It was around 6:45 a.m., Pacific Time. My wife was up getting our daughters ready for school when she came into the bedroom waking me with the news: “A plane crashed into the World Trade Center.” Still in the fog of sleep, I assumed it was a small private plane, and recalled a similar incident happening to the Empire State Building years before.
It was only a few minutes later when she came back to announce, “Two planes crashed into the towers and one of them has collapsed!” That roused me from my bed. It couldn’t be true! But soon enough, we all knew it was. Then reports of the Pentagon crash made it clear America was under attack.
I watched live reporting as people jumped from the second tower. I saw it crumble and fall. Other news flooded in: United Flight 93 crashing in Pennsylvania; the grounding of all flights; the evacuation of the White House and Capitol. It was overwhelming and surreal.
Most of us recall exactly where we were when we saw or heard the towers fall twenty years ago this week. It was a life-changing event, a world-changing event. Today, we can see the effects of that day: twenty years of a “war on terror” that has killed thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Afghanis and Iraqis; thousands of veterans disabled in body, mind, and spirit; the erosion of civil liberties and the ready acceptance of security measures in every public venue; the vilification of innocent and peaceful Muslims and Arab-Americans, along with a rise in Nativism and the politics of hate; the emergence of the surveillance state… the list goes on.
As events unfolded during the day, I put out word to the congregation I served that we would have a service of prayer that evening. We read the words of Psalm 46: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear….” We prayed for our nation, for the victims and their families, for emergency personnel, for those in military service. Those prayers are as needed today as they were in 2001.
Included in the service was this litany for peace and justice (borrowed and adapted, I believe, from the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship) which is as true today as it was then:
It is not true that this world and its people are doomed to die and be lost—
This is true: There is a future for the children of peace.
It is not true that we must accept inhumanity and terror, hunger and poverty, death and destruction--
This is true: The sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces and will remove sin and evil from all the earth.
It is not true that violence and hatred should have the last word, and that war and destruction have come to stay forever—
This is true: the Lord foils the plans of the nations and thwarts the purpose of the peoples. But the plans of the Lord stand firm forever, the purposes of the heart of the Lord through all generations.
It is not true that we are simply victims of the powers of evil who seek to rule the world—
This is true: the Lord gives strength to the people of God; the Lord blesses us with peace.
It is not true that we have to wait for those who are specially gifted, who are the official leaders, before we can do anything—
This is true: The Lord says, “I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit.
It is not true that our dreams for human freedom, of justice and human dignity, of peace, are not meant for this earth and for this time—
This is true: the hour comes and now is that the true worshippers shall worship the Lord in spirit and in truth. They are the kind of worshippers God seeks.
So let us dream; let us prophesy; let us see visions of love. And let us seek peace and justice with humility, with joy, and faith, and with courage, for the sake of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace. Amen.
As we remember the events of 9/11 this week, let us also remember the Sovereign God who is our refuge and strength, who calls us to be ambassadors of peace and reconciliation in the world.
Faithfully,
Dan Saperstein, Executive Presbyter
