The Sounds of the Heroic

On September 11^th, he made it out of the World Trade Center, but now he has trouble sleeping. Any doctor would tell him that’s normal. The noise, the heat, the flames, the smoke, and the collapse—such mental images seared on the brain would keep any one awake.

Yet, it’s not what he "sees" in the nightmares of the night that jolt his body to rigid attention. It’s what he hears in those nightmares night after night.

As he’s desperately running down the stairs of the melting skyscraper, he hears the sounds of the heroic, heroic sounds that will echo in his mind and throughout American history forever.

When he first heard the sounds, he most likely couldn’t believe the ears he’d trusted all his life. The sounds are moving toward him. Heroic sounds climbing, not descending.

If he thought his ears weren’t to be believed, could he trust his eyes? He could, because there they were. Firefighters in full gear, rushing up the stairs of the Tower, yelling for him to keep going, to get out, and get out now.

It couldn’t have been long; just seconds and then the sounds were gone as he descends and the firefighters climb on up higher and higher inside the melting Tower. Soon, with them in it, the huge building will dissolve and crash to the ground while the world watched.

But what he heard for those few seconds on 9-11 has somehow engrafted itself into his mind, a mind which replays those sounds of the heroic footsteps night after night. He can’t sleep, so he writes a song dedicated to the sound of those sounds climbing up the stairs, about how he’ll never forget their sound.

It’s Christmas time, 2001 and the world still hears the sounds of the heroic two millennia later. Christmas is the story of the birth of the God with feet. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14) on that first Christmas day. Then those feet were tiny baby feet. In our mind’s ear, we still hear the sound of those feet doing what all baby feet do—sporadically kick against the manger, those feet with no crib for a bed.

Years later, we hear the sound of those same feet pounding the dirty Israelite roads as they’ve come to seek and to save those who are lost. We hear the same footfalls walking into a wedding, attending and breaking up funerals, and we still hear the feet thudding on top of the deep waters of the Sea of Galilee.

The loudest echo we hear is the heroic sound of those feet striding toward the Cross. No Roman soldier had ever had to hold back a person from the Cross, but in our mind’s eye we can see those of the military trying to restrain Jesus for getting there.

Jesus’ feet propelled Him on a mission; they set face like flint toward Jerusalem where He knew there would be danger. But "for the joy that was set before Him (doing the Father’s will) He moves deliberately toward the Cross to pay for our penalties for our sins. For three days, there were no sounds of footsteps. The heroic was done. Finished. Paid in full.

Then, three days later, we hear the footsteps again leaving the tomb, empty.

And the sounds of those feet still jolt people’s attention today, as the Bible confronts us with a choice: do you believe Jesus for eternal life?

The echoes are so strong, poets still write songs about the One who made those heroic sounds, sounds that began in a manger and ended up walking out of a tomb, alive from the dead.

Dr. Mike Halsey, Pastor

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