20 years on from 9/11

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Isaiah 50:4-9, Psalm 116:1-8, James 3:1-12, Mark 8:27-end

When I lived in Germany I regularly went to the same hairdresser. She didn’t speak more than a dozen words of English. And I didn’t speak German but learned in my ponderous way through my two years there. But we had great fun attempting to communicate, Each of us trying out words and guessing and gesticulating our way through, And we did get more successful as we went along.  Rhiannon would get irritated in Germany when she’d speak German – which she picked up way faster than me –because Germans would reply back in English –  defeating her attempts to learn and respect another tongue. The French, of course, give you the opposite problem, ignoring you entirely if you don’t speak perfect French.

It’s very hard to understand the language of violence in terrorism. Most of us can’t imagine what might drive someone to kill, let alone indiscriminately. And even more what could push someone to trade in their own life for the death of others. The philosopher Terry Eagleton called the suicide bomber ‘the last word in passive aggression’; Vengeance and humiliation –  Tearing yourself apart for a symbol of outrage. Typically, the reaction is to speak the same language back. 9/11 was followed by wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which have now come to an end without any sense of resolution or progress, but greater instability and an increased humanitarian crisis.

Human nature naturally resorts to Newton’s third law:  ‘For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.’ Conversational violence. It’s 182 years since the beginning of the first British Afghan War. And it’s unlikely we’ve heard the last from that country.

But what is the answer to violence? In today’s passage from Isaiah we have a sentiment familiar to us from the Gospel: ‘turn the other cheek’ As Isaiah puts it: ‘I gave my back to those who struck me and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting…  therefore I have set my face like flint and I know that I shall not be put to shame’. Turning the other cheek can seem very passive. Or stoic – we must bear the violence inflicted upon us. We, perhaps, admire those who bear the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and faint not.

But it’s more than that. When you’re struck it’s not just an act of violence, it’s about power. The striker is expecting you go down, or to fall in line.  The slave will obey its master. You will walk away with your tail between your legs. They are not expecting you to stand your ground and turn the cheek. It’s a bit like Jaws in James Bond – when he takes the punch and smiles. It’s a challenge to power; frightening to the one who threw the blow. It says – you can hurt me, you can pull out my whiskers, but you have not beaten me – you have not put me to shame. So it isn’t passive. It is non-violent protest.And from Gandhi and Martin Luther King jr we know how powerful that can be. This is what it means to change the language from that which we’re spoken to. To end conversational violence. Against our nature, to break Newton’s third law. To respond to violence with something else. To an action, don’t re-act, be neither equal nor opposite.

Today we’ve also heard the central question of the Gospel: “Who do you say that I am?” And the misunderstanding that is at its heart. Everyone thinks that Jesus is here to bring a revolution against the imperial Roman occupation. Those in power fear it. The Jewish leaders are jealous of it. His friends desire it.

But that is not the language of Jesus. He doesn’t speak power to power Violence to violence. Instead, he tells his friends, he must suffer, be rejected and killed. He is speaking a different language. Others will continue the conversation of violence and Jerusalem will be destroyed and Rome will be sacked. But Jesus has set something else in motion. Something that is not violent, but will win over much of the synagogue, and before long the entire Roman empire. That is to set your mind on divine things and not human things. And to follow is to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow him.

Richard Curtis, included in the opening monologue of his 2003 film, Love Actually, the line: “When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge—they were all messages of love.” It’s a theme also taken up by Archbishop Rowan Williams, who was on Wall Street when the planes struck. What struck him was the contrast between the violence apparently inspired by religion, and the many well documented phone calls to loved ones from ordinary people. And specifically how at the most awful time of danger, difficulty and certain death – So many people put themselves to one side in order to let someone know that they loved them.  At a moment when we’re biologically primed to self-interest, adrenaline-panic and survival – so many of those three thousand victims thought first to alleviate the grief of someone else. And then there were the firefighters who placed themselves at the heart of the inferno. One firefighting unit lost all its members. I heard a US fire chief on the radio last week who ordered his own brother’s team into the tower, never to see him again; and then went day after day to recover his body. The first official victim of 9/11 was the Roman Catholic fire brigade chaplain Mychal Judge, who had rushed to the scene and was killed in the tower lobby by flying debris.

I have set my face like flint and I know that I shall not be put to shame.
For those who want to save their life will lose it and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the Gospel, will save it.

We cannot explain these events, or justify or blame God; we are lost for words in the face of such suffering; And we look with wonder when violence and suffering is met with love. As the ancient Christian hymn puts it:  Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est. ‘Where there is love, there is God also.’

Like this pandemic, this day 20 years ago was a point of change in the world. A point of ‘where were you when’ And a discussion about how taking a plane used to be like getting the bus. 9/11’s legacy has been the war on terror. The attack on the axis of evil. The conversation of violence has continued.  Rowan Williams remarked that ‘in the global village, the one who becomes rich will be seen as the thief of his neighbour’s goods.’ At a time when the wealth of nations may be measured in its rate of vaccinations, this becomes painfully clear. Man hands on misery to man.

But when suffering is shared we build solidarity. And when we are confronted with fear and aggression, if we can speak another language, we are following Christ. Twenty years on, the results of violence on violence are at best ambiguous. The world is not a safer place. The threat of violence is undiminished. Turning and turning on the widening gyre, there is neither better understanding nor more compassion. But perhaps the examples left to us, of quiet heroism in the service of firefighters and the last words of love, may at least inspire us to more Christian responses to the pain we find in the world. Where there is love, there is God also. Amen.