September 11th is just days away.
And, even 17 years later, I'm really not sure what to say.
In fact, I think anything I say is too much to say.
Silence. Silence seems more appropriate.
While I'm not sure what to say, I'm not even sure what to pray.
Therefore, silence.
I am a Christian. I am a pacifist. For me, those things are not two separate things. I am a pacifist because I am a Christian. What does a Christian pray in the face of the world's violent terror? For peace? Is peace merely the absence of conflict? If it is, I have no use for it. Such sentimentality makes me sick.
Some folks have told me, over these intervening years, that my pacifism undermines American politics and policies. That's fine with me. I am a Christian pacifist who believe that genuine peacemaking is the only ground upon a politic of life -- a politic that's not based on death -- can be built. Such a peacemaking politic will automatically call into question the violent power of military might, particularly when it’s couched in the language of "policing". The way we Christians call that power into question is through our practices of silence and prayer -- "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven".
So I can't deny that any remembrance of September 11 has to begin in the silence of prayer. Americans desperately need to sanctify the violence of that day, and its resultant spiraling into violent chaos, so we do our best to domesticate 9/11 with our words. I believe every attempt to explain that day -- even in retrospective -- have to be resisted. That is, after all, why theologian Rowan Williams wrote all his words about that day in a book entitled Writing in the Dust (which, by the way, if you want to read some words worth having been said about that day, this is the book to read).
In the earliest hours that Tuesday morning, there was lots of stunned silence. And rightly so.
But, Americans know that something has to be said, something has to be done. So we did it.
The silence was shattered in the dropping of bombs.
On 9/11, two men thought what had happened was an act of "war". The first was Osama bin Laden. The second was President Bush. That's because both men had adopted the modern narrative that believes only violence can bring peace. Words -- especially the words that aim to love our enemies and in that way understand and respect them -- words are the only American way forward.
When Americans are frightened, only words can bring comfort. We are Job's friends -- attempting to justify the ways of God toward violence rather than to find mercy in patience. Americans normalize violence with our words. And our words -- every word -- about that day, have, since that day, sought to normalize the violence that not only responded to a murderous act (not an act of war!) but the words that have underscored all that violence since. (But when your words only matter to prop up certain ways of being in the world -- when words serve purposes beyond truth-telling -- who needs to make that truthful distinction?)
We have to justify killing, because death can only make sense when justified. So we sanctify the dead with our words. Americans are experts at killing -- particularly with our words.
So the silence of that Tuesday was very quickly shattered by talk of revenge. Revenge that is all the more deadly because we cannot speak the truth about the ways our lack of vulnerability enabled and created "the evil Empire" bin Laden believed we'd become (wait, weren't we the ones who first used that phrase against Russia, those against whom bin Laden had banded with us just a couple of decades before?). We needed heroes, so we quickly found them in the dead -- and in those who rushed to the dead.
I'm a Christian, so all this American "we" is not mine. I am alienated from the words that are spoken lately about that Tuesday fifteen years ago, precisely because those words are not my words. My words are not even my words, because these are the words of peace I have learned to speak from Jesus Christ.
I learned a long time ago, as a child, that sometimes you just have to get your hands dirty. I grew up reading the words of Captain America (who better to embody Niebuhr's justification for violence?). But it was another book -- Bonhoeffer's Discipleship -- that taught me Captain America is wrong. If there is any truth to the Christian message, it is that Jesus would rather die than kill. That the resurrection makes the Christian words and acts of obedience to peace possible. So I have no desire to rid the world of violence. My pacifism is not a means toward an end. Instead, it is a testament to a different world, a different Kingdom.
So what do I have to say about 9/11?
To be nonviolent means I have to change the way things are done. For example, with all the recent hullabaloo over "The Star Spangled Banner", I confess: I stand when it's sung, but I will not sing. Not to sing the "Star-Spangled Banner" is a small thing that reminds me that my first loyalty is not to the United States but to Christ and Christ's Church. I confess it never crossed my mind that such small acts might over the years make my response to September 11 quite different from that of the good people who sing "God Bless America" -- so different that I am left in saddened silence.
