Ten Years Later

[I will not be preaching this Sunday, so I do not have an entry on the Sunday lessons. Instead, I am posting the reflection that will be in the church's September newsletter.]

September 11th will be the tenth anniversary of the attacks on the United States: the destruction of the twin towers at the World Trade Center, the crashing of a jet into the Pentagon, and the loss of life in Pennsylvania when passengers attempted to regain control of a hijacked plane.

No one who lived through that time will forget where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. No one will forget the fear of what might be next, or days without planes in the sky. It was a defining moment for this country, like the loss of the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia, the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., and the bombing of Pearl Harbor. All are etched into the memories of those who lived through them.

Ten years later, we still live in the shadow of 9/11. As a country, we struggle to disengage from two wars initiated in retaliation for what happened. Travel in general, and air travel in particular, has become difficult and costly. Even the political polarization and gridlock we now experience can be traced to differing reactions to the attacks, and the tremendous economic cost of responding to them. If, as is sometimes suggested, one of the intentions of the attackers was to overburden the U.S. economy, they have certainly succeeded.

In the last decade, historians have documented the precise sequence of events that occurred. Engineers have analyzed the mechanical weaknesses which caused the towers to collapse. CIA and law enforcement officers have examined the failures in intelligence and communication that allowed the hijackers to succeed. Sociologists have weighed in on the political and economic conditions that spawned people who sought to destroy as many lives as possible through their suicidal acts.

What about the religious response? How can our Christian faith, in particular, give meaning to what happened? An early response by Pat Robertson, who said that God punished the U.S. for its sinfulness, especially its tolerance of homosexuality, must be rejected as non-Christian. The God revealed to us through the Jesus Christ of the Gospels is not a God who capriciously kills innocent people. One wonders what Bible Pat Robertson reads, that he is so quick to condemn others.

What is clear is that the God whose Son died an excruciating death on the cross was present with those terrified people in the hijacked planes. God was ready to receive them into his everlasting arms, ready to embrace the workers and firemen and policemen who died.

It is also clear that evil is very real, evil greater than any human being. The men who trained to fly their planes into buildings – who practiced takeoffs but not landings – allowed themselves to be overpowered by evil under the deadly illusion that they were doing the work of God. I do not believe that Islam is a fundamentally violent religion, any more than Judaism or Christianity are. But each religion has adherents who preach violence in God’s name. And that, I believe, is a perversion of their faith.

This September 11th our church will have a brief ceremony of remembrance in the park across the street. There will be representatives from the local fire department and a military honor guard. After that remembrance we will have our annual community picnic. You may wonder why we’ll have a joyful event on such a solemn day, but it makes perfect sense to me. September 11th brought us together as a nation. It created community, common purpose, and a turning toward God. What better way to remember that sense of unity than to offer what we have to the community around us? What better way to be thankful for what God has given us than to provide a free meal to everyone who comes? And what better way to come together as a church community than to work toward a common purpose of helping others?

Yes, 9/11/2011 will have its somber moments as we remember those who have died. Yet it is also an opportunity to witness to our faith that evil will not prevail, that through his resurrection, Jesus Christ overcame evil and destroyed death. God reigns. And no amount of human-caused destruction can change that fact.