Ten years has gone by now--ten years since we were shocked, angered, numbed, and outraged by an attack on our country, ten years since we stood out in the narthex watching television and saw the towers fall, ten years since that emotional punch-in-the-gut moment we now know simply by the numbers 9.11.
I preached last week on forgiveness, partly because that’s what the text was about, just as it is this Sunday, and partly because that’s the frame of mind I wanted to be in, and, frankly, the frame of mind I wanted all of us to be in, as we approached this weekend.
As in all things, we should approach this day as Christians, in other words. We would approach this day as people who love Jesus, as people who seek to follow Jesus, as people who trust, as Jesus did, that there is a better way than violence, a better way than discord, a better way than revenge.
The poet, Emily Dickinson, once wrote that “after great pain, a formal feeling comes.” “The nerves sit ceremonious, like tombs,” she said. That’s how a lot of us felt ten years ago. We had a “formal feeling”--we were stiff and numb. I remember then comparing it to feeling like you were walking through molasses.
We wondered: Why? We asked: Why do they hate us? Some said they hated us for our freedoms. Personally speaking, I never believed they hated us at all. To me, it was more about playing for power in the Arab world than it was about attacking us.
They attacked us because we’re the big dog on the block. By attacking the big dog on the block, bin Laden thought he would rouse the Arab world, and lead them on a holy war against the west. In my view, it was mostly about internal Arab politics. To put it a different way, as Tom Hagen told Sonny Corleone in The Godfather, “It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s business.”
This is why there were also later terrorist attacks in Turkey and in Spain. At one time, Constantinople in Turkey was the lynchpin of the Christian world. The Muslims tried to take it many times and couldn’t. A terrorist attack there sends the message that Turkey and Constantinople, on the eastern side of Europe, is theirs.
The attack in Spain shows an intention to block off Europe on the western side. It was also a signal that they, the radical Muslims, wanted to reassert themselves in Spain where, once, 1000 years ago, the Muslims had ruled. Bin Laden was sending a message to the Arab world that he would lead them back to former glory. At least, that is my view of the situation.
Now, ten years later, how has that strategy worked? Obviously, it has not. Bin Laden is dead, Al-Qaeda is weakened around the world, and the very opposite of what it wanted is now taking place.
The Arab countries are changing, yes, but they’re not changing toward al-Qaeda. If anything, they’re changing toward more democracy. The Muslim world has not rallied to al-Qaeda. It has recoiled from al-Qaeda.
On our side, we must admit that some of us lost our heads. Some said, and some still say, that the whole thing was an inside job. It wasn’t bin Laden at all, but we ourselves blew our own selves up. I’m as curious about conspiracy theories as the next person, but the thing that escaped me about this one was why in the world anyone would want to blow their own selves up. Who benefits? No one, that I can see.
Still others thought that Muslims were the problem. Didn’t the Koran preach jihad? Didn’t the Koran teach “holy war”? No, actually, it does not. It does speak of jihad, yes, but jihad is understood by the vast majority of Muslims as referring to spiritual warfare, not earthly warfare.
In fact, let me tell you a story of how such a view can backfire. Ten years ago, this week, three days after 9.11, it was my privilege to be downtown at the State Capitol building as Humo and Aida were made citizens of the United States.
Humo and Aida are Muslims from Sarajevo. During the time of conflict in Sarajevo, they couldn’t go outside for fear of being hit by snipers. They had to burn their own furniture for heat, and scrounge food wherever they could.
They were helped to come to this country by Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services. They loved the United States. They wanted to live here. Unfortunately, however, Humo, an architect, couldn’t find work, at least partly because he and Aida are Muslim. As Aida put it, “I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised. Humo is short for Muhammed, after all.”
Aida got a degree in international relations from Denver University. She wanted to work for the United States. She and Humo are moderate Muslims, even, you might say, liberal Muslims. They don’t believe in any use of violence, they don’t hate Jews, and they are exactly the kind of people we should be helping. Instead, unfortunately, they moved to Dubai because they could find work there, but not here.
Some of us took flight into conspiracy theories. Others took flight into religious prejudice. Still others, including some of the nation’s preachers, thought 9.11 was all our own fault. The Lord God was exacting some kind of vengeance, they said, for all the things we were doing wrong. It was our own fault, in other words, for being such sinners.
Jesus himself once addressed this very issue. You may remember the story. A tower had fallen down and killed 18 people. They came to Jesus and asked him if the tower fell because those people were sinners and God was getting them for their sins. Jesus said, “No way. The tower didn’t fall because those people were sinners. Why, these poor folks weren’t even any worse sinners than you are.”
So, some of us lost our heads for awhile. Considering the state of shock we were in, it’s not all that surprising, and mostly, over time, cooler heads have managed to prevail.
In the newspaper business, they talk of the five “w’s”--the who, what, when, where, and why of a story. A friend of mine points out that we can know how, and we can know what. We can know when and we can know where.
But we don’t always know “why.” I gave you my theory of why bin Laden did it, but it’s only a theory, and your guess is as good as mine. Sometimes, the causes of events can be murky, with no clear answers.
This afternoon, there will be a gathering at Civic Center. There will be speeches by various dignitaries. The Beach Boys will be there to entertain the crowd. Some Air Force jets will stage a fly-over.
That’s all perfectly fine, but it doesn’t feel like that kind of day to me. If you’re going, I don’t want to spoil it for you. I have nothing against the speeches, and certainly nothing against the Beach Boys. I love the Beach Boys. It’s just that, to me, this is not a Beach Boys kind of day. (The flyover, however--the flyover will be cool.)
Personally, I plan to go to St. John’s Cathedral this evening for a service of remembrance. I want to place the whole event in the context of the Christian faith. I want to experience giving up on the “why?” question, and think instead about God’s promises.
It’s a time for remembrance, yes. It’s a time for observance, yes. It’s a time for prayer as well--prayer for the 3000 direct victims, of many nations and many religions, a prayer for the untold thousands of other victims, for those who lost loved ones, those who still experience health problems, those who suffered other losses.
I took a moment this week to look back to see what I had said on this Sunday ten years ago. Here’s a paragraph I said then:
“Yes, those responsible must be punished. It needs to be done even though we also know that nothing we can do, no amount of retribution, no amount of payback, can ever make things right again. Nothing we can do, no amount of retribution, no amount of payback, can undo what has been done. In a situation like this, there is no such thing as true justice, and if that’s what we’re looking for, we will surely be disappointed.”
What, then, can we do? We can do this: We can deal with it as Christians. We can place it in the context of the Christian faith. Christians know all too well the darkness and pain of the world. Our Lord, you’ll remember, was brutally murdered, and many of our brothers and sisters of the faith have been victims of violence all through history.
But even though we know the darkness and pain of the world, we also know the source of life and light, and, even in the depth of that darkness, we trust in the light.
Sometimes, we don’t know why things happen, but we know why we act like Christians. We act like Christians because that’s who we are, and following our Lord, we are called to be people of hope, people of mercy, people of compassion at all times and in all situations.
That’s why we do it, who we do it for, and when we do it. As for what and where, St. Francis of Assisi already told us: “Where there is hatred, let us sow love. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light.”
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