Forgive and Remember
A sermon preached by Peggy Halsey
at First United Methodist Church, Gainesville, Florida on Sunday, September 11, 2011.
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When I agreed to preach on September 11, I knew it would not be
easy – but I knew it was something I needed to do. I was in New York that day
ten years ago and, while I have talked about it quite a bit in the intervening
years, I have not reflected on it as deeply as I need to do – and in the context
of my faith. Knowing it is the custom here to use the lectionary readings,
especially the Gospel, to shape sermons, I checked the texts for today. I was a
little taken aback when I discovered that the Gospel reading was Jesus’ teaching
on the limitless nature of forgiveness. Left to my own devices, I probably would
not have chosen such a text – but mercifully I was not left on my own. God does
not let us off hooks easily, and I knew this was where I needed to dig in.
I will come back to Jesus’ rather confounding parable of forgiveness, but first
let me say something about my experience on that day and, more importantly, on
the days that followed. I do not believe I have any special claim on the pain of
the experience – it is seared on all our souls, no matter where we were. But I
do think location is a factor in how each of us internalized the trauma.
It was a stunningly beautiful day in New York – sunny, intense blue sky, warm
but crisp. As usual, I took the subway from my home in Brooklyn to the offices
of the General Board of Global Ministries on the upper west side of Manhattan. I
got to my office around 8 am, a little earlier than usual, said Hi to a few
colleagues, picked up some mail to read, turned on my computer. Through the
wall, I heard Ruth in the adjoining office answer her phone, say “WHAT?”, then
call out to us as she ran to the window in the conference room, which faces
south and has a direct and unobstructed view down the length of Manhattan.
People were converging on the room, cell phones and transistor radios in their
hands. We believed it was a terrible accident, though that notion was shaken by
the sight that greeted us – one of the twin towers with thick black smoke
pouring from it. Already there were helicopters overhead; at that early point,
first responders still believed they might be able to pluck people from the
roof. As we stood gaping, I heard my colleague Diane say, “What is that plane
doing so close?”, then watched in horror as the second tower was hit. The
following hour is a blur in my mind –the next clear memory I have is of someone
saying, “There’s so much smoke that I can’t see but one tower now,” just as the
unbelievable word came over the radio that the south tower had collapsed. Soon
there was nothing but smoke; the north tower collapsed as well. We were all
nearly speechless. I do remember Sam Dixon, head of UMCOR, staring out the
window and saying with a sad, quiet reverence, “Those poor people were just
going about their morning routines – getting coffee, turning on their
computers.” I thought of his comment two years ago when Sam himself died in the
Haiti earthquake – he was just going about his work.
Like everyone else, I had a hard time getting home, but made it by 8 pm – a
usual 45 minute commute took nearly five hours, and I walked a good part of the
way. Everything was eerily quiet in that usually noisy city, since no planes or
other forms of transportation were operating. The only sounds were an occasional
military jet flying low and voices of people reaching out to other people,
mostly strangers, to ask “Where were you? Are you ok? Do you need anything?” It
is that I want to talk about – the extraordinary responses of human beings who
transcended the usual anonymity of the city to do whatever they could think of
to help, and to simply take care of each other.
There were so many stories each day of huge acts of heroism and small acts of
compassion. On the second day, a call went out on the local news for dry socks
for rescue workers. Within an hour, every department store, big box store and
pharmacy in the city had sold out of socks. One man rushed to K-Mart at Union
Square and bought every pair there, then persuaded the store manager to let him
and his friend take four of the store’s big carts, then walked about 50 blocks
to deliver them to police who were posted at the site’s perimeter barricades –
then of course had to walk back 50 blocks to return the carts.
One of the stories that moved me most was of a man who lived in the city, but
had taken the 6am Delta shuttle to Washington DC that morning for a business
meeting. Following the attacks, he got word that his son-in-law, who worked on
one of the top tower floors, was among the missing. He was desperate to get back
to NY to be with his daughter. But it was impossible – all planes and trains
were grounded, and not a single rental car was available, though he searched for
hours. He was standing in the hotel lobby, telling a colleague about his
desperation. A complete stranger walking past overheard, approached the frantic
father, reached in his pocket, held out a set of keys, and said, “My car is the
grey SUV at the curb. Go.”
