"The Power of Love and Forgiveness"
Romans 12:9-21; Matthew 18:21-35
Today is
the fifteen year anniversary of September 11, 2001. Over the past days we’ve been reminded of
the tragic events of that day and their aftermath. As the suffering of this
horrible event unfolded in the hours and days that followed, we felt afraid…
and vulnerable. We grieved.
How many of you remember where you were when he heard
about this?
I
remember I was getting ready to leave the house, and I had a morning show on
when they showed the first tower being hit and coming down. I carried a little 5-inch TV in to church and
followed in horror the chaos and devastation as it unfolded. I remember the heroic
responses of the first responders, and a city and nation of people taking care
of each other.
The media brought to our attention all kinds of
examples of how the people of our nation rallied in the face of tragedy. Everywhere, in acts large and small, people
came together to help and to take care of each other.
Firefighters and welders and others from Michigan and
around the country went to Manhattan to help the recovery effort. Chefs and restaurant owners in Manhattan fed the
search-and-rescue workers.
At Atlanta's Hartsfield airport, a
gate attendant looked out at thousands of passengers stranded when their
flights were canceled, and was touched by their plight. She called her friends, asking them to bring
vans to the airport and offer lodging to the weary strangers. She herself put up seven people in her home.
In the days following September 11, 2001, a similar
spirit of solidarity broke out abroad, and dividing lines of all sorts vanished
in the wake of the crisis, even in our nation's Congress.
When the airspace over the North
Atlantic was closed, flight crews were told to land at the nearest airport. In Gander, Newfoundland-- a town of around
10,000, with about 600 hotel beds-- somewhere between six and 10 thousand
airline passengers and crew members were stranded. The people of Gander and surrounding
communities fed them, provided places for them to sleep, toiletries and other
necessities, and overwhelmed them with hospitality.
We were reminded that in the midst of devastation and
chaos, God can work in and through us to bring about good.
I remember in those
first days after 9/11 how we held hands together in this sanctuary and prayed…
and how we opened the sanctuary and welcomed people from the community—including
our Muslim neighbors—who felt safe coming here to pray in the quiet. We put signs up in the entrances that said, “This is a hate-free zone.” We met together in each others’ houses of
worship to grieve and pray together. And we re-committed ourselves to work for
interfaith understanding and cooperation.
On the first
Sundays after September 11, 2001, broken-hearted people gathered in churches,
grieving and praying and hoping to hear a word from the Lord.
There was a season of crisis and
public mourning, but it was brief. Strong cultural forces were soon at work
coaxing the national mood out of its rhythm of lament.
As Jim
Wallis wrote near the tenth
anniversary, “Within a short period of
time, the official reaction to terrorism would simply be defined as war -- a decade
of it -- resulting in many more innocent casualties than on September 11, 2001. In response to America's own suffering, many others in Afghanistan,
Iraq, and around the world would now suffer -- all in the name of our war on terrorism. The opportunity for deeper
understanding, reflection, and redirection would elude us as we sought to erase our vulnerability with the need
to demonstrate our superior force and power. This was done quite easily in the early days
of both our new wars. But now, we see that the longest series of wars in American
history has failed to resolve or reverse the causes of the violence that struck
us, or to make us safer. They just made
it all worse.”[1]
Wallis
wrote-- and I agree—that “the world
expected and would have supported a focused and sustained effort to pursue and
bring this small band of criminals to justice. But [the]… years of manipulated and corrupted
intelligence, endless war, practices and policies of torture, violations of
human rights, and trillions of dollars wasted caused America to lose the high
ground long ago…”
Fifteen
years later, as we remember and reflect, we need to ask ourselves whether our
reliance on war and violence have made the world a better and safer place—or
more divided, polarized, and dangerous. I
don’t have any simple answers for you today.
But as people of faith-- as Christians-- we need to be praying about
this.
On this anniversary,
we remember
all that was lost to us that day: our sense of security… our peace… and our
belief that we were safe from such random violence and death. Most of all we remember those who died in New
York, Washington and Pennsylvania, their lives of promise extinguished in
hatred. And we remember those whose
lives and health were changed forever because of their service at Ground Zero,
people have died over the years and those who continue to struggle with cancer
and other physical and mental illnesses.
