Reflection on 9/11

Today I went to Duke Chapel to hear Mozart’s Requiem as a memorial to the tragedy that struck our nation ten years ago. The Chapel was filled to overflowing, with people spilling out onto the lawn and standing shoulder to shoulder in the aisles. It was good to be there with so many. There was a solidarity of sorts, a koinonia of grief and horror and memory and hope for a better future. President Broadhead, Mayor Bill Bell, the Muslim Chaplain Abdullah Antepli., and Dean Sam Wells all spoke. Broadhead was thoughtful, Bell was optimistic, Antepli was hopeful, and Wells was evangelical. Wells might balk at that label, but I mean, simply, that he spoke the truth about this event in such a way that it shone forth the good news about Jesus Christ. He has a profound, British way of doing that, and it made me glad to be there just to hear his introduction.

The Requiem begins with a prayer:

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine,
et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Give to them, Lord, eternal rest,

And let perpetual light shine upon them.

As the choir sang these words, I couldn’t help but imagine the unspeakable scenes ten years ago: Of fathers trapped above the 90^th floor of the North Tower; of firefighters running up stairways minutes before the building collapsed; of passengers aboard Flight 73 storming the cockpit of the hijacked plane. What horrors they experienced on that day, what brave decisions they faced, what fears they had to run right through—God only knows. Surely it is the right prayer to pray for them, that they may know requiem.

We all want rest. Sometimes we get so tired we think we can’t go on. And sometimes life brings us choices that seem impossible. “Eternal rest” may sound boring to us sometimes, but when the world is burning and smoking and collapsing, it’s just the thing our hearts desire. And it is just the thing we are promised (Hebrews 4).

It also struck me as marvelously odd that the result, ten years later, of such wicked acts of terror, would be that a group of musicians would come together and sing. Somehow I think that's not what the terrorists thought they would bring about.