Forgive

September 11, 2011
Gen 50: 15-21; Ps 114; Rom 14: 1-12; Mt 18: 21-35


The energy behind the 10th anniversary of the 2001 attacks took me by surprise.

Like most churches, we responded to the attacks with special services, welcoming those who sought a church for comfort in those days. We even held a one-year anniversary concert, and if memory serves we did something on the second anniversary. It was pretty plain by then that people were done, that attention had been fixed with a sense of dread and great controversy on the war that seemed to march on us whether we raised our voices in protest or not. In the years since 9/11 so much has happened that has felt out of our control—war and occupation in two nations, increasingly bitter partisan politics with little co-operation between the sides, deepening economic fear and suffering for more and more people.

Remembrance is important, the stories of the famous and the ordinary who lived, and those who died, need to be told. They need to be given their names. But in addition to sorrow and grief and remembrance are deeper, darker truths. I find people speaking with a sense of loss about the “innocence” of life before 9/11. For some, the ‘90’s are remembered as a sort of innocent golden age, when money flowed freely and we were unafraid and the most interesting thing happening was the clumsy sexual escapade of a president and an intern. We do love tales of a lost paradise—those with longer memories, or whose lives here or overseas did not reflect this nostalgic vision, do not think there was much innocence or safety to be lost.

Now we speak of fear. “Terrorism’s next move” announces today’s headlines. And we live with unease about what happened next, what we thought and what we did. An upsurge of racism and prejudice against anyone Middle Eastern or Islamic in our midst, rage and the deep need to see someone else suffer because we had suffered, we had lost, we were now afraid. Somewhere in our home we have a photo magazine feature published shortly after the attacks. The pictures are beautiful, terrifying or horrifying or heart-breaking or inspiring images of the dead or the heroic living or the impossible images of jet liners flying into the buildings that were colossal symbols of power and invulnerability. But after all the moving, powerful photos, the last page is for me the most memorable. It depicts two jet fighters flying in close formation, silvery and deadly. The caption below says simply, “Vengeance.”

The composers of the book were more right than they knew. I think a great deal of what we struggle to come to terms with is what happened in the days and weeks and months and years after that iconic day in September. Lands were bombed and invaded, blood was spilled on both sides. Much of that blood was innocent, families and children like our own who were trying to live until the flash of the missile or the gun. I do not stand here ready to open arguments about whether Afghanistan should have been invaded, whether Iraq should have been invaded and occupied, let alone the morality of the “robust interrogation tactics” practiced on those captured.

What matters today is all of that happened. The post-9/11 world in which we live is one of greater unease and fear, greater uncertainty, the knowledge that in this world there are those who will strike at us and call it just. And the post-9/11 world is one in which we know ourselves to be capable of rage and vengeance and the willingness to deal out pain and death in return.

How does a church commemorate such a day?

We bring all this truth to the feet of Jesus and listen for what Jesus has to say.

Today’s Gospel is a playful but stern tale of the power of forgiveness—God’s forgiveness and humanity’s capacity to withhold forgiveness. One man owes an impossible sum—10,000 talents meant this guy was a corporate raider, a Ponzi scheme-level thief. He asks for impossible mercy, and an impossibly merciful lord gives it to him. A fellow-servant owes the equivalent of a few month’s working-class wages, nothing compared to that first staggering debt. The first servant does what the law allows—has him thrown into jail.

The law may allow this, a sense of justice may allow this, but this is not a story of law and justice. This is a story of impossible mercy and forgiveness, and how astoundingly short we fall of the lord’s kindness. “So it will happen to you, unless you forgive from the heart.” We the church gather around to listen to Jesus, and this is what Jesus says—forgive, even the colossal kind of debt. Who knows—perhaps the one you forgive feels we owe the same sort of debt ourselves.

The Gospel is stern today. It is the Old Testament that holds out hope.

Joseph could have revenged himself on his brothers who abused him and sold him as a slave. Once their father was dead, there was really nothing to stand in his way. But the greatest miracle of the book of Genesis, with its floods and creation and fires from heaven, is in this moment. Joseph, with all the power of Egypt at his command, chooses another path. “Am I in the place of God?” Forgiveness and a new future opens for everyone in that room, fear and grudges are put aside, and the chain of events that will lead one day to the birth of the Savior is set in motion.

“Am I in the place of God?” Justice and the knowledge of the right thing to do in fearful, confusing times are not in our hands. The fear and rage of this age may be around us, and it is in us. But freedom in Christ is possible and offered to us today. Each of us are debtors to God’s mercy. We are not in the place of God. But we are given the Godly power and command to put an end to the fearful, rage-filled ways of this world. “Forgive” is the one word that churches can and must bring to the table today.

A wise man said, “Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.”*



*Paul Boese, as quoted by Rob Voyle in “Appreciative Inquiry Newsletter”