The Unifying Spirit of 9/11

Below is an essay I wrote on the 15th anniversary of 9/11. But today, on the 20th anniversary, I think the problem and the challenge may be even greater than they were five years ago.

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In the fall of 2001, I was teaching high school Civics and World History 1 in Buckingham County, Virginia. And after the first period, as I was going to office to check my mail, I noticed that a television in the library was on, and one of the Twin Towers was on fire. And I remember asking the librarian what had happened, and she said that a plane had hit it. Now, that certainly seemed possible. I mean, if there'd been some kind of engine problem, it certainly might have lost altitude and crashed into the building. It made sense. But then, as I was standing there, I saw another plane hit the other tower. And suddenly, an accident was no longer a possibility. It had to be intentional. It had to be an act of incredible violence. It had to be something that I'd never seen

before. 

And throughout the day, as more information came out, the magnitude of what had happened became more apparent. Not only had the Towers been hit, but also the Pentagon. And another plane had crashed in a Pennsylvania field. We also had a better sense of those responsible. And as I was driving home, listening to NPR, I remember the reporters and the commentators saying that, after this act of terrorism, nothing would ever be the same again. America and Americans would come together and experience a renewed sense of the unity that would take us into the next century. As a country, we would be forever changed.

And for a while, they were right. Politicians talked about our new national sense of focus. Together we declared war on terror, forgetting that it's just as difficult to fight an emotional reaction as it was to wage war on poverty and drugs. And I bet every other car had at least one of those little window flags, and it didn't seem to bother anyone that they were all manufactured in China. We did feel some kind of unity, a closeness that we didn't have before. Maybe we had changed.

But now, here we are, fifteen years later, and I think most of us recognize that our national unity didn't last. I mean, the brand new One World Trade Center, formerly the Freedom Tower, is now open and the rent has been cut from $75 to $69 per square foot on floors below the 64th in an attempt to attract more tenants, given that 44% of the building hasn't been leased. We've fought two quasi-wars in Iraq and Afghanistan using the attack as dubious justification. We've put partisan spins on violence in Sandy Hook and Baltimore to suit our political tastes. And we're in the middle of one of the nastiness presidential campaigns I've ever seen, one where you have to filter the muck to find anything positive much less inspirational and where telling the truth seems to reflect political weakness and the Russian dictator is offered as an example of the kind of leadership we need. America seems to be coming apart at the seams, with Americans debating which lives matter most. And although we might debate whether the level of our divisions is greater now than it was fifteen years ago, I'm not sure anyone could say that, with respect to national unity, we're stronger now than we were then.

And maybe all this offers a powerful lesson for the church, and I'm talking about Christ's Body, 

an organism drawn together by the Holy Spirit. You see, regardless of the prevailing winds of politics or the current crisis trumpeted by 24-hour news services that desperately need stories to retain viewers, it's really up to us, the church, to bear witness to the unity intended in Jesus Christ. You see, when Paul wrote to the Galatians, "there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus," he wasn't just messing around. And when he said to the Ephesians, 'for [Christ] is our peace; in his flesh he has made both [Jews and Gentiles] into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us," I think he mean exactly what he said. 

You see, in the church, we need to do what the nation couldn't seen to pull off after 9/11. We need to be place where all people can come together, without secular distinctions separating us into groups. We need to be the place where walls and barriers are torn down and not put up, because we know that God was the one who brought us together into this place for a reason and that we need one another. And we need to be the place where faith guides our discussions and where if it doesn't sound like something Jesus would say and look like something Jesus would do, we probably shouldn't say or do it either. It's on and in him that we've been built, and for us to look for unity anywhere else would be like building the One World Trade Center, formerly the Freedom Tower, on sand. To me, this is the example we might offer both our country and our world.

From where I stand, we haven't done a great job of maintaining the unity we had about fifteen years ago. But when you think about it, maybe that's to be expected. I mean, we live in a world in which we're taught and encouraged to focus on ourselves: on our health, on our wealth, on our happiness. And since the resources to attain those things are limited, well, unity involves concepts like equality and sharing and those ideas don't fit comfortably in a me-centered world. But the church is different. Within the Body of Christ, the old distinctions are no longer valid. The rigid walls have come down. And despite our different skills and talents, we're all equal in the sight of God. And so, it's in the church, among Christian brothers and sisters, where the unifying spirit of 9/11 should be always present.