At 8:46 that morning an “airline accident” was soon discovered for what it was, a sinister & intentional act. Tragically, “Never forget” quickly became a cliche and we soon forgot -- not where we were at that morning (like with JFK or the Challenger Spaceshuttle, who could?), not the brave first responders rushing towards danger or hoisting the Stars and Stripes, not the grotesque image seared into our psyche of the doomed people hopelessly bailing out of their windows “escaping” from the flames which were leaping and billowing like an inferno, or the dense dust clouds enveloping and draping the mangled towers like a death shroud, nor even the thousands of lives violently lost to the destruction or its gruesome carnage. We’ve memorized all that we had memorialized but sadly we’ve forgotten about our cohesion afterwards, senselessly we have ignored the lessons of 9/11 over the last twenty-five years.
Instead of needing to sound profound in the days immediately following 9/11/2001, we valued being solemn and we cherished our collective consciousness/solidarity. Maybe I’m being naive or nostalgic, but am I wrong to think that for a few days together as a community we held tightly to a piece of the peace of Christ or that we believed together that love triumphs over hatred and evil? The idea that God can bring about blessings in the midst of pain and suffering is a difficult concept to grasp, though it is true, for example when Joseph was sold into slavery, afterwards he recognized how God used an extremely evil situation for good in Gen 50:20, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today...”
No sniveling over petty grudges and in an absence of cynicism we were optimistic that united, we would stand. And after the smokey haze of our country’s crisis cleared, none of us needed to be told to be kind, to forgive, to be loving, to overlook our differences, or simply to get along with each other. The shadows of the wreckage illuminated our hearts and we didn’t feel the need to nitpick what translation of the Bible other people chose to read; there were no denominational or doctrinal differences that mattered, those all disappeared, if only for a few days no one was a Papist, Presbyterian, or Pentecostal, we were just Christians. We didn’t see each other as liberals or conservatives, we saw each other as fellow citizens struggling to find stability; political parties and partisanship agendas were put aside, people were prioritized and we were all patriots, however briefly that period persisted.
We’re no longer immobilized by fear these days, but we walk with a limp now. More TSA, stricter passport laws, and other inconveniences became the norm and soon we went back to our backbiting and bickering as a people, or worse. Today, the tragedy is that culturally we are estranged from each other, after a quarter of a century of being entangled in multiple Middle Eastern quagmires, accumulating trillions in debt, and the grim reality of the irreplaceable loss of life both of our military and civilians, instead of being transformed we are tethered to our smartphones and lost in the cloud of an ever increasing ever present AI. We blabber ceaselessly about the benefits of self-driving cars while we remain tight lipped about the blessings of self-control -- we’ve misunderstood that access to all of the information available on the internet will never make us wiser, connected, or more considerate.
It would be silly to say that the days after 9/11 were idyllic or to romanticize the days following that tragedy, yet. We need community, not controversy; we have more in common than we differ on, we have more to celebrate together than to separate over. Why we crave controversy, conflict, and competition over community confuses me, but we are immersed in our polarization and we are poorer in spirit for it, so instead, to honor those who died on 9/11 we who live on should resist the lure of resentment, reject the temptation to hate those we disagree with, and embrace the idea that we need love more than we need to be right, consider 1st John 4:20-21, “[20] If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. [21] And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.”
I wish I could persuade all people to embrace unity or provide a solution to our fragmentation, I suppose all I can offer here is the suggestion that we reflect for a moment today on that brief period of time after 9/11 where we shared a flicker of hope that we could as a people experience true brotherhood and genuine fellowship, even in the midst of our differences. Somewhere in the Good Book it says something about loving your enemies and praying for those who persecute you; there’s enough blame to go around on both sides of our divide, but I’m probably not the only one who is discouraged by everyone endlessly arguing about elections, vaccines, virtue signaling, and pronouns etc... Is this the best we can do, is this really the best version of “us” that we have to offer? I think I am finally understanding why the early church would groan, “Maranatha!”
