Recently, I found myself talking with a friend who’s four years into his career as a firefighter for a major city department. With the anniversary of 9/11 approaching, we were reflecting on the surreal reality that it’s somehow been 20 years since that fateful day. My young friend was just 9 years old on September 11, 2001, but like so many of us, he will never forget where he was when the towers fell – and he will never forget those 343 firefighters who lost their lives purposely running IN to the burning buildings when everybody else was running OUT.
My friend told me how the dangers of firefighting have changed since 9/11. I was stunned to learn that there have been a number of ambushes in recent years, where arsonists set blazes then call them in, only to lie in wait so they can shoot the unsuspecting firefighters responding to the scene. As a young guy with a wife and his first baby on the way, he admitted that men and women like him who are entering the field today do so knowing that the threat to their lives no longer comes only from the flames themselves, but from the people responsible for them.
As he reflected matter-of-factly on the realities of the job, I couldn’t help but ask him, “So why do you do it?” His answer surprised me. “It’s the price of sacrifice,” he replied. “And as Christians, I think we’re called to sacrifice every day, in one way or another. My way just happens to be through my job. It’s how I can live out Luke 9:23.”
He was referring to the passage where Jesus foretells His death to His disciples: And he said, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.” Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?”
For my firefighter friend, the risk of harm or even death on the job matters less than the knowledge that he has the ability to save lives – lives that might otherwise never hear the saving message of the Gospel. When he watched the news footage of those towers falling 20 years ago and realized that the firefighters he’d seen going inside weren’t going to make it out, he can remember thinking that if they knew Jesus as their Lord and Savior, then they would be with Him, and all the people they managed to rescue before the buildings collapsed would now live long enough to have the chance to know Him, too. As a young child, the thought gave him hope, and as a young man now, it motivates him every day when he steps onto the engine to respond to someone else’s crisis.
I wonder…can each of us say the same? Can we admit that following Jesus looks a lot less like convenience and comfort, and a lot more like sacrifice? Sure, we’re not all “first responders” in the traditional sense of the word. But we are all called to be “first responders” to the most critical need of every human being: the need for the Good News that Christ offers through salvation.
Jesus suffered the agonizing fate of His crucifixion on our behalf. When He warned His disciples before His death what it would cost to follow Him, it was no coincidence that He referenced the cross. Even before He was arrested, tortured, and nailed to those slabs of wood, He already knew exactly what He was about to endure – and He did it anyway. There is no greater example of the true price of sacrifice.
So, 20 years later, as we remember one of the darkest events in our nation’s history, may we also remember the selfless actions of so many that day – from firefighters and police officers to doctors and nurses, from business executives to “ordinary” men and women just going about their daily lives. May we allow the sobering reality of tragedy to make us increasingly aware of the urgency with which Jesus has called us to take up our own crosses in order to follow Him. May we be spurred on to do His work for the glory of the Kingdom with whatever time we’re given here, resisting the urge to cling to the temporary pleasures of this world.
May we understand, as my friend put it, that following Jesus comes with the price of sacrifice. And the price is worth it.
