Ten Years to Think About It

“Ten Years to Think About It" The Dover Church
September 11, 2010
Scripture: Matthew 18: 21-35

My memories of the morning of September 11, 2001 are pretty much the same as everyone else’s I have ever spoken with about it, which is to say vivid and rich in detail. I can remember where I was, who I was with, what I was doing, what the weather was like, and how I felt, although those feelings have only sorted themselves out over time. Even now, after ten years to think about it, I still know that I can’t get my heart or mind all the way around it.
I remember being shocked and amazed. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I remember thinking that the whole thing looked more like a Hollywood blockbuster at the movie theater, than a real time news broadcast on my seminary day room television I was watching with other seminarians. If Harrison Ford or Morgan Freeman as the President of the United States, or even Pierce Brosnan as James Bond, had come on screen, rather than Peter Jennings of ABC News, it would have seemed more “normal” to me. This sort of thing happened in Tom Clancy thrillers, not on domestic news reports. I was reasonably well informed, so I was vaguely aware of some group on the other side of the world who had bombed the USS Cole, the East African embassies, and whom we had counter-attacked with missile strikes in Somalia and Afghanistan, but that was so far away. Over there somewhere.
But it was real. As the individual stories of loss began to be told, as the pictures of the firehouses and morgues in New York, the commuter parking lots with unclaimed cars in them in Connecticut, the rubble, fire and smoke in New York, Washington, and the twisted wreckage in a Pennsylvanian field, the grief stricken faces, I was swamped with sadness and emptiness. I can’t remember being fearful or angry, only very sad.
As an associate pastor, I went to church where I was awed by the number of people and the intensity of silent prayer. On the following Sunday, more people came. The prayers, the hymns, the emotion in the sanctuary were some of the holiest church experiences I had known. But every time anyone tried to sum up what had happened, what we were to think about it, and where God was in all of it, well, it felt hollow and insufficient. I knew that all the preachers I listened to in those weeks and months were only trying to offer an answer, a word of comfort, to people who really wanted to hear one. Luckily I was not called upon to preach. I would have claimed to be a Quaker and invited everyone to sit in silence. I didn't know what to say. God is love sounded like a Hallmark card. I knew righteous vengeance and damnation would resonate but wouldn't be true to Christ. So I didn't preach. I prayed and listened for God to answer.
Listening to the politicians was equally frustrating, the sound bite grabs for clarity, the simplifications. When war in Afghanistan started, I resigned myself to the inevitability of it. When bin Laden escaped and suddenly our leaders were rolling us inexorably to war in Iraq, then I despaired and started to feel fear. This thing was a whirlwind with a life of its own that would swallow us all. And as all the horror and tragedy of the last decade has unfolded, I have been unhappy, frustrated, and still waiting for an answer.
Having thought about that day for ten years now, I still do not have a simple, easy answer for you. But I can say this. In the last ten years I have read books like The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khalid Husseini and marveled. The last few weeks I have listened to stories on NPR, stories of loss and mourning, stories of courage and survival. My sadness in listening to those stories and reading those books has been intense at times, but what has really moved me in the stories are the brilliantly bright flashes of surging life amidst the carnage, struggle, violence and death: the stories of widows who do not forget but have found new life nonetheless; stories of selfless heroism that lead to unexpected new life nonetheless; stories of grieving people who found a path forward in the completely unexpected direction of reaching out to Afghanis and Iraqis who also mourned nonetheless; stories of maimed soldiers who were bravely striving towards new life here at home nonetheless; stories of service families who had lost a son, father, brother, daughter, and yet, were somehow at peace with their loss nonetheless. Forever changed, but none the less nonetheless. All stories of dramatic, disruptive change, but change that was not killing but transformative and unexpectedly life-giving. Where it would seem impossible to go on, some have. The light from their lights is blinding compared with the dull darkness of sadness and despair in which they shine.
I did not choose our lesson about forgiveness for this morning. It is always the reading for the twelfth Sunday after Pentecost in the first year of the three year lectionary cycle, which just happens to be September 11 this year. As I read Jesus' words and thought about what I might say to you this morning, I knew that I was not going to tell you that Jesus says we have to forgive. I was not going to say that we should have forgiven ten years ago and thereby avoided everything else that has happened since. No. That’s all hypothetical, philosophical, intellectual, and won’t get you anywhere. You can’t think your way into this. I want you to look at real life, at the stories of those people who have forgiven, the grieving widows, widowers and children, the maimed soldiers and mourning service families, the real, true stories of people who seemingly unbelievably have been able to forgive, not forget mind you, but forgive, forgive as in let go of the gripping emotional intensity of whatever day their day has been in this decade of violence, as in cutting loose the ball and chain of anger, fear, pain, regret, desire for revenge, whatever, that could have all too easily kept them imprisoned, chained if you will, to September 11, 2001. Listen to those stories. See those people. Those people have forgiven and they have found new life. Jesus was right. Jesus wasn't telling us that we ought to forgive. I think he was just telling us the truth about life. Life is truly impossible without forgiveness. Just compare the soul of the orphaned children who have started foundations for orphaned Afghani and Iraqi children with the soul of the suicide bomber masquerading as a police officer who goes to Friday prayers and blows himself and many others up and apart. I am not telling you that you are bad people or faulty Christians if you have been unable to forgive or do not want to forgive. I am only telling you that Jesus was telling us the truth about life. Forgiveness is the only way forward. This is not a question of spiritual willpower or heroism. I think real forgiveness, the depths of forgiveness necessary to meet the pain of the events of September 11, can only be gifts from God. Deliverance from this level of agony can only come through the gracious and merciful intervention of the Lord our God. In other words, this depth of forgiveness is something we ought to spend our lives praying to our Lord Jesus Christ to grace us with. This lesson is one worth spending a lifetime pondering and reflecting upon. For this is the sure way of life, truly the sure and certain hope of the resurrection, of life out of death. Hear the Good News of Jesus Christ: “How much should I forgive?” We ask. “As much as the hole in which your pain keeps you buried is deep. As much as you desire new life, as much as your desire to be set free from whatever it is that chains you to a dreadful past. God will give you exactly as much as you ask for.” This is the Good News. Thanks be to God.