Ten years later

September, 8, 2011

On September 9, 2001, I led a small Sunday worship discussion with several young adults at the University of Illinois. We were talking about the watershed events in our lives and world. My generation remembers the moon landing, Elvis’ death, the Challenger explosion, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union. The generation before me remembers the assassinations of Dr. King and the Kennedys. The generation before that remembers the attacks on Pearl Harbor and the dropping of the A-Bomb a few years later. The young adults in that worship service on September 9 said they didn’t have any such events in their lives. That would change just 48 hours later…

Some say that the world changed on September 11, 2001. But violence and evil have always existed. Human beings have always been capable of and too often willing to engage in the unimaginable. We can read about the most horrific human terror in even the most ancient manuscripts written across the millennia. The world didn’t change ten years ago. It simply continued in the reality explained to us in Ecclesiastes–that there is a time for everything, and there is nothing new under the sun.

Even the U.S. didn’t really change ten years ago. Our ancestors have repeatedly seen tragedy of epic proportions in poverty, war, slavery, and genocide in just the past few hundred years. What happened that day was that we once again lost our innocence. The unimaginable happened to us. All of us.

As with natural disasters, few people never feel safe (and are always fearful) in the aftermath of terror. This is because we lose our sense of control, and so our natural instinct is to regain that control. The problem is that none of us can control the hate of another. We can only control our own feelings of love and hate. “There is a season for everything under the sun…” Vengeance, as natural as that response is to our human sensibilities, doesn’t work. As Dr. King said:

Through violence you may murder the hater,
but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate.
So it goes.
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness:
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

And so, ten years later, as prophets and sages have been calling us to do since the beginning of time, we are again called to love one another–to live our lives to the fullest despite the uncontrollable realities of the world. We are called also to remember that good and evil happen to both saint and sinner. We needn’t respond with cynicism or hopelessness to life’s unavoidable tragedies. Quite the contrary, our fragile existence, and the certainty that one day each of us will meet death, are the very things that call us not to take life for granted–to “eat, drink, and be merry,” as Ecclesiastes also encourages–to live with faith, hope, and love in the face of evil.

On this anniversary, our grief remains strong. For some of us, vengeance is still a temptation. But all of us are called to the difficult and painful process of healing–of letting go–letting go of all hope for a different yesterday–letting go of some of our memories of tomorrow–letting go of our anger and hate so that we can make room for joy and love. Looking forward to the life that awaits us rather than reliving the one that has formed us. As Maya Angelou said, “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived. But if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”

There is a time for everything under the sun.

Blessings,

Rev. Matt

Comments

[Casper]

Matt,

I'm sorry to post off-topic. I thought you may be interest to know I have posted a brief comment on on of your recent sermons here: http://radicalreformation.info/?p=47.