September 11, 2021 marks the 20th anniversary of a day that cannot be forgotten in American history.
That horrible day has become unlike any other day in our shared history. The neat lines that demarcate days on the calendar dissolve, and the meaning of 9/11 now spill into an era that I believe we are still wrestling to understand fully. It was a day of senseless violence committed against citizens in this nation who were simply going about their business and lives, working, running errands, visiting loved ones, growing families, and enjoying the freedom that comes from believing they were safe.
It was also a day of countless acts of courage, compassion, and self-less giving for the sake of others. Hundreds of women and men, first responders, police officers, paramedics, and fire-fighters, threw themselves into harm’s way to save lives — only to have their own lives snuffed out by collapsing towers, falling debris, and then later the inhalation of air filled with toxins.
For a brief period afterward, we experienced a kind of solidarity that we have not since known. We had the empathy and support from peoples around the globe. It seemed that they felt that the deadly assaults were as assaults on the hopes of all humanity. But clearly that center of compassionate solidarity did not hold for long.
It’s hard not to notice how, since 9/11, our outward concern for our neighbors seems to have eroded. Our respect for institutions that sought to guide us, as flawed as they are, has collapsed in many places. We are less kind, more toxic, more callous toward people whose views or backgrounds differ from us. I wonder if the root of this unkindness is fear, fear that we are vulnerable to other acts of violence, fear of defenselessness, fear of weakness, fear of how being in an authentic relationship with those unlike us might change us.
At the heart of our Christian faith is the cross, the place where God chose to be weak in order to unmask the futility of the violent. On the Cross, Jesus Christ chose, quite literally, to open his sacred heart to the evil of this world so that when he rose from the dead, he would make weak all the powers and principalities of this world, those of empire, and even of religious self-righteousness who seek to condemn the children of God. God chose to be tread upon, freely deciding to set aside any privilege, power, worldly claim to use force so that human kind itself, in Jesus Christ, could instead rise out of the tomb. Once risen, Jesus then breathes peace, not revenge, on those who denied and abandoned him at his most needed hour.
For Christians it’s the Cross of Jesus that is an anchor of hope for turbulent times. The 13th century Franciscan theologian Bonaventure, writing in a time racked by political unrest and religious violence, said that the Cross is the medicine of the world. By that he meant to invite us to look not to the counterfeit and corrosive power of human violence, revenge, and hatred for our purpose and identity in this life, but to the life-giving presence of God, gloriously shown by Christ’s self-offering on the cross, for our strength, hope and inspiration in our dealings with one another — even as we seek justice for the victims of cruelty and brutality.
On this 20th anniversary of that horrible day, a day that has tragically become an era, I believe it is in the humility of Jesus that we will ever have hope of freeing this world from the fears that result in cruelty. With God’s help and God’s graces may we seek to bring healing to this beautiful and hurting world.
Faithfully yours,
The Rt. Rev. A. Robert Hirschfeld