Reflecting on 25 years since 9/11

By Rev. Dr. Dien Ashley Taylor
LCMS Atlantic District President
Hastings-On-Hudson, N.Y.

Twenty-five years have passed, but the raw soreness has not, as the throbbing pain still lingers and the searing memories remain jarringly vivid.

How does one process this indescribable grief when each reference to the phone number of the emergency services — 911 — recalls the date of the surprise attacks that changed the course of history? When every airplane trip’s security requirements remind us of the weariness of terror threats? When suspicions about allegiance poignantly persist, and as post-traumatic stress syndrome’s enduring images negatively affect individuals, families, communities, and nations for years to come?

Children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews have been born who never saw those slender twin edifices that jutted upwards from the bedrock of Manhattan. They only know the paradoxical waterfalls of profound emptiness with perimeters imprinted with the names of those whose voices are no longer heard.

We dread the remembrances because 25 years does not simply allow people time to “get over it.” Yet, we are humbly honored to recollect the names of everyday people who never saw their family members again after the blue skies of the Big Apple were smeared in gray dust that hung over the charred tombs of silenced soldiers.

Instead, loud grief is often shared and lived as stories of where one was that day. The stories are retold with chilling detail.

Sharing stories is not simply an attempted therapeutic exposition of scabbed yet festering wounds; it is a pattern of resilience echoed by prophets of old who recount corporate pain for the sake of healing, who recollect for deeper meaning, and who grieve with the desire to process — to move forward — as one walks by faith and not by sight (Lamentations 1; 2 Corinthians 5:7).

It is not that time heals all wounds; it is that the Lord of all time heals broken hearts and binds up wounds in His time (Psalm 147:3), which, oftentimes, brings to remembrance those unconscionable events that demonstrate how His power is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12).

It is not by two slender vertical beams that the greatest world trade was accomplished, but by One who on one vertical and one horizontal beam who beheld and bore the world’s unending grief that humanity willingly brought upon itself.

“It is finished,” cried the Lord Jesus from the cross, signaling His perfect obedience to the Law that purchased righteousness for His people (John 19:30b). The rippling of His abundant mercy allows people to remember each Friday as a Good Friday, each Sunday as a resurrection day, and each moment of loud grief as an opportunity to revel in the Lord’s gracious and saving hand in and through it all.

Because Jesus died and rose from the dead for us, new life is lived not only when God’s people close their eyes and sleep in Christ, but also from the moment that they are baptized into Christ and are gathered to receive His precious body and blood for the forgiveness of sin, life, and salvation. Loud grief is met by loud grace.

There is no need to plow through loud grief dispassionately. Loud grief need not be muted. It need not be feared. It need not be ignored. The Lord did not disregard our grief, but He bore our griefs and carried our sorrows (Isaiah 53:4a).

Retracing the battle scars and weathered wounds that continue to itch and ache, the Lord’s people behold the active and saving will of Christ Jesus in the midst of despair. They see the healing hand of Christ touching and restoring amid the ruins. They hear the still small voice of the Deliverer saying, “Peace, be still.” They feel the everlasting arms of the Redeemer who carried slaves into freedom through the Red Sea so that, in the recounting of loud grief, God’s children may learn of salvation’s loud grace.

In Christ, every “Ah!” of disappointment, discouragement, and disbelief becomes a triumphant “Alleluia.”

Twenty-five years of grief after the Twin Towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001, in New York City will yield to an eternity of bliss. While the Spirit still calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies us, He whispers peace and calm to all those whose persistent grief is loud by reminding faith-filled pilgrims of the abiding words of Jesus: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4).

In Christ, loud grief that affects a people for years yields to loud grace that recreates the cosmos for eternity.

Thanks be to God for this indescribable gift.

The Rev. Dr. Dien Ashley Taylor is the bishop and president of the Atlantic District of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) as well as the Synod president’s voting representative and vice chairman of the LCMS Board for National Mission. He is also the pastor of Redeemer Evangelical Lutheran Church in The Bronx, New York.

Above photo by Ashley Wiehe: Two squares of waterfalls surrounded by names of those lost now stand as a memorial to the Twin Towers in New York City.