love or death and destruction.
Faced with a crisis, confronted by fear and uncertainty, we perhaps instinctively, seek to protect ourselves, desperately trying to find ways to feel safe again in this world, a world in which we human beings are vulnerable and not all powerful. In seeking to be safe, though, we can reduce our world to a place we share only with people we know and not with people we do not know, only with friends and not with strangers, only with people who think and act and look like and not with those who think, act and look differently from us.
As our world shrinks, we may be safe, but ultimately we will become unable to hear the cries of our fellow human beings who like us must live in a world haunted by evil. Locked away from the world we will not see the folk Jesus sees and blesses in our reading from Matthew this evening – the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, and the peacemakers. We can indeed build thicker and higher walls between ourselves and others, but if we do, we will not hear the cries of those who God loves and calls us to love as well.
The crisis of September 11th lay not in that day’s revelation that we are not immune from terrorism; the crisis of September 11th lay in the perception that there are good people in this world and there are evil people in this world and we must protect ourselves from them. The crisis of September 11th lies deep within the human soul, in the awareness that we human beings – all of us - have been given tremendous power to work both good and evil. On that day, we saw the very best and the very worst of human being, both the triumph and tragedy of what it means to be a human being.
We each must choose how we use the power God has given to us, knowing we each have the power to choose evil rather than good. We can be instruments of God’s peace or we can despair that this world will ever be filled with the glory of God, a place in which, in the words of Revelation: “Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” Holding fast to a vision of a world made new may be for us even harder - more unimaginable - than were those horrific images we all remember now ten years past. Tonight we remember, not only the horror of a day which filled us with fear, but the promise of God that these “first things” will pass away.
On September 11, 2001, we experienced a crisis of epic proportions, as four suicide bombers crashed planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and a rural field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people and scarring thousands more for life. We all watched in horror, most of us by way of television, as first one and then a second plane crashed into the twin towers, smoke billowing out of the buildings and then, unimaginably, witnessed the collapse of both towers and the death of thousands of folk who worked that day in those towers.
In those hours, no one knew for sure what was happening and many believed our nation was under attack, wondering where and when the next terror would be visited upon us. We woke up in one world that morning, preparing for a day just like any other, and went to bed that night, in a different world haunted by fear and uncertainty and grief.
The trauma of 9 – 11, was not the first time we as a nation have been brought to grief. Some of us can remember the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, and many of us remember the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. We have known fear before and no doubt will know fear again.
Every crisis we face – and I would here invite you to remember not just national crises but the many personal crises we all have had – every crisis we face confronts us with a decision. One world or way of life has passed away and we must choose how to live in a new world, a world we did not ask for, but which has been given to us. September 12th marked the beginning of a world that was not like the world we awoke to on September 11th. The familiar and the certain had passed away and we were confronted with a strange new world, a world haunted by terror and fear.
What we saw on September 11th is the capacity we human beings have been given to work both great evil and great good. On that day we witnessed both the triumph and the tragedy of humanity. On that day, we saw human beings kill thousands of innocent fellow human beings as well as watch others, risk their own lives to save their fellow human beings. What was very clear on September 11th was that we live in a world that is haunted by evil, yet rich with possibilities for goodness and love.
The power to do good and the power to do evil is given to us as human beings and we each are accountable for what we do with our power. Every one of us, every day, must make choices and none of us are spared the truth of our humanity – every human being throughout all time has both the power to do good and the power to work evil. No one born into this world is all good or all evil, but everyone born into this world can be instruments of life and love or death and destruction.
Faced with a crisis, confronted by fear and uncertainty, we perhaps instinctively, seek to protect ourselves, desperately trying to find ways to feel safe again in this world, a world in which we human beings are vulnerable and not all powerful. In seeking to be safe, though, we can reduce our world to a place we share only with people we know and not with people we do not know, only with friends and not with strangers, only with people who think and act and look like and not with those who think, act and look differently from us.
As our world shrinks, we may be safe, but ultimately we will become unable to hear the cries of our fellow human beings who like us must live in a world haunted by evil. Locked away from the world we will not see the folk Jesus sees and blesses in our reading from Matthew this evening – the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, and the peacemakers. We can indeed build thicker and higher walls between ourselves and others, but if we do, we will not hear the cries of those who God loves and calls us to love as well.
The crisis of September 11th lay not in that day’s revelation that we are not immune from terrorism; the crisis of September 11th lay in the perception that there are good people in this world and there are evil people in this world and we must protect ourselves from them. The crisis of September 11th lies deep within the human soul, in the awareness that we human beings – all of us - have been given tremendous power to work both good and evil. On that day, we saw the very best and the very worst of human being, both the triumph and tragedy of what it means to be a human being.
We each must choose how we use the power God has given to us, knowing we each have the power to choose evil rather than good. We can be instruments of God’s peace or we can despair that this world will ever be filled with the glory of God, a place in which, in the words of Revelation: “Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” Holding fast to a vision of a world made new may be for us even harder - more unimaginable - than were those horrific images we all remember now ten years past. Tonight we remember, not only the horror of a day which filled us with fear, but the promise of God that these “first things” will pass away.