We follow
Jesus the Christ, whom we know in part as the Prince of Peace. We are called to ask how Jesus would respond
to acts of terror and violence.
As people who say we value all human
life, we need to grieve the loss of American lives, and we also need to grieve
the loss of civilian lives due to our nation’s military actions. Our armed forces apparently don’t keep track
of deaths resulting from our military actions.[2] But the estimated documented civilian deaths
from violence following the 2003 invasion of Iraq is estimated to be between
163,000 to more than 182,000.[3]
As followers of Jesus, I believe we are called to find Christ-like
ways to respond to issues of injustice and violence. I think we need to resist the temptation to
identify ourselves too easily with the Israelites who pass unharmed through the
Red Sea, while their pursuers, the Egyptians, are drowned.
In his
commentary on the Exodus story, Theodore Wardlaw describes the pillar of fire
and cloud that “came between the arm of Egypt and the army of Israel” as a sign
of a mysterious and unpredictable
God—not a God who is always biased toward one people at the expense of
another, but “a God who is steadfastly
preoccupied with a gracious horizon that we cannot comprehend.[4] As Wardlaw puts it, “God is, quite simply, bigger
than us and our agendas.”
There’s an
old Hasidic story that tells how the angels were rejoicing over the deliverance
of Israel at the Red Sea—playing their harps, and singing and dancing.
“Wait,” said one of them. “Look—the Creator of the Universe is sitting
there weeping!” They approached God and
asked, “Why are you weeping when Israel has been delivered by your power?”
“I am weeping,” said the Master of
the Universe, “for the dead Egyptians washed up on the shore—somebody’s sons,
somebody’s husbands, somebody’s fathers.”[5]
As
Archbishop Desmond Tutu says: “God loves
our enemies as much as God loves us.”
This is true, because God is love.
God’s ways are not our ways. God’s love is greater and more gracious and
inclusive than we can comprehend. But
we are called to live more fully into God’s way-- the way of love.
In the 18th
chapter of Matthew, Jesus has been giving his disciples instructions on how to
live together in Christian
community. Listening to Jesus, Peter gets concerned about
what, exactly, is required of him. He's
looking for a guideline, a limit to how forgiving he has to be.
Peter says to Jesus,
"Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often
should I forgive? As many as seven times?"
To Peter, and probably to a lot of
folks, his proposal to forgive his fellow Christian seven times probably sounds
extravagantly generous-- especially
since we don't have any reason to assume that the offending party has repented. Seven is a lot of times to forgive someone.
We aren't very good at
forgiveness. It isn't some natural,
inborn human emotion. Now, vengeance,
retribution, violence-- these are
natural human qualities.
When you have been hurt,
it's a natural human reaction to want to hurt somebody back. When someone you care about has been hurt or killed,
it's a natural human response to want revenge.
But our Christian faith teaches that, when
the Love of God is at the center of our life, we are called to move beyond what
is the natural human response.
As followers of Jesus,
we need to seek the response that is consistent with the response that Jesus would make. If it isn't loving, it isn't of
God.
As if
what we hear Jesus saying in the gospels doesn’t set the bar high enough, we
hear the apostle Paul speaking to the church at Rome: “We do not live to ourselves, and we do not
die to ourselves. If we live, we live to
the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord.
So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s…. Why do
you pass judgment on your brother or sister?
Why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment
seat of God…. Each of us will be
accountable to God.”[6]
We will
be accountable to God for how we live our lives. We are called into the life of love and forgiveness.
The apostle Paul describes marks of the
true Christian: “Let love be
genuine. Hate what is evil. Hold fast to what is good. Love one another with mutual affection. Outdo one another in showing honor…. Be
patient in suffering, persevere in prayer… extend hospitality to
strangers.