That will always haunt me.
I grew up being a "good American". I come from a hard-working family who instilled in me a pride of place and people. While my family hasn't been militarized since the Korean War, we have always been good "Volunteers" for the American experiment. For most of my young life, I was that "good American", until I attended seminary and began thinking and praying about such things.
There was the Gulf War. I prayed, and I lamented. I was sure that if God loved us, he also loved our enemies. That was enough to convince me not to cheer as I watched smart bombs being dropped over grainy images on my tv screen.
Which means that by 9/11 I didn't share the American trauma over the murders. Of course I recoil over murder -- any murder -- and murder on such a scale is unfathomable by any account. But I think Americans were just too quick to speak a word that can never been a word in the vocabulary of those who follow Jesus: “War”.
Where does that leave me, these 17 years later?
All I can really say is this:
Christians often tend to focus on being united with Christ in his resurrection, forgetting that we are also united with him in his death. What could that mean if it does not mean that Christians must be ready to die, indeed have their children die, rather than betray the Gospel? Any love not transformed by the love of God cannot help but be the source of the violence we perpetrate on one another in the name of justice. Such a love may appear harsh and dreadful from the perspective of the world, but Christians believe such a love is life-giving not life-denying.
Of course living a life of nonviolence can be deadly. It means that, in my nonviolence, I will have to watch the innocent suffer and die. But when you’re committed to the ways of peace, you have to be willing to endure death instead of taking life. I believe we should rather die than kill. I can only say this, though, because my death is taking into the death of Jesus, and raised with him in his Resurrection.
It's hard to make a policy around that, though. So Americans are right to balk at all my words.
This brings me back round to what I can -- or, more accurately, can't -- as we approach this anniversary.
My silence.
My silence is my prayer.
And, even 17 years later, I'm really not sure what to say.
In fact, I think anything I say is too much to say.
Silence. Silence seems more appropriate.
While I'm not sure what to say, I'm not even sure what to pray.
Therefore, silence.
I am a Christian. I am a pacifist. For me, those things are not two separate things. I am a pacifist because I am a Christian. What does a Christian pray in the face of the world's violent terror? For peace? Is peace merely the absence of conflict? If it is, I have no use for it. Such sentimentality makes me sick.
Some folks have told me, over these intervening years, that my pacifism undermines American politics and policies. That's fine with me. I am a Christian pacifist who believe that genuine peacemaking is the only ground upon a politic of life -- a politic that's not based on death -- can be built. Such a peacemaking politic will automatically call into question the violent power of military might, particularly when it’s couched in the language of "policing". The way we Christians call that power into question is through our practices of silence and prayer -- "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven".
So I can't deny that any remembrance of September 11 has to begin in the silence of prayer. Americans desperately need to sanctify the violence of that day, and its resultant spiraling into violent chaos, so we do our best to domesticate 9/11 with our words. I believe every attempt to explain that day -- even in retrospective -- have to be resisted. That is, after all, why theologian Rowan Williams wrote all his words about that day in a book entitled Writing in the Dust (which, by the way, if you want to read some words worth having been said about that day, this is the book to read).
In the earliest hours that Tuesday morning, there was lots of stunned silence. And rightly so.
But, Americans know that something has to be said, something has to be done. So we did it.
The silence was shattered in the dropping of bombs.
On 9/11, two men thought what had happened was an act of "war". The first was Osama bin Laden. The second was President Bush. That's because both men had adopted the modern narrative that believes only violence can bring peace. Words -- especially the words that aim to love our enemies and in that way understand and respect them -- words are the only American way forward.