One more story, this one of a symbol of remembrance and hope that still blankets
the city every spring. As the first anniversary approached, a bulb grower in
Holland called the NY City Dept. of Parks and Recreation. His call was referred
to a staff member who happened to be available. He told her that he wanted to
give the city one million tulip bulbs in memory of those who were lost. Now,
most of us, if we took that call, would simply say “Thank you so much – here is
where to send them.” But she knew something many people don’t, so she said,
“Thank you so much. But let me ask a question: do you have daffodil bulbs as
well?” When he said yes, she asked for a million of those instead– and he sent a
million more each of the following two years. When word got around, US growers
contributed millions of daffodil bulbs as well. They were planted on every
street median, every tree pit, and every park and community garden in the five
boroughs. What that staff member knew is that tulip bulbs only last, at most,
two or three years – but daffodils multiply endlessly. If you go to NY any
April, you will see daffodils everywhere you look – grief and beauty and hope
all wrapped up in yellow.
Now to the text from Matthew: Jesus, in response to Peter’s earnest question
about how much forgiveness is enough, gives an answer that suggests there should
be no limits placed on forgiving. He then tells a somewhat disturbing story
about how NOT to forgive. A servant who owes the king an astronomical amount is
forgiven the debt and set free. Unfortunately the servant does not go out and do
likewise to others. Instead, he has a fellow servant who owes him a paltry sum
thrown into prison. When other servants run and tattle on him, the king is
justifiably enraged and has the unforgiving servant thrown into prison. He is
forgiven his enormous debt; what he is not forgiven – and the implicit
suggestion is that what we will not be forgiven - is his/our failure to, in the
words of the Lord’s Prayer, “forgive those who have trespassed against us.”
Peter must have thought he was being extremely magnanimous when he suggested
forgiving someone seven times; the Jewish teaching of the time was to forgive
three times, with a fourth time being unnecessary. Imagine Peter’s disbelief
when Jesus said no, you must forgive seventy-seven times (some versions say
seventy times seven). Since either number is clearly symbolic of infinity, I
found myself thinking that perhaps the limitlessness should be applied not just
to numbers of times, but also to the magnitude of the offense itself.
I have struggled a lot in my professional life with the concept of personal
forgiveness. I spent more than 20 years developing a national United Methodist
program called Ministries with Women and Families in Crisis. A large portion of
the work centered on helping clergy and lay leaders respond appropriately to
issues of domestic violence and sexual abuse. While other agencies helped
victims deal with medical, legal and safety concerns, only the church could help
them struggle with religious questions – and for most of them, forgiving their
abuser was at the top of the list. Did they have to do that? Was there a formula
or timeline? Did forgiving mean they were saying the abuse was OK? And who
benefits from forgiveness – the one forgiven or the one who forgives? After so
many years of helping victims struggle with those questions, my belief system is
well-honed: while forgiveness is an important Christian value, there is no
timeline – it happens when the wronged person is ready, if ever; it does not in
any way suggest that the wrong was ok, or that its memory should be wiped out;
and while both parties may benefit, the primary benefit is to the one who does
the forgiving and in doing so is released from bondage to the abuse and the
abuser – and bondage is always the result when we allow ourselves to be defined
by our wounds.
Forgiveness is never easy. Like any other spiritual discipline, in must be
practiced; it is a learned behavior. That is certainly true in the wrongs that
individual humans do to each other. In thinking about today, I found myself
wondering if it is possible to consider forgiveness in huge global terms – we
have so little practice. Is it conceivable that the perpetrators of the Crusades
might be forgiven? The architects of the Holocaust? The designers of mass
genocides? And, in light of this 10th anniversary, could I bring myself to
consider forgiving those who attacked my city and my nation on September 11?
While I hold firmly to the belief that there is no timeline for forgiveness, for
me that time has come. Ten years is a long time to hold on to anger and
bitterness and hatred. It corrodes the souls of individuals and of nations. It
weighs us down, makes it impossible to move forward with the kind of energy and
optimism that has characterized this country at its best.
