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Twenty-five years. Moments from that day are still so vivid. Riding with a driver on one of the Lancaster City UPS routes, we were in a dentist’s office when there was a wailing scream from the waiting room. We had heard there was a fire at the World Trade Center, but the image of a plane flying into the second tower had just shown on the screen, and one of the patients had cried out in shock. The driver and I stared at the screen with everyone else, listening to the anchors try to make sense of it. That was the moment. That was the moment that would change all of us forever. Whatever innocence we had about our safety in the world, or whatever understanding we had about our invulnerability, was dashed in an instant.
Up until the second plane hit, I think we were all naively thinking we had witnessed an accident, or at the very worst, an isolated suicide run by a distraught pilot. The second plane made it clear it was something much worse. The rest of that day was eerily quiet as people stayed off the streets. Some businesses closed. Throughout the day, we heard reports of other planes crashing, none of which we could verify from the road. By the afternoon, we knew the Pentagon was on the list and figured out the White House and the Capitol were fine, but rumors were rampant for a while. There were no smartphones. I spoke to Donna on the phone while she was also at work, but she didn’t know much more than I did. As we made our scheduled pickups at the end of the day, one of the banks with close ties to a financial firm (I can no longer remember which one) near the top of one of the towers was almost frozen in shock. People stood around desks in groups, some crying, knowing that people they spoke to on the phone regularly were gone.
It’s hard to explain to my kids just how different life is now than it was then. Some things are obvious, and other things are much more subtle. There was no Homeland Security, no limits on liquids, and no stringent security screening. We felt different about surveillance within our borders before 9/11. We didn't worry about safety at home. So many things had a before and after based on those events twenty-five years ago tomorrow. And in truth, some of the changes are still playing out today.
I wish I could say that the attacks didn’t succeed, but in some ways, they were probably more effective than Bin Laden or anyone else involved could have imagined. The waves that have rippled out from that day prove that they hurt us. Badly. And they have changed us forever. I wish I could say that the galvanizing unity that followed the attacks became the norm for us as Americans, but it didn’t last long. Not long enough, anyway. The two wars that were birthed from 9/11 have their own legacies, and those, too, continue to send out ripples to this day. In that regard, it’s hard to admit, but those attacks were all too successful.
The pledge has always been “Never Forget.” Clearly, I don’t think we have forgotten. Not what happened and those we lost, at least. If we have forgotten anything, it’s probably who we were on September 10. We can’t go back to that day and become those people again, but it might be worth remembering who we were so that we can compare it to who we have become. Just because we have forgotten something doesn’t mean we can’t recover it if we want to. One thing we might want to reclaim is living without fear. Fear is one of the most destructive forces in the world, which is exactly what terrorism counts on.
There is a difference between learning a lesson and being proactive about security and being afraid. If we do well with the former, the latter has less power. When we remain afraid, however, we will more easily sacrifice aspects of our spirit and our common life that would otherwise be maintained and treasured. A fear-driven response can make us more aggressive, less empathetic, and prone to short-term thinking. Survival is innate, after all, and fight, flight, and freeze are also common responses to fear. If we don’t want terrorists to have “won,” or to be successful in the future, it will be because we can manage our fear.
It is no accident that scriptures contain commands like, “be not afraid.” You may have heard that there are 365 occurrences of similar phrases in the bible. There aren’t. It’s actually less than half that number, which I find no less impressive and inspiring. When one of God’s messengers, be it a prophet or Jesus himself, tells us not to be afraid, it isn’t really an invitation or meant as a gentle way of saying everything will be ok. Instead, it's usually followed by a promise of God’s presence or preparation for something that is, in fact, scary. The intent is always to prepare the hearer to shift their thinking from worry to God’s protective presence. The matter before us might be challenging and scary, but God is with us, is stronger, and has promised to be with us.
Those commands to leave fear behind likely come from the reality that we tend to be afraid. Most of us are afraid of one thing or another more often than we care to admit. When we operate out of fear, we're much more likely to put ourselves before others, and even before what God intends and expects of us. And, to be fair, some of the things God asks us to do are terrifying. The reminder is that we can handle terrifying things when we remember God is with us. And God is always with us. That, among everything else, is the one thing that I hope we will remember.
Remembering that God is with us reminds us that God was with all those who lost their lives on 9/11, whether they were at work in the World Trade Center, responding to the crisis, serving at the Pentagon, or flying over Pennsylvania. It reminds us that God was with the men and women of our Armed Forces who served in the wars this attack spawned, one of which was the longest in our nation’s history. God was with the civilians whose lives were lost in the violence of the decades since. God has been in the midst of the suffering of this world from the beginning and is in the midst of it now. That presence doesn’t guarantee that we are shielded beyond our fragile humanity, only that with God we are not destroyed when death comes for us. We will be well, and even better than well as we inherit the place in God’s kingdom prepared for all of us.
That may sound like an awfully heavy comfort, but it is at the heart of who we are as resurrected people who follow a resurrected Lord. We need not fear because we are free from death. If we aren’t afraid of that, we have nothing else to fear. God is always working for good, but that doesn’t cancel out evil. We are invited to work for good, too, alongside God, doing everything we can to cast out fear and evil along the way. No one and no fear should keep us from that work.
As I remember 9/11, one of the things I will always remember is not what I learned on that day, but in the days after: the number of people for whom their final words were words of love. Calls to spouses, parents, friends, and children. Messages left on answering machines. Promises that love would endure and never end, despite the violence and tragedy that was about to rob so many people of their lives. We should never forget that either. It may sound trite to bring this, like so many things, back to love, but it’s also the heart of who we are. 1 John says, “There is no fear in love; perfect love casts out fear.” If we remember to love in all that we do, fear will never be our problem. Fear can change the world in powerful ways, but love is stronger.