When Americans are frightened, only words can bring comfort. We are Job's friends -- attempting to justify the ways of God toward violence rather than to find mercy in patience. Americans normalize violence with our words. And our words -- every word -- about that day, have, since that day, sought to normalize the violence that not only responded to a murderous act (not an act of war!) but the words that have underscored all that violence since. (But when your words only matter to prop up certain ways of being in the world -- when words serve purposes beyond truth-telling -- who needs to make that truthful distinction?)
We have to justify killing, because death can only make sense when justified. So we sanctify the dead with our words. Americans are experts at killing -- particularly with our words.
So the silence of that Tuesday was very quickly shattered by talk of revenge. Revenge that is all the more deadly because we cannot speak the truth about the ways our lack of vulnerability enabled and created "the evil Empire" bin Laden believed we'd become (wait, weren't we the ones who first used that phrase against Russia, those against whom bin Laden had banded with us just a couple of decades before?). We needed heroes, so we quickly found them in the dead -- and in those who rushed to the dead.
I'm a Christian, so all this American "we" is not mine. I am alienated from the words that are spoken lately about that Tuesday fifteen years ago, precisely because those words are not my words. My words are not even my words, because these are the words of peace I have learned to speak from Jesus Christ.
I learned a long time ago, as a child, that sometimes you just have to get your hands dirty. I grew up reading the words of Captain America (who better to embody Niebuhr's justification for violence?). But it was another book -- Bonhoeffer's Discipleship -- that taught me Captain America is wrong. If there is any truth to the Christian message, it is that Jesus would rather die than kill. That the resurrection makes the Christian words and acts of obedience to peace possible. So I have no desire to rid the world of violence. My pacifism is not a means toward an end. Instead, it is a testament to a different world, a different Kingdom.
So what do I have to say about 9/11?
To be nonviolent means I have to change the way things are done. For example, with all the recent hullabaloo over "The Star Spangled Banner", I confess: I stand when it's sung, but I will not sing. Not to sing the "Star-Spangled Banner" is a small thing that reminds me that my first loyalty is not to the United States but to Christ and Christ's Church. I confess it never crossed my mind that such small acts might over the years make my response to September 11 quite different from that of the good people who sing "God Bless America" -- so different that I am left in saddened silence.
That will always haunt me.
I grew up being a "good American". I come from a hard-working family who instilled in me a pride of place and people. While my family hasn't been militarized since the Korean War, we have always been good "Volunteers" for the American experiment. For most of my young life, I was that "good American", until I attended seminary and began thinking and praying about such things.
There was the Gulf War. I prayed, and I lamented. I was sure that if God loved us, he also loved our enemies. That was enough to convince me not to cheer as I watched smart bombs being dropped over grainy images on my tv screen.
Which means that by 9/11 I didn't share the American trauma over the murders. Of course I recoil over murder -- any murder -- and murder on such a scale is unfathomable by any account. But I think Americans were just too quick to speak a word that can never been a word in the vocabulary of those who follow Jesus: “War”.
Where does that leave me, these 17 years later?
All I can really say is this:
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in the newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.
Christians often tend to focus on being united with Christ in his resurrection, forgetting that we are also united with him in his death. What could that mean if it does not mean that Christians must be ready to die, indeed have their children die, rather than betray the Gospel? Any love not transformed by the love of God cannot help but be the source of the violence we perpetrate on one another in the name of justice. Such a love may appear harsh and dreadful from the perspective of the world, but Christians believe such a love is life-giving not life-denying.
Of course living a life of nonviolence can be deadly. It means that, in my nonviolence, I will have to watch the innocent suffer and die. But when you’re committed to the ways of peace, you have to be willing to endure death instead of taking life. I believe we should rather die than kill. I can only say this, though, because my death is taking into the death of Jesus, and raised with him in his Resurrection.
It's hard to make a policy around that, though. So Americans are right to balk at all my words.
This brings me back round to what I can -- or, more accurately, can't -- as we approach this anniversary.
My silence.
My silence is my prayer.