On the Anniversary of the Terrorist Attack
September 12, 2010, Psalm 137:1-6, Luke 6:37-38
As I was preparing for worship this week the reports about the pastor in Florida who planned to burn copies of the Koran, the Holy book of Muslims, occupied my thoughts. Yesterday, as I'm sure you're aware was the 9th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that changed the world profoundly. I cannot think of another event in my lifetime that had such impact. I wasn't alive on December 7, 1941, the day the Japanese airforce attacked Pearl Harbor, a day, that our president famously said, would " live in infamy." Certainly in my lifetime there has never been such a stark break from the past as the one we experienced September 11, 2001.
Last summer when I attended the City of God conference in Washington, DC, one of the speakers said that in some ways the United States has been in exile since September 11, 2001. I have held onto that image and it helps me make sense of what I have been feeling personally as we mark this anniversary-and what our nation is experiencing as well. In the biblical exile, the nation of Israel was overrun and invaded by the Babylonians, and later the leaders and scholars of Israel were carried bodily to Babylon. They struggled with their identity as God's chosen people, having been taken away from the Promised Land to a foreign nation. While the United States has not been invaded, nor have our leaders been carried far away, in a spiritual sense, I believe we have been in exile for nine years now. The wound that was inflicted on our nation is still healing, though we have, I believe, a long way to go until our exile is ended and we can return to living as we remember it.
I kept a journal of my thoughts and feelings starting on September 11. I knew my sons would want to know what it was like. My younger son was 14 days old that day. He will have no recollection of life before exile.
Coinciding with the anniversary of the terror attacks, in addition to the pastor in Florida who announced his plan to burn copies of the Koran, there has been a longer-standing controversy over the building of an Islamic cultural center in lower Manhattan. As I understand it the center would be sort of like a YMCA, built several blocks from where the World Trade Centers stood. There has been strong, vocal opposition to this center. There has also been passionate support from outside the Islamic community for its construction.
Both of these controversies are complicated by our Constitution. Really. This is the United States and the freedom to practice one's religion is guaranteed by the First Amendment. Oh, and freedom of speech is also protected by the same amendment. And those protections of speech and religious expression are explicitly intended to protect people who say and believe things that other people think are wrong, nutty and offensive. Burning the American flag is an expression that is protected and permitted by the First Amendment. Personally, I find that particular expression profoundly offensive, even provocative, but also protected by the constitution. So as I see it, the pastor in Florida has the right to burn copies of the Koran both as an expression of his religious beliefs and as a protected expression of free speech. As I listened to the news on my car radio this past Thursday, he said that he would call off the plan to burn copies of the Koran if contacted by the Pentagon or the State Department. I had a Seinfeld moment as I heard that...I thought, "there's something funny there..." I thought about it...here's a pastor who believes himself called to serve the Lord Jesus Christ, who plans to make a provocative, public statement, ...who's waiting to take orders from General Petraues and Secretary of State Clinton. What was he planning to do in case he got word from God? As of Friday the news was that this pastor planned to fly to New York City, seeking to persuade those who plan to build the cultural center to build somewhere else.
I have following this controversy all summer as well. One morning when my family was in Denmark there was a headline about the planned cultural center. This has been big news all over the world. And I bring a unique perspective to this situation. I spent a year working for the Department of City Planning in New York between college and seminary. My office was literally in the shadow of the World Trade Centers. I cashed my first paycheck there in 1986. I am very familiar with that neighborhood and I even have a dear friend who lives there. I have found the conversation about the cultural center in that neighborhood fascinating. People on both sides agree that a religious group has a right to build such a center. Some voices, however, who oppose the center contend that it would be insensitive for such a center to be built on "Holy Ground." I've walked the streets of lower Manhattan, I know personally the ground we're talking about and I have to say that that ground is no more or less holy than any place I have ever been. And I am puzzled about that designation. Does ground become holy when it is the scene of a cataclysmic tragedy? What makes ground holy? And who gets to make that designation? When God called Moses in the fire of the burning bush, God commanded Moses to take off his shoes because he was standing on holy ground. And Psalm 139 says that God is all the time in all places, so one cannot ever possibly not be in God's presence, which I believe means that all ground is holy. If an Islamic cultural center cannot be placed on holy ground, what would be permissible? A statue, a memorial, a chapel, a meditation room, an office building, a subway station, the abandoned Burlington Coat Factory store that stands there now?
Both of these issues that have consumed hours and hours of news coverage revolve around a question that I find fascinating: Right vs. Good.
Both the pastor and the congregation have the right to go ahead with their plans. As a Christian I am appalled that someone who represents my faith tradition would publically destroy another tradition's holy book. I cannot imagine how doing that would help people to meet the Christ whom I worship and serve. Nevermind that it would give ammunition to Muslim extremists-and encouragement to Christian extremists...it simply would not be "good" in my opinion.
On the other hand, as an American and a religious leader, I believe great good could come from the construction of the cultural center. This could be a place where people who have been wounded by Islamic extremism can go and see that the enemy is not Islam, but extremism. What does it say about us as a nation that we permit and encourage minority religious traditions to exist? And for them to seek to put down roots of faith and justice so near to the soil that other people, who claim to be of the same tradition, have sown catastrophe?
Christ calls us not to judge, tells us that we will receive mercy to the same extent that we extend mercy to others. That is not easy, nor does it come naturally to most of us. But as I see it, our enemy is not Islam, our enemies are extremism and intolerance.