A Cross At Ground Zero
September 11, 2011 is a big day for our nation. In preparation for this day (and for the week full of news stories leading up to this day) I offered the following meditation on September 4, 2011. Usual disclaimers apply. This does not (of course) say all that could be said. And what is said may not be said so wonderfully. But it is an attempt to say something.
On this mountain the LORD Almighty will prepare
a feast of rich food for all peoples,
a banquet of aged wine—
the best of meats and the finest of wines.
7 On this mountain he will destroy
the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations;
8 he will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears
from all faces;
he will remove his people’s disgrace
from all the earth.
The LORD has spoken.
9 In that day they will say,
“Surely this is our God;
we trusted in him, and he saved us.
This is the LORD, we trusted in him;
let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.” (Isaiah 25:6-9)
Family in Christ:
Few of us will ever forget where we were on that Tuesday morning ten years ago.
I was headed to my Shakespeare class at Dordt College. Late as usual. As I hurried down the hallway, backpack bouncing, coffee sloshing, I noticed something strange. Every classroom I ran past had a TV on. Every face was upturned. Every eye was locked on the screen. And every mouth was silent. Nobody spoke. No student. No professor. Just silence—draped over everyone like a heavy winter quilt.
As I slid into my seat, the reason for the silence soon became clear. For just as Dr. De Smith began to explain to me that something terrible was happening inNew York City, the second plane appeared on the right side of the TV monitor, banked suddenly, and smashed into the second tower, causing an enormous explosion.
During the days that followed, I watched and re-watched that sickening footage again and again. So many of us did. It’s like we needed convincing that it wasn’t just some terrible dream; it’s like we couldn’t bring ourselves to believe what we were seeing.
Perhaps we couldn’t believe that such a horrendous evil could be perpetrated by other human beings; couldn’t quite believe the darkness of human hearts; couldn’t quite believe just how right the teacher in Ecclesiastes was when he wrote: “The hearts of men are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live.” (Ecc. 9:3). But we also couldn’t seem to believe that such a terrible monstrosity was happening to us—here, in theUnited States, in the land of the free and the home of the brave. How could something so terrible happen in a place with so many wonderful freedoms and such progress and amazing technology and such massive defense budgets?
Maybe we couldn’t believe it. But something tells me that Isaiah the prophet would not have shared our surprise—either about the darkness of human hearts, or the darkness of that day in general. Because even though it has often been said that “everything changed” on September 11, 2001, Isaiah might observe that really, that day was just more of the same.
Notice: In verse 7 of our text today, Isaiah speaks of a “shroud that enfolds,” a “sheet that covers.” Isaiah is using the imagery of funeral parlors and gravesides. The imagery of death. And Isaiah says that death’s dark shroud is draped over every person, the sheet is wrapped tightly around every nation. There are no exceptions.
This sounds obvious enough. We all know (at least on some level) that nobody gets out of here alive. But Isaiah isn’t only reminding us of our mortality; he’s not only observing that that at some point, maybe sooner but hopefully later, our meter’s will expire and our time will be up. When Isaiah talks about the dark “shroud that enfolds all people”, he’s talking about something far more sinister. Not only a life ending event. But a life consuming power. According to Walter Breuggamann, Isaiah thinks of death as a suprahuman power that “crowds in upon every chance for life.” In his words, “Death here is…an active force that moves to counter and cancel and prevent all well being…. ‘Death is all that circumscribes life, that limits…humanity, [and] that diminishes well-being.”[iii]
This, says Isaiah, is the dark shroud that hangs over all people. This is the sheet that has entangled all nations.
And this is the shroud that we became so painfully aware of on September 11, 2001. We felt the shrouds staggering weight; felt the sheets stifling, suffocating power. And we have been trying to shake off that shroud, to free ourselves of that sheet, ever since.
Author Sarah Vowell was living in New York City at the time of the attacks. She recalls that in the days after 9/11, she desperately wanted to do something. So when the TV news announced that rescue workers were in need of toothpaste, she lept at the chance. She clicked off the TV and marched down to the corner store—only to discover that she was too late. Half her block had already been there and all the shelves with the name brands were all empty. So she ended up hauling fourteen tubes of Sensodyne—the toothpaste for sensitive teeth—to the rescue worker’s headquarters.[iv]
It was, I think, her own small way of trying to push back the shroud. Of trying to shake herself—and her corner of the world—free of the sheet that entangles. I think much of what we’ve done as a nation during the past ten years (especially in the name of national security) has been an attempt to do the same. And I suppose that from a certain perspective, we’ve been successful.
A friend of mine visited Ground Zero last month. As he surveyed the scene, he says he got tears in his eyes. Tears because of all the loss and sorrow. But also tears that grew out of pride. And, he says, a “profound sense of hope.”
