Today we will begin a week of remembrance for a day nobody over the age of ten will ever forget. A day that dawned with blue skies almost from coast to coast. A perfect day for flying that turned into one of the darkest days in our collective memory as a nation.
There is no use reviewing the events of September 11. The news media will do that for us – re-searing images into our brains that have left a scar on us all. That’s is one of the difficulties of living in an era of instant communication where everybody who has a cell phone is armed with a camera for capturing almost every possible moment from the mundane to the unforgettable. Those who heard about the attacks on Pearl Harbor could only imagine the horror, we saw it live. And we will never forget it.
One year later Father Sakowicz and I planned a service of remembrance at Saint Mary of the Woods. It was extremely well attended but one funeral director friend of mine gave me a little static when he heard about our plans. “I don’t think I’m ready to be reconciled to what happened yet.” He was a fire fighter too and I understood his position completely. I reminded him of the subtle difference between reconciliation and remembrance. We were going to ask people to stop and remember what happened. Both Father Sakowicz and I knew that remembering would be easy but that reconciliation, if it came at all, would be a long way down the road.
Some things take time. And the problem with today’s gospel is that for centuries preachers have been corrupting Jesus’ words and telling us that if someone hurts you, you should forgive them, and you both will be the better for it. After all, isn’t that what Jesus said? Well, yes and no. He told us that we should be forgiving and then told us a parable that has a very unforgiving ending.
Peter gets us started off on the right foot with an answer to his own question that flies in the face of conventional wisdom. Seven times is a lot of forgiveness. It’s a whole lot more than we have been taught to dish out. “An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth.” “Once burned, a lesson learned.” “Never give one person two chances.” “Don’t get mad, get even.” That is pretty much how our society views things so Peter was way ahead of the curve when he came up with the pretty high number of seven. But Jesus ups the anti and says, in perhaps the worse translation in the history of scripture, “No, seventy-seven times.” What Jesus really said was, “No I tell you but rather seventy times seven times.” Actually, since all of us can do this math, we know that this turns out to be 490 times.
The problem with coming up with any kind of number, be it one, seven, seventy-seven, or 490, is that it invites us to still keep score. That is the problem with the forgiven servant he always thinks he can settle the score. Jesus must have drew some laughs with his first outlandish statement. Almost like a joke. A guy owes his boss the equivalent of the national debt and he thinks some way he can score enough bucks to pay it off. But his boss tells him, “Forget it. It’s only money. You, your wife and kids can go on their way.” Cue the laughter.
Then, cue the horror as this same guy goes out and grabs a friend who owes him about “a-buck-and-a-quarter” wrestles him to the ground and when he can’t come up with it in a split second has his debtor thrown into the clink. It was not a pretty sight and I think what Jesus is asking us to do here is contrast the beauty of someone who forgives sins with the absolute ugliness of someone who doesn’t. Forgiveness is a beautiful thing, retribution is not. Forgiveness inspires us to be better people, retribution does not.
I have been reading a lot of stories this week about how those who lost loved ones in the unmerited attacks of 9|11 have coped with their grief. Some have started charities, some have entered into community work, some have started support groups. The scars are still there and they are deep but people press on.
Two person who really pressed on were Phyllis Rodriguez and Aicha el-Wafi. Rodrigu ez’s son, Greg, was killed in the World Trade Center attacks. el-Wafi’s son is Zacarias Moussaoui, convicted of conspiring with the 19 hijackers of plotting the attacks. After a period of time, his mother requested a meeting with the victims, to say how horrified she too was by her son’s actions and to seek forgiveness. Rodriguez said, “The day I met Aicha was the day that changed my life because it changed my direction emotionally. Meeting Aicha gave me strength and took away my anger and bitterness. It brought out the generosity in me and I felt better for it.”
I want us all to be very careful here. Forgiveness does not mean making excuses. Forgiveness does not mean that there are no consequences for behavior that is unbelievably cruel. We didn’t let Moussaoui go free and give him flying lessons. Like the servant who had been so cruel in Jesus’ parable we locked him up and threw away the key. His mother understands that as does Ms. Rodriguez but they are both facing their hurts and dealing with the consequences.
Forgiveness contains the underlying affirmation that one person refuses to be destroyed by the unkindness of another. It says, “I refuse to treat you like you treated me. What is best for you is that you need to face up to what you have done. It may mean that you are held accountable. It may mean you need to change. But in all of that I am a Christian, a member a forgiven community, and so I will pray for the desire to want what is best for you. I am going to give you to God and let God sort things out while I try, as best I can, to get on with my life.”
That is what the steward should have done. He should have accepted the king’s forgiveness and gotten on with his life but he didn’t and so ruined everything. The king didn’t do it to him, the guy who owed him the pittance didn’t do it to him, he did it to himself. His un-forgiveness, like the un-relenting hatred of Moussaoui and his godless gang of thugs acting on behalf of a god no right-minded person would ever follow, got them consigned to a living hell or an eternal hell of their own making.
The human spirit can only handle so much. It can handle as much joy, gratitude, love, forgiveness as you want to put into it. I have never heard anyone say, “That’s it. That is more joy than I can handle. That is more love than I could ever want.” But that same human spirit can fill up quickly with anger, hate and resentment. And when resentment grows and grows it pushes out all the love, joy, and gratitude that once was there until there is nothing but hate and, in the hijackers case, a wanton disregard for innocent human lives.
President Bush remembered how on the day he first visited the rubble that once was the World Trade Center “there was a palpable blood a kind of blood lust. You go get them.” But then he said that “eventually September 11 will be just another day on the calender. It will be like Pearl Harbor day and when that happens the terrorists will know that they can never win because they never understood us. They didn’t understand that we are a compassionate, kind, but courageous people.”
A people who by the power of God’s love and the Holy Spirit can not only carry forth and soldier on but forgive and be free. We’re getting there and with God’s help both sides will make it all the way. All the way to a life of freedom offered in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
©The Rev’d Dr. David C. Nelson
4 September 2011
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