Seven Years of Hope: A Look back at 9/11
1 Peter 1:3-9; Romans 13:8-14

It’s hard to believe that seven years have passed since one of my co-workers told me a plane had hit the World Trade Center.  Has it really been seven years since we saw those television images – the scorched field in Pennsylvania, the smoke rising from the Pentagon, the towers falling in New York City – has it really been seven years?

On September 11, 2001, many of us learned a lot about hatred; we saw just how badly our nation is hated by some of our enemies.  It was a hard pill to swallow, wasn’t it?  Unfortunately, on that day a lot of us learned how to hate as well.  Osama bin Laden, prior to that day, was someone I had seen on television; but after September 11, he became someone I hated.  During the weeks and months that followed, whenever I saw pictures of the plane hitting the World Trade Center I thought of how much I hated him.  Because of what Osama bin Laden and his fellow terrorists did, we live in a world that’s far different than it was before 9/11.  The difference really hit home for me when I had to step aside at airport security and allow a pat-down search of my two-year-old daughter Aspen in Los Angeles in 2006.  Seeing that security guard’s hands on my daughter made me despise bin Laden that much more.

But I’m a Christian, and Christians aren’t supposed to hate.  Paul tells us in Romans 13 that all of the commandments are summed up in this word: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  But sometimes, it’s hard to love those that hurt us, isn’t it?

I wonder if God ever feels that way about me?  When I commit a sin, large or small, I destroy the peace and beauty of God’s world like the terrorists of 9/11 destroyed mine.  My sin hits God with the impact of a thousand planes hitting a thousand World Trade Centers.  As I selfishly shatter God’s perfect plan, God’s world is forever changed.  My disobedience robs His creation of its innocence.  My sin sends a message to God: “This is what I think of you and what you stand for.”  Can he read that message as anything but hatred?  Thinking in human terms, I can see where God might sometimes have trouble loving me. 

But the good news is that God doesn’t think about things in human terms.  God loves me in spite of the things I do to hurt Him because that’s what God does – God loves.  God is all about love.  God loves us, God wants us to love Him and God wants us to love one another. 

When He sent his Son Jesus into the world, He did so to teach us how to love.  Jesus Christ lived a life defined by the Ten Commandments.  God’s Laws, the ones we have so much trouble obeying, were not viewed by Christ as something He had to obey, they were instead a description of who He was; Jesus Christ stood as an example of what a life a life lived in obedience to God looked like.  And if the commandments can be summed up in the words “Love your neighbor as yourself,” then there can be no greater example of perfect love than that expressed by Christ for us.  For even when the Roman soldiers mocked and beat Him, and the Jews – His own people – sent Him to the cross to die, He still loved them.  As He hung broken and bleeding on the cross, He looked out at those who had hurt Him, and said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  That is true love.  So, I suppose that as a Christian I should say the same thing about the 9/11 terrorists: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” But that’s hard to do, isn’t it?

How can I see past my anger over what they did?  Can I get over the fact that we live in a world where a two-year-old child has to be frisked before getting on an airplane?  Can I accept the fact that living under the threat of terrorism has become a way of life?  Oh how I wish we could go back to the way things were before the innocence was gone.  Maybe that’s the biggest problem I have – those terrorists stole our innocence.  My children won’t ever know what it is to live in a pre-9/11 world.  And I hate that.  How can I love the people responsible for all of this?

God probably thinks the same thing when He looks at this sin-filled world.  Mankind’s sin stole creation’s innocence, and now God’s children won’t know what it’s like to live in a pre-fallen world.  Instead of enjoying the peaceful and perfect beauty of the Garden of Eden, we have to live in a cold and sometimes cruel world broken by sin – a world where bad things happen – like somebody flying a jetliner into the side of a building.  But God, being who He is, offers His children forgiveness, and gives them hope amidst the ruins of what we have made of His perfect creation.  The apostle Peter writes:

God has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ⁴and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for you.[1]

No matter what we may have to face in this lifetime – no matter what anyone might take from us – God promises us an inheritance that no one can take away.  This inheritance is eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ.  Through His mercy, God has given us not just hope, but what Peter calls a “living hope,” a hope that cannot die.  And sometimes that hope might be the only light we can see in our darkest days.  Let the world do what it will to me… and I’ll hold onto the hope God has given me through His promise of eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ.

When I think about mankind at its worst, I think of the morning of September 11, 2001.  When I think about hope, I think about the next morning: September 12.  I remember waking up that day and seeing the sun coming up that morning, just like it always had.  On the morning after one of the darkest days in our nation’s history, the blue sky and sunshine seemed to be God’s way of reminding me that no matter what happens, there will be new day.  I saw in the rays of that sunrise a glimmer of hope – would things ever be like they were?  No, but somehow I’d get through whatever might occur in this world because I had God in my life.  I had hope, because I had God’s promise of eternal life through Jesus Christ, and nothing could ever take that away from me.

Hard to believe it’s been seven years since that 11^th day of September.  That’s seven years of living under the threat of terrorism, seven years of lost innocence, and in a lot of ways seven years of hatred: directed at us and, in some cases, felt by us.  That’s seven years that the world has had this cloud of hatred hanging over it.  But as a Christian, I’m going to try to start remembering the 12th day of September as well.  In the first light of dawn that next morning, I was reminded that my hope was never gone, it just sort of got lost in the smoke-filled skies of the day before.  No one can take that hope away from me, and if you have faith in Jesus Christ, you too have that hope that can stand against the greatest forces of evil this world could ever throw at you.

Seven years ago this Thursday we were reminded of what hatred looks like.  The world changed that day, and gave birth to a new era of hatred. But sometimes it takes an event like a 9/11 to remind us just how precious our hope is.  So let us look back this week not on seven years of hatred, but seven years of hope.  Nay, not seven years, but 2000 years of hope.  Sometimes it takes an event like the death of Jesus Christ to remind us just how precious our hope is.       

Amen.