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| Andrea di Bartolo, Way to Calvary 1400 PD |
It has been a pretty odd week.
In the midst of the normal day in and day out, a significant day was solemnly marked this week.
I was asked to participate in a command 9/11 ceremony, offering the invocation and benediction.
That fairly standard task, that all chaplains are asked to do quite frequently took a different toll on me than it would under the normal circumstances.
I found myself sifting through my own emotions and memories as I attempted to craft a prayer that would hold significance to those of the same faith, those of different faiths, and those with no faith tradition they called their own what-so-ever.
On top of it all, my children came home from school with questions.
In contrast to other years, they seemed to be hearing a lot more about September 11th than they had ever heard before.
They started to ask questions, like;
“What is 9/11?”
“What happened on September 11th?”
And “What is Patriot Day?”
On the eve of the September 11th Ceremony I was to participate in, I had prepared my uniform and printed out my prayers.
After reviewing everything carefully my family and I sat down for dinner, and amidst the chatter at the table, my kids began to once again discuss 9/11.
Their reactions were sometimes more somber than others, sometimes even taking an inappropriate turn.
They’ve heard us talk about 9/11, and I believe they had an idea about it.
They have seen pictures, watched videos, and throughout the week we’d seen tributes on the television about it.
But they still didn’t seem to fully grasp or understand it.
It’s a foreign concept to me, and I think many of us, who just take it for granted that 9/11 is a scarring memory, etched into our heads and hearts universally.
With so many junior sailors, officers, and students in this command, I have become increasingly more aware that many who’ve raised their right hands and donned the cloth of our nation don’t even have a memory of that fateful day.
In conversation about it with my children, and so many others, I have come to realize it is not a day that they can “Never Forget” because they have no memory of it at all.
More and more over the years I have heard that proclamation; “Never Forget” or “Always Remember” morph from a shared burden we all carry together, to a demand imposed on others.
If one’s profile picture is not changed on social media, or we do not publicly broadcast our whereabouts on that fateful day, we are somehow opposed to those who do suffer so publicly.
In light of my own emotions, the events of this week, my children, and the texts for today, it has haunted me how we carry this cross.
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| Andrea Booher, 19 SEP 2001 FEMA Photo Library PD |
Today’s text finds Jesus with his disciples, asking them to identify his role and place in society, and among his followers.
Peter’s confession of faith is a well-known episode in Jesus’ ministry.
Peter and the other disciples advise Jesus that he is seen as the return of one of the prophets in days of old, and perhaps even John the Baptist.
Upon proclaiming that Jesus is the Messiah, Peter and the others are sworn to the secrecy of Jesus’ identity, before Jesus saves the bad news for last.
What is most interesting about the text, and the texts we couple with this one, is that none of the disciples or Peter identify Jesus as Isaiah, or “the suffering servant” from our first lesson.
I know that text particularly well.
It was one of the first Hebrew texts I ever translated in seminary.
I wrote an extensive paper on this lesson.
It is a pretty graphic portrayal of a Prophet, speaking out to his people.
He is speaking out not only to them, but in support of them.
He is attempting to strengthen them, support them, and allow them to grow as God’s people.
In response he is brutally punished and silenced.
This isn’t the end of the plight of the suffering servant, in the next song of the suffering servant, it becomes even more graphic.
In the fourth act, the people become the voice in the song, announcing the servant’s death and their own responsibility for it.
There is a tone of remorse in the voice of the author, and there is much debate in academic circles just who the servant was; an individual prophet like Isaiah,
Or the collective nation of Israel.
It matters both a little or lot, depending on the context of its use,
But for today, the most significant thing is the fact that the vulgar brutality described mirrors the foreshadowing of Jesus’ own humiliation and death.
An image Jesus alludes to in the Gospel today.
Scattering the hopeful optimism of his followers that he will usher in a new age of what they see as justice and God’s intention for the world.
Jesus foreshadows his own suffering, but the worst part is he in fact invites more suffering.
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 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.”
That one portion of the text has just been a recurring quote in my head this week, over and over again;
Take up THEIR cross and follow me.
Jesus isn’t asking us to be crucified on his cross.
He isn’t asking us to suffer in the same way he did.
He is asking us to “set our faces like flint” as Isaiah says, essentially staring down our pain, our grief, our bondage to sin, hatred, and anger.
He is asking us to steer our ship into the storms of our worlds.
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| Photo by Author |
So, we did a thing in my house.
We watched the events of 9/11 play out on old footage online.
We told our children the stories from that day.
My wife and I wept, and my children remained confused.
Confused about what emotions they should or shouldn’t express.
And in this moment, I leaned on Jesus’ Word.
I approached the questions and confusion realizing that this is not my children’s cross.
They are no more familiar with the events of September 11th than I am with the events of December 7th 1941.
They cannot know what that NYC skyline meant to our collective nation, so we closed the lesson with a video montage we found of iconic movie scenes where the WTC could be seen in the background.
They’ll never know how that day wounded me, or their mother, or our nation.
They have no memory of what was lost that day.
But what is more, just as I could not know December 7th the way my grandparents or my great Uncle who blazed the trail I would follow when he responded to those attacks by enlisting in the USMC
They too cannot fully understand 9/11.
My great Uncle rarely spoke of his experiences leading to WWII, or his role at Peleliu and Okinawa.
But it was a cross he bore all his life, from that black and white photo of a young Marine surviving a brutal fight with a squad sized company of other Marines.
He didn’t ask me to bear that cross for him,
Perhaps it was due to his stoic nature, or post-traumatic stress?
But maybe, just perhaps, he knew this would not be the last cross young men and women would have to bear?
Perhaps he knew that a young Marine recruit would be standing at attention before a BN commander, announcing to a full company of Marine recruits that they would now be charged with carrying their own cross;
A twenty-year multi front war.
There are many crosses we must bear, and God help us all, who are we kidding when we demand others never forget?!
How does one even forget such a day as that?
But those who never knew it cannot be expected to carry that cross, nor should we want them to,
Because this world is still broken, flawed, and damned by what we’ve become.
The next generation will face their own crosses, so who am I to ask them to carry mine?
Unless we do better, we will continue to build the crosses that our children and their children will carry.
Jesus doesn’t demand we carry his cross, he only demands we carry the ones we are faced with,
But the crux, the hope, the grace, the resilience can be found clearly in the fact that in the midst of being called to carry our own crosses, the only one not carrying their own in that story is Jesus the Christ.
He carried it for us, and the promise is that he will be the one taking it onto his shoulders when we believe we can go no farther.
Amen
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