Proper 19
September 11, 2011
The Rev. Marguerite Alley
Today, we are remembering the events of September 11, 2001. The emotions of that day are deeply ingrained in most of us. The repercussions…far beyond the lives lost, are still felt in our daily lives. Fear, mistrust, suspicion, and anger are all such a part of the tragedy of 9-11.
There have been times in my ministry when I have been asked to help people face senseless tragedy. I have been with parents when they have lost their children, husbands and wives who have lost their partner, even children who have lost their parents. In each and every case I have been asked why. Why did this happen? Why did this happen to me? Why did God do this to my loved one? I am always at a loss for words in these cases. But I don’t think anyone would really appreciate it if I just said “Beats me”! and walked away. We lost a student at First Colonial a week or so ago in a senseless accident. The young man went for a run while on vacation with his family. A great student, a star athlete, a great person, a senior making his college plans. While on his run he lost his balance and fell into a deep ravine and died. I don’t have an answer for his parents either. But what I do know is that the only way to live through something like that or something like what happened on 9-11, the only way to make sense of and begin to understand is to seek understanding. I believe that this search for understanding will require incredible strength. And to find this kind of strength we must dig down deep.
To begin with, we must understand that the problem of tragedy, injustice and suffering is a problem for every human being regardless of whether or not you are a person of faith or not. When we are young and developing our faith, we have a tendency to believe that when something bad happens God caused it, and we question how a great and loving God could cause this to happen. But as we grow, we begin to understand that NOT believing in God is not going to make dealing with tragedy any easier, so we must re-think our understanding.
Now every faith has ways to understand and deal with suffering in the world. But as a Christian I know my own faith’s resources the best. When people ask the big question, “Why would God allow this or that to happen?” there are almost always two answers. One response is: Don’t question God! God is all -powerful and all- knowing and it’s not your place to question God! Just accept everything. Don’t question. The other response is: I can’t possibly know what God is thinking because God is God and I am not. Well, neither of these is very satisfactory to me. One is too hard to do…and the other is too weak.
I would suggest to you that forgiveness is the only lens through which we can understand God’s place and role in the tragedies we face.
It seems somewhat providential that the 10th anniversary of September 11, 2001 would fall on the Sunday in our lectionary where we read Jesus’ mandate about forgiveness. Even people of great faith struggle mightily with this mandate.
One of the great themes of the Hebrew Scriptures is that God identifies with the suffering. Yet we are asked to forgive those who injure us. There are all these great texts that say things like this: If you cast out the poor, you cast me out . I am a husband to the widow. I am father to the orphans. But Christianity says God goes even beyond that. Christians believe that in Jesus, God became human and thus vulnerable to and involved in - suffering and death! He didn’t come as a king or a president. He came as an ordinary day laborer. His vulnerability, his openness, his willingness to take on our pain flies in the face of what we want to believe about our God. We feel like we want a hero, a superman, one who will rush in to right the wrongs, to punish the evil -doers. And yet, in the aftermath of 9/11 we wonder why that didn’t happen. Do we feel any safer now that Osama bin Laden is dead? Certainly enough “good” Christians are praying for peace and security. Clearly, at least in my mind, divine retribution has not occurred. But, maybe something better has. Have you considered, that if God was willing to come to us in human form, to suffer the physical pain of alienation, crucifixion and death, that this does answer our question? A God who is willing to do this is a God who loves us beyond measure. A God who avoids coming to us, a God who blocks or avenges our pain, can’t truly love us, because that God doesn’t really know us.
In our Gospel this morning, Peter questions Jesus’ mandate. How many times do I have to forgive someone? Maybe the real question he is asking, is how many times will YOU God, forgive me?
Now we have all known someone who plucked our last nerve, tested our friendship, pushed us to our very limit of forgiveness. And according to Jesus, 70X7..that is to say limitless forgiveness, is what is expected of us as his followers. That can get to be pretty irritating! We tend to want our relationships to be a bit more equal. We want to get at least as much as we give. Forgiving over and over again and getting little in return is just not in our nature. We have a tendency to keep score cards on people. I mean I try not to…but sometimes I just can’t help it. When someone burns me, I am very reluctant to give them another chance.
Here is where we must work hard at our 70X7 forgiveness. The frustrating thing about forgiveness is that when you do muster the courage to forgive someone sometimes the other person doesn’t change at all and in fact doesn’t even seem grateful!. If we were expecting some kind of return, was it really forgiveness? I don’t think so. Forgiving means we believe that the life of the family of God is THE most important thing. Anyone who wants to be a Christian is called to forgive with no limits, to love unconditionally. At least this is what we strive for.
Forgiving someone guilty of a heinous offense does not mean we are saying the act was /is acceptable. It means that WE are not going to allow ourselves to be filled with hate and anger. It means we are willing to recognize that the perpetrator is a human being and that they are more than that one act they committed. And that is darn hard to do!
If you have ever been forgiven and taken the time to think about it then you will understand this. We cannot control forgiveness. We cannot make someone forgive us and we cannot force someone to change when we forgive them. If you have ever been forgiven then you understand…it comes from beyond us. We have nothing to do with it. All we can do is ask for it……..or offer it. It is quite simply grace….freely given. We cannot force another to accept it. We cannot turn it away. It is what it is.
It is quite tempting to look at this parable and to say that the real message is: Forgive those who injure you, or God won’t forgive you. But wouldn’t that be living out of fear rather than out of love? It sure doesn’t feel much like grace. Perhaps we need to just change a few words and rather than “forgive so that you will be forgiven” we need to “forgive because we are forgiven”.
As I was preparing to write my sermon, I came across a quote that really sums up my thoughts. It is from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov:
“I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they’ve shed; and it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify what has happened.”
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