Hope a big word at Ground Zero. My friend was even given a plastic bracelet that says, United by Hope. And I think I know what my friend—and the people who made the bracelet—are getting at. I’m enough of a patriot that I want to wave my flag this week, and maybe puff out my chest a bit, let the world that nobody is going to keepAmerica down because we’re going to come back bigger and stronger than ever. This week, I am proud to be an American. And I’m thankful that (despite some of the political nuttiness that’s gone on in the last decade), our nation still has a future.
So I understand pride. And gratitude. And even optimism. But I wonder. Do we have hope? And I mean real hope. Hope that isn’t only sunny optimism about the future. But hope that also says something about the past?
In one of his novels, Jonathan Safran Foer tells the story of an eight year old boy named Oskar Schell. Oskar lost his father in the WorldTradeCenter. Oskar says that to him, the loss is a giant “the hole in the middle of [him] that every happy thing [falls] into.”[vi] At night, Oskar lies in bed and he cries. He cries so much that he imagines that, if he could invent a special drain to put beneath every pillow in New York to collect all the tears of all the people who cried themselves asleep at night, and if that drain would funnel all those tears into a reservoir in Central Park, it wouldn’t be long before people would need to start filling sand bags and building levies, lest the reservoir overflow its banks and flood the entire city with tears.
When you’ve shed that many tears, when you feel the sheet wrapped that tightly around you, it’s going to take more than some flag waving and chest thumping, more than a new national security plan or an act of congress to dry your tears and disentangle you from the shroud. As fine as those things may be, for people like Oskar, they probably don’t do much more to create hope than fourteen tubes of Sensodyne. Because the kind of hope someone like Oskar needs is more than hope for a future where things are all right. It’s hope for a future where even the past is put right. It’s a future where that reservoir of tears is completely dried up, because “everything sad can come untrue.”
In other words, it’s the kind of future that only God can provide. And the kind of future God promises to provide through the prophet Isaiah.
The incredible promise that comes through Isaiah is that one day, God will wipe away all tears, because he will not only tug back the corner of the dark shroud draped over humanity; he will not only loosen the sheet that entangles every nation. But he will do away with the shroud and the sheet completely. He will tear it up, shred it, toss it in the back dumpster. Isaiah says that death will be crushed to death. This force so often pictured in the ancient world as a gaping mouth, as the Great Swallower, will itself be swallowed up. God will “take it in his jaws, crush it, chew it, reduce it, eliminate it.”[ix]
That’s the promise God makes through the prophet Isaiah. And it’s the promise he keeps in his son, Jesus Christ. As one of my teachers was fond of saying, on the cross, Jesus Christ absorbed all the power of evil without passing it on. On the cross, he let the forces of death do their worst on him. And in his resurrection, he proved he had exhausted their power. The Apostle Paul says it this way in Colossians 2:15: He “‘disarmed the powers and authorities, having made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”
For many of us, one of the enduring images that emerged in the days and weeks after 9/11 featured a pile of cement and rubble—the remains of what used to be the World Trade center. Towering above the wreckage were two iron beams. Together, they formed a perfectly symmetrical cross.
For those of us who put our faith in Jesus (crucified, died, and risen), that imageis a fantastic picture of the hope that we have been given. And the hope that the world has been given. Because it’s a reminder that there is something bigger than terrorism. Something more powerful than death. Something that has and will overcome all those forces that threaten to destroy us, that try to reduce our world to a smoldering heap of rubble. And that is the Cross of Jesus Christ. On the cross of Jesus Christ, death was put to death, everything sad began to become untrue. Because of the cross of Christ, every tear will be wiped away.
In Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel (which I mentioned to you earlier), there are no words on the last twenty or so pages. Instead, these pages feature flip book made by young Oskar. It’s the kind of thing kids make when doing basic animation—usually featuring a cow jumping over the moon, or a stick figure dancing the robot. But Oskar’s book pictures a lot more than cows or stick figures. Oskar’s book pictures hope. Real, Christian hope.
Oskar’s book starts with a crudely drawn picture of the crumbled towers, nothing more than a pile of rubble on the ground. But as you flip through the book, the towers reconstruct, bit by bit. Up, up up, they go. And then, the enormous cloud of smoke and flames begins to recede back into the building. Down, down, down they go. And finally, the image that haunted Oskar the most—the picture of those people hurling themselves to the ground—is reversed. The little stick figures figures rise up from the dirt and rubble. Up, up, up they go. Back into the windows. Back to their little desks. Back to the way things are supposed to be.
That’s hope. That’s Christian hope. Every tear wiped away. Every sad thing undone. And because of Jesus Christ—because Christ has died, because Christ has risen, because Christ will came again—that’s our hope.
Let’s give him thanks and praise for that.