“Bless those
who persecute you. Bless and do not
curse them…. Live in harmony with one another…. Do not repay anyone evil for
evil… So far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Never avenge yourselves, but leave room for
the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the
Lord.’ No, if your enemies are hungry,
feed them. If they are thirsty, give
them something to drink, for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their
heads. Do not be overcome by evil, but
overcome evil with good.”[7]
These are challenging words—easier to
hear or say than to live. It’s hard to love
people… to live in harmony… to live peaceably with all-- especially those we see as Other. And yet that’s what we are called to do in
our Christian life, even when we’re afraid of those who are different, afraid
of what will happen if we let them in.
I think Will Willimon is right when he
says, “In presenting our church with sisters and brothers whom we fear as the
Other, God is not only testing us but giving us a gracious opportunity to
recover the adventure of discipleship.
By the grace of God and the ministrations of the church, we are enabled
to have better lives than if Christ had left us to our own devices.”[8]
Willimon says that some of the first passages
seminary students ordinarily translate from Greek to English are from First
John, and one of the verses that sets the agenda for this book is John
4:18: “Perfect love casts out fear.” Willimon remembers that many years ago his
professor said, “In First John, the Greek is easy to read, but its message is
hard to live.”[9]
Indeed!
Consider the messages we hear in our
culture. Listen to the rhetoric of
political campaigns and the arguments we’ve heard against admitting Syrian
refugees.
Loving the “other” is
counter-cultural. “Xenophobic,
exclusionary fear of the Other is more than a matter of preferring the people
we enjoy hanging out with or those with whom we feel most comfortable. When we fear the Other, we separate ourselves
from others in order to better oppress, exploit, expulse, confine, hurt, or
deny justice and access to others whom we have judged to be so Other as to be
beyond the bounds of having any bond between us or any claim upon us.”[10]
Part of the recent debates over
whether or not to admit Syrian refugees has been, “If we let them in, what’s
the cost? Will our nation be less
secure? What will they cost our society,
our economy?
And yet we who follow Jesus are called
to practice hospitality. As Paul wrote,
“Welcome each other, in the same way that Christ also welcomed you, for God’s
glory”[11]
Because
God has planted Littlefield here in east Dearborn and entrusted us with a
ministry of reconciliation,[12]
we’ve been in interfaith relationships for decades. We may take for granted that most of us have
friends who are Muslim and that we even find ways to pray and work
together. But elsewhere it’s a different
matter.
Five years ago, the Memphis Islamic Center had purchased
property to build a new mosque, but they didn’t have a place to pray for
Ramadan. It was a difficult time. Proposed Islamic centers were encountering
resistance around the country, from New York City to Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
Across
the street from their new property, the pastor of Heartsong Church put a sign
up outside their church that said, “Welcome to the neighborhood, Memphis
Islamic Center.”
The Heartsong congregation invited the Muslim community
to celebrate Ramadan inside their church building while their own center was
under construction.
Now, not everyone was thrilled. Rev.
Stone was criticized by some colleagues.
Some members of the Heartsong Church were unhappy, and over time 20
members left the church, out of a congregation of 550.
After the Memphis Islamic Center was complete, the two
congregations continued to develop a strong relationship. Once a month, they continued to work together
to help the homeless in their neighborhood.
They have learned to respect each other’s different faith
traditions. And Pastor Stone and
members of Heartsong Church say their congregation is better and stronger
because of it.
Fifteen years after 9/11, let us remember. Let us prayerfully imagine what the world
would be like if God’s will is done… and then let us re-commit ourselves to
live more fully into the Beloved Community God desires for us and for all of
God’s children.
We don’t need to be afraid, because we have this
assurance: “There is no fear in love, but
that perfect love drives out fear.”
Thanks be to God!
[5]
Quoted by Albert C. Winn in his sermon “A Way Out of No Way: Exodus 14:5-31.”
[6]
Romans 14:7-12
[7]
Romans 12:9-21
[8]
William Willimon, Fear of the Other: No
Fear in Love (Abingdon Press, 2016).
Kindle edition, Location 77.
[9]
Willimon, Location 91.
[10]
William Willimon.
[11]
Romans 15:7
[12] 2
Corinthians 5:18