But because contemplating forgiveness in the context of September 11 is so
daunting, I began asking myself if we have any model for forgiveness in the wake
of a horrific public event – and I realized that we do. At the end of apartheid
in South Africa in the mid-90’s, most people – and especially white South
Africans who had either constructed and maintained, or at the very least
benefitted from, decades of state sanctioned oppression, violence and death –
expected a bloodbath at the hands of a population newly freed from horrific and
sustained suffering. Instead, Bishop Desmond Tutu, at the request of President
Nelson Mandela, convened a Commission on Truth and Reconciliation. They chose a
middle road between vengeance and a blanket amnesty or amnesia – one that
involved years of testimony and soul-searching and in the process offered the
world a gift, one we had rarely, if ever, seen before and could not have
imagined. So I turned to the writings of Bishop Tutu about that period and what
it represented. Here are some excerpts from his book No Future Without
Forgiveness:
Nelson Mandela emerged from 27 years in one of the most terrible prisons in
the world not spewing words of hatred and revenge. He amazed us all by his
heroic embodiment of reconciliation and forgiveness. …Forgiving and being
reconciled are not about pretending that things are other than they are. It is
not patting one another on the back and turning a blind eye to the wrong. …In
forgiving, people are not asked to forget. On the contrary, it is important to
remember, so that we should not let such atrocities happen again. Forgiveness
does not mean condoning what has been done. It means taking what happened
seriously and not minimizing it. It means drawing out the sting in the memory
that threatens to poison our entire existence. …In the act of forgiveness, we
are declaring our faith in the future…
I have a feeling that I will be coming back again and again to those words
representing a people who suffered terribly – and longer and more intensely than
we have. While they moved on, they did not forget their suffering and their
fallen martyrs. And while I hope to move on, I will never forget. I will not
forget the thousands who died that day or the responders who are still dying of
toxins they inhaled in those weeks and months. Nor will I forget the hundreds of
thousands of service men and women as well as Iraqi and Afghani citizens who
have died in these ten years. I titled this sermon “Forgive and Remember.” Too
many Christians have grown up believing that there is a divine mandate to
“forgive and forget,” even though they cannot say exactly where in the
scriptures it is found. Actually, it is in no sacred text, unless you believe
William Shakespeare wrote scripture; it is a quote from King Lear. I believe we
are called not to forgive and forget but to forgive and remember.
A friend of mine this week spoke of a line in the very familiar 23rd Psalm.
Isn’t it interesting, he said, that it says that “God prepares a table before us
in the presence of our enemies”? Perhaps radical hospitality based on God’s
grace is a more sustainable means of security than shields or weapons of attack.
Certainly a decade of military actions and high alerts has not left us feeling
much more secure. I wonder what it would look like in practical terms if we let
God help us prepare a table in the presence of our enemies.
If forgiveness still seems impossible, consider the words of a woman I spoke
with years ago, on the eve of her attending the trial of a man who had brutally
attacked her. She said, “It isn’t possible for me to forgive him, and I don’t
think I am ready to even think in those terms. But I think it is possible now
for me not to cherish unforgiveness.” Those are what I am beginning to think of
as September 12 words. Sometimes we focus so much on September 11 that we forget
September 12, the day that thousands of folks showed up in New York and at the
Pentagon and Pennsylvania, to help with searches, clean-up, ministry with
survivors and family members and first responders. We forget September 12, when
parents got their kids up and sent them to school, where compassionate teachers
and counselors helped them to grieve. We forget September 12, when churches were
open for prayer and the work of recovery and even forgiveness had already begun,
even if we didn’t yet recognize it. And I found an example of September 12
behavior in yesterday’s New York Times: it was the story of an Arab-American
music and speech teacher in Brooklyn who is tutoring a young Jewish boy for his
Bar Mitzvah. The man said: “I personally refuse to be the Other to anyone else,
and I refuse to see anyone else as the Other. We’re all on the same path. As
proud as I am of my heritage, I never want us to think of ourselves as so
different that we can’t all appreciate the bounty and sacredness of our world”
I believe that God is with us in all our 9/11’s, and that God helps us step
forward in faith and confidence into all our 9/12’s.
Amen.
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