Remembering Sept. 11, 2001

There are two dates in recent American history that have been seared in the minds of most of the people living in the United States. We sort of called them days of infamy: echoing the famous words of Franklin D. Roosevelt in his famous 1941 speech after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Indeed, in 1941 and 2001, we as a nation were sent for a spin of disbelief. We were taken by surprised, and our illusions of security were shattered. These 2 days are very different in proportion, scope, and impact. In a very simplistic fashion we could say that December 7, 1941 was a military operation, while September 11, 2001 was not. On both days lives were lost and heroes were forged. In both days we, as a people, suffered together.

However, the days, weeks, and months that followed these days of infamy also became infamous days in our history as a people. On the one hand we interred over 127,000 people of Japanese ancestry, their crime: being Japanese. On the other hand, in a smaller scale, after September 11, a few thousand Arab Americans were detained and held without charges for moths.

This is the sad reality of how fear clouds our judgment not realizing that even those who we might sometimes feel are our enemies also lost loved ones during these attacks. In both attacks this was the case.

Therefore, it was wonderful to hear President George W. Bush’s speech after the 9/11 attacks because at that time, at that moment everyone who died in New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, the President told us they were all Americans: at that moment we were one people. We were all suffering because we were all victims of hate, as Dr. Cornell West put it at the time. The people who died on that day were not Asians, Whites, Latinos/Hispanics, Arabs, Native Americans, African Americans, Blacks, and others. They were not immigrants and native born, they were not documented or undocumented; they were all Americans. Their blood was one, mixed in a senseless act of barbarity, the fruit of hate and despair.

This month we remember the senseless act of hate that took the lives of almost 3,000 people in one day. This month, we will remember the deaths of other countless other people who died as a consequence of this act of hate. This month we must remember that on September 11, 2011 we were all one people: African Americans, Whites, Blacks, Latinos/Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, Arabs, and others. Our blood was mixed, our suffering was mixed, our pain was mixed, we were all victims of a senseless act of hate.

Here the words of the Apostle Paul are very telling: “For he himself is our peace, who has made [of many] groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of [many], thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile [everyone] to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near.” (Ephesians 2:14-17, NIV).

Although this passage speaks of our relationship as a human race, it is very telling about the purpose of God to bring unity to the human race. Therefore, the same God who wants the human race to be one, this is the same God who wants every member of the human race to see in each other God’s face, God’s presence; for we were all made in the image of God, everyone of us. As hard as this might be sometimes to accept, the fact is that we are called to love our fellow human beings as God has loved us (John 3:16-18). As Paul also reminds us in Romans 13:8c:

… for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law.

And again Paul declares in verse 10:

Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

The days described above may be infamous days, but that does not mean that we, as a people, need to continue living infamously. We have seen what ignorance and hate can do to nations (i.e., Germany, and others), we must not allow our faith to be clouded by hate or ignorance, we must be vigilant to ugly expressions of hate that pop-op all over the world and around us. We must learn from Jesus and learn to respond how Jesus responded to hate and ignorance: with love and sacrifice.

We are one human race, one human family, the way God intended it from the beginning. Let us glance in our neighbors the image of the living God.

Rev. Eliezer Valentín-Castañón