A couple weeks ago Akwi Nji and I helped Matthew 25 put on a live storytelling event in Groundswell Café. The theme of the show was, “What are you good at?” I was one of five featured storytellers. I talked about being a slow, distracted child whom my mom nicknamed “Space Cadet” and how that personality trait has shaped my life. The show was a heckuva lot of fun, but if you missed the event, you can watch my storytelling in the video above.
That’s what I said. Here’s what I didn’t say.
I had actually prepared two stories to perform. Because the event took place on the night of 9/11, that’s what my second story was about. But because the show was already running long, we made the decision to cut it. Since I have this outlet, I’ll share a written version here with you.
What I remember from September 11th, 2001, and the 12th, and the days that followed.
Twenty-three years ago, on 9/11, I was in Denver, Colorado, heading to my first day of orientation at Iliff School of Theology, a United Methodist seminary. Like my grandfather, dad, and older brother, who were all United Methodist pastors, I was going to seminary to begin my training for ministry.
We had one car, so my wife Emmy was driving me to school, our nine-month-old daughter Anyssa behind us in a car seat. We had NPR on the radio, half listening. But then we heard them saying something about a plane crashing into some building in New York. The World Trade Center? I didn’t even know what that was at the time. We didn’t really understand what was going on, but it sounded like maybe it was an attack of some kind.
When I got to school and went inside, someone had placed a TV set near the reception desk, and a group of people was huddled around it, watching video of a smoking skyscraper as a second plane crashed into it. And you know how the news does it. They just kept playing that footage over and over, slowing it down so we could see the plane flying into the tower.
Burning those images into the American psyche.
The next day was Wednesday, and on Wednesdays all the students, staff, and faculty at Iliff gathered for the weekly chapel service. I remember walking into the chapel that day for my first worship service at Iliff, and one of the staff members was up front, standing next to an American flag, playing “America the Beautiful” on violin.
And something about that picture rubbed me the wrong way. I knew in my gut that I did not want any part of it. So I turned around and walked out of the chapel. I don’t remember where I went after that. I just remember not wanting to be there.
Why I went to Iliff
I chose to go to Iliff School of Theology for two reasons. The first reason—I’m not going to lie—was that it was close to the mountains. I wanted to ski and hike and just be near them!
But the second reason was because Iliff had a focus on peace with justice.
It didn’t take long for the drumbeat of war to start after 9/11. And many people who claimed to be Christians were enthusiastically marching right along. America had been attacked, and it seemed like everyone agreed: we needed someone to hit back.
George W. Bush started using the phrase “War on Terror”, and Congress gave his administration the power to do pretty much anything they wanted. Then was not the time to hesitate or to question. We were told by our leaders to do two things in response to 9/11, strengthen the economy and support our troops.
Spend money, kill Muslims. That’s how they told us we would protect America.
As a follower of Jesus, I had a problem with this, because I knew Jesus spent his ministry preaching against exactly this kind of action.
Jesus knew all about violence. In his day, acts of rebellion were met with crushing, brutal violence. When he was a boy in Nazareth, a small group of rebels had attacked a Roman outpost in the town of Sepphoris just a few miles away. According to the historian Josephus, the occupying Roman army responded by burning the entire city to the ground, selling all the inhabitants into slavery, and remaking it into a Roman city.
Palestine then was a lot like Palestine today.
Spend money, kill Muslims. That’s how how they told us we would protect America.
Jesus knew the terrible, endless cost of “an eye for an eye”. He witnessed these sorts of things throughout his life. And his consistent response was to preach messages like “Love your enemy.” “Turn the other cheek.” “Put away your sword.” “Forgive them.”
Most people didn't like that part of Jesus’s teaching then, and 2000 years later, most of his followers try to ignore these teachings. Forgiveness (or even thoughtful hesitation) was not a popular response to 9/11. Americans needed vengeance.
Luckily for me, I was at Iliff. In spite of my initial misgivings when I walked into that first chapel service, Iliff did in fact turn out to be the peace and justice-focused place I had hoped it would be.
During seminary, I participated in a lot of anti-war protests. When I learned that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were both United Methodists, I even led an effort to get them kicked out of the church for violating several teachings in our Book of Discipline.1
Nothing that any of us did was enough.
The Iraq war lasted 10 years. The war in Afghanistan was 20 years. Over half a million people died because of those wars. The majority of them were civilians.
Tens of thousands were children. (Just under 3,000 Americans died as a result of the 9/11 attack.)
Another memory I have from my time in Denver was this house that I used to drive by occasionally. Out front it had yellow ribbons on the trees and a huge sign that said, “We will never forget. We will never forgive.”
And every time I saw it, even today I wonder, will they ever forget? Will they ever forgive us for what we did?
My only hope is that they are better at following Jesus’s teachings than we were.
At the time, conservatives in the UMC liked to use the Book of Discipline to strip pastors of their ordination if they came out as gay or even if they officiated at a wedding for a same sex couple.
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