Matthew 27:46, 50 — And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?…Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.

Today marks the anniversary of a historic breaking point. On September 11, 2001, the United States was brutally awakened to the knowledge that foreign terrorists could reach into the very heart of the nation. It was not the first such historic breaking point. On December 7, 1941 there was another such awakening, when Japanese aircraft struck an unsuspecting Pearl Harbor. On August 16, 1945 the world as a whole became aware that massive destruction could sweep whole cities away, and that tit for tat nuclear devastation could bring the end of the world.
Each of these breaking points fractures our understanding of reality. What was true one day – the comfortable assumptions underpinning life – suddenly becomes not true, and a new insecurity becomes part of daily reality.
How are we to react to these fractures of reality? There is a terrible tendency to seek to brush them under the carpet, to “forget”, and to revert to an old reality protected by a comforting amnesia. It is a cruel decision. Today we will remember many of the almost three thousand people killed by the four coordinated terrorist attacks of “9/11”. But there are the individuals too who cannot be remembered individually:

There be of them, that have left a name behind them, that their praises might be reported. And some there be, which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never been; and are become as though they had never been born; and their children after them. (Ecclesiasticus 44:8-9)

For Christians, of course, the ultimate fracture of reality happened on that day 2000 years ago, when God died, and the Father excruciatingly turned His eyes away from His Son. It would be so easy to look away from that day and its consequences – to retreat to a comfortable non-sacrificial Christianity. It would be that same cruel decision – to refuse to seek for and know the real Jesus.
Breaking points are terrible. They must demand grief, mourning, sadness and remembrance. At the same time they must elicit a positive response – a response that says “why did this happen, how can we make sure that we learn foundational lessons on which to build a better future”.
As I wrote painfully yesterday, Christians cannot choose hate and fear in the face of historic breaking points. We must remember … and turn to love.