Today’s Scripture Reading (September
11, 2013): Psalm 79
It is hard
to believe that it has been twelve years. It seems like just yesterday that we
watched in horror as the peace of a September day was crushed by hijacked
planes crashing into symbolic and beloved land marks. At the time I was living
thousands of miles away – closer to the west coast of the continent than the
east where the horror was, and yet even there the crashes changed things. One
of the things that I remember was the eerie emptiness of the skies as
governments tried furiously to figure out what was happening. All of my life I
had watched the sky, infatuated with the flying machines that inhabited the
spaces over my head – but on that day and a few days after, the flying machines
were no longer there. On that day, everything changed – and maybe for the first
time in generations, North Americans understood a feeling that up until that
day only our friends in Europe and Asia truly understood – we understood what
it felt like to be vulnerable. On that day we lost something that might have
been more valuable than the Twin Towers or the possible loss of the Pentagon or
even the White House. We lost our
innocence. And that was something that just could not be rebuilt.
This Psalm
is attributed to Asaph, but it is another of the Asaph Psalms that was probably
written by a descendant of the revered Levite. The context of the Psalm would
definitely appear to be following the destruction of the Jerusalem in 587
B.C.E. But it was not just the city walls that were breached that day – this
was the day that temple was lost as well. Just like the significant losses that
Americans suffered on 9/11, the temple was something that the people thought
they would never lose.
But the
ultimate truth that Israel would need to learn is that God loved them in spite
of their losses. We seem to want to connect our losses and our hurts as evidence
that God has turned his back on us, but that is not the truth. The reality that
we need to understand is that God’s presence during the good times is a good
thing, but God’s presence when planes are crashing around us and the enemy is
destroying everything that is dear to us, is essential.
Today is a
day of mourning. It could be argued that, at least in North American, 9/11 is
the saddest day on modern calendar. For our Jewish friends, they have another
sad day. It is called Tisha B’Av, or the ninth Av. And while on 9/11 we
remember the attack on our economic (the Twin Towers), our military (the Pentagon)
and our political (The White House) identities, on Tisha B’Av Jews remember
attacks that occurred on that day across centuries – including the destruction
of Solomon’s Temple (587 B.C.E.), the destruction of Zerubabbel’s Temple (70 C.E.)
and the Roman Massacre of 100,000 Jews at Betar (132 C.E.) All of these events,
and others, occurred on the ninth of Av. But while Tisha B’Av and 9/11 are days
of great sadness, they should also be a celebration of the God who sticks with
us, even in the worst moments of our lives.
Tomorrow’s Scripture
Reading: Psalm 80
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