REMEMBERING SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
SEPTEMBER 11, 2011

How should we best remember that day ten years ago? Certainly we want to remember the victims, those who lost their lives in the attacks on the twin towers and the Pentagon, and in the crash of United Airlines flight 93. We want to remember those who showed extraordinary courage and heroism in helping in the aftermath – both emergency services workers and ordinary citizens. And we want to remember those who continue to be victimized by hatred and intolerance around the world, especially when the name of God is invoked to justify it.

So let us remember in a minute of silence……. Amen.

We are preparing to gather at the table of the Lord in a few moments, and I wanted to share with you an article that I read in the magazine Christianity Today. It was written by Ryan Holliday who is the pastor of a church in Lower Manhattan that was started after 9/11. He writes about the controversy surrounding the inclusion of the “9/11 Cross” – the cross shaped metal beams that were found standing amidst the rubble. Several individuals who describe themselves as atheists have launched a court challenge, arguing that the cross is an overtly religious symbol that privileges Christians, and that represents the very religious intolerance which was at the root of the 9/11 attacks.

Ryan Holliday has a very interesting take on this controversy. He says that it makes perfect sense for non-Christians to be offended by the cross and that, in fact, these atheists take the meaning of the cross much more seriously than a lot of Christians do.

The cross, he says, proclaims that “God came to earth and died, but also that culpability for his death was universal…. The whole world stands guilty of committing history’s greatest atrocity, an atrocity in light of which the events of 9/11 pale by comparison. God came to earth, and we killed him.”

The atheists are right, he says. The cross does symbolize “horror and death.”

But to those who believe the story of the cross, the cross stands of a profound paradox: “The same event that condemns humanity also justifies it, standing at once as damning evidence of guilt, and a doorway to forgiveness and innocence…. The very episode that shows humanity at its worst shows God at his best, as he transforms an act of wickedness into a display of mercy and love.” But only those who by faith share the Christian story will see it in this light. To those who do not share such faith, the cross truly is a stumbling block, a scandal and an offence.

Unfortunately, the cross is sometimes used to trumpet the superiority of one way of life over another, and to shift the burden of guilt away from “us” and onto “them.” If that is how the 9/11 cross is interpreted, then it is sadly misunderstood. The cross stands for the guilt that we all share in trying to make ourselves gods, and to use the name of God to lord it over others; but more importantly, it stands for the grace and forgiveness that God lavishes on the world, even though none of us deserves it.

Christians should be motivated by the challenge to the presence of the 9/11 cross to reflect deeply on the meaning of the cross in their lives. Is the cross turned into an adornment to make us feel satisfied with the way we are, and to condemn those who are different from us? Or does the cross bring us to our knees, deeply aware of our common failings and our common need for grace? Can we only deal with the cross by evading its true meaning as the means by which the world rejected the Holy One of God, or can we face it square on, trusting in the reconciliation which God effected through it?

It’s commonly said that “everything” changed on September 11, 2001. Certainly a lot has changed. People are more anxious, more afraid, more suspicious. Certainly we are all more watched, and perhaps we feel less free. But the really important things have not changed. The fact of the brokenness and sinfulness of our lives has not changed; and the free gift of forgiveness that God has made possible through the death of Christ on the cross has not changed.

Let’s prepare our hearts to gather at this table where our salvation is proclaimed, and where we are invited to take tangible signs of the grace that is ours through Jesus Christ, by singing the hymn “Beneath the Cross of Jesus.”