“Al-Ghafur: A Sermon for the 10th Anniversary of September 11th"

Matthew 18: 21-35

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Ordinary Time – Season of Creation

FirstUnited Church – Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

I wasn’t planning on preaching a sermon about September 11^th today.

Well, to be more accurate – I was and then I wasn’t. If you had asked me a few months ago, I would have told you, sure, yes, a preacher should address September 11^th in some way on the 10^th anniversary. It has been a formative event in our shared lives. It needs to be addressed from the pulpit.

But as the anniversary crept closer and the stories in the media started coming and coming….I just started to feel overwhelmed. Stories of bravery. Stories of tragedy. Stories of political fallout. Stories of the mundane everydayness of “where were you when the towers fell?” And on and on.

I started to wonder: by the time we get to the actual anniversary, will anyone care? Or will we all just be so inundated by the coverage that we’ll want to think about something else?

But somewhere on the way to the sermon, I remembered something. I remembered that we don’t come to worship to hear human interest stories. Or to have our intellect stoked by thought-provoking statistics.

We come to worship to be transformed by the Gospel.

And so I want to tell you a story from the Gospel of Matthew. If you’re anything like me, you’ve heard the preamble to this parable a million times….Peter asks Jesus, “Lord, if someone sins against me, how often should I forgive? Seven times?” And Jesus says, “Not seven times, but seventy times seven.”

The parable, on the other hand, is not one I’ve heard so many times. Historically, we’ve referred to it as “The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant” but I prefer to think of it as “The Parable of The Guy Who Never Should Have Been Forgiven But Was.”

Here’s how it went down: There was a ruler who had a whole slew of people working for her. Let’s imagine, perhaps, that this ruler was the CEO of some Fortune 500 company.

The CEO is a nice lady, so she tends to help her employees out where she can. One of her employees – I’m going to call him Bob – had a habit of always needing something. Over the years, he came to rack up quite the debt with his boss.

One day, the boss decides that she needs to get some of her money back from her employees. When she started looking at her books, she realizes that Bob owes her approximately 10 kajilliony-jillion dollars. An astronomical sum. There’s no way Bob (or anyone else, probably including the CEO) has ever even seen this much money.

So she says to Bob, “Pay up.” And Bob, of course, says, “I don’t have it.”

So the CEO says to Bob, “Well, I don’t know what else to do. I’m going to have to fire you and you’ll be on your own.”

And Bob says, “But if you do that, how will I ever find another job in this economy? You know my wife is very ill and we won’t have health insurance. And my twins just started college. If you fire me, we will be ruined. Let me stay and I’ll work hard. I promise.”

And the CEO, having a warm heart, reconsiders. She allows Bob to keep his job, and she even forgives his debt. Wipes the slate clean.

And Bob leaves the CEO’s office with a new spring in his step. Feeling confident, he goes to the cubicle of one of his subordinates, Sally. He grabs her roughly by the elbow and says, “Look here, Sally. I’m tired of you scamming off me. I want the $10 that you owe me from lunch last week.”

And Sally says, “I don’t have it. I’m so sorry. Please let go of my arm. It hurts. I’ll bring the money tomorrow.”

Bob says, “No. I don’t care. I’m sick of your lies. Get out. Pack a box. This is your last day.”

His coworkers, looking on, stare with disbelief. The run to tell the CEO because they know that she would be horrified if she knew something like this was happening on her watch. Enraged, the CEO calls Bob back into her office and lets loose. “What on earth are you thinking? How can you sit here and beg me to forgive your debt and then turn right around and treat Sally that way? I treated you with kindness, and this is how you repay me? Get out. I mean it this time. I’m done with you.”

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Now, if you were going to write a sermon for September 11^th based on this text, it would kind of seem like a no-brainer, right? The boss in the story is clearly God. The reason Jesus tells this parable is to illustrate to his hearers that God requires forgiveness.

The Kingdom of Heaven is a place where we can owe huge debts, make big mistakes, and still be forgiven. Apply that to a nation’s remembrance of a terrible Tuesday morning where innocent people were slaughtered by outsiders using instruments of everydayness as instruments of terror and you’ve got it wrapped up: we are called to forgive.

So let’s forgive those who have done these atrocities. Let’s move on, practice God’s grace and be a model for the rest of the nation as they continue to struggle with the allure of hatred and vengeance.

And you could preach a sermon like that. I don’t think you’d be wrong. And I don’t think it’s even as easy as I’m making it sound. Because in many pulpits in this nation, there are preachers who are standing up in front of people who lost their daughters, their sons, their best friends, their partners. Asking those people to forgive is not an easy thing to ask.

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But here’s what happened as I was pondering forgiveness this week. I was reading about this Matthew text in one of my favorite little commentaries – The Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels. Sounds thrilling, right? This series of books does an astounding job of breaking apart the social mores and fabric of the Biblical world, so I consult it every time I preach.

And what I found this week was this description of forgiveness of sins:

“In the Gospels, the closest analogy for the forgiveness of sins in the forgiveness of debts. Debt threatened loss of land, livelihood, and family. It made persons poor, that is, unable to maintain their social position. Forgiveness thus would have had the character of restoration, a return to both self-sufficiency and one’s place in the community.”

Debt is debt because it endangers our livelihood. It makes us fearful for our families. It puts us on the defensive. When we are in debt, we are poor. We are unable to be the people we once were. We suffer.

When we seek forgiveness of debt, what we are really seeking is a return to the “good ole days.” A return to prosperity. A return to the time when we were a part of the wider community. When we knew our place and our place was one of dignity and respect.

When I started to think about debt in these terms, I suddenly came to a realization.

We are all – we Christians and we Muslims, we U.S. Americans and we foreigners, we white folks and we brown folks, we liberals and we conservatives – we are all indebted to each other. The legacy of September 11^th is a tortured dance of deceit and shame, fear and loathing, attack and counter attack.

As we remember the events of ten years ago, we are called to forgive, yes. And that alone would be hard enough for most people.

But I would also submit to you that we are called to beg for forgiveness.

When presented with an opportunity for humility, an opportunity to turn the other cheek and respond with lovingkindness, we as a people did not do so. When presented with an opportunity to look seriously at our shortcomings as players on the global stage and reconsider our historic methods of coercion, we as a people did not do so.

Instead, we have spent the better part of ten years responding from a place of fear and intolerance. We have waged wars that have not made us safer. We have said things that cannot be unsaid.

In short, we have dug ourselves further and further into debt. We have shamed ourselves.

I don’t know about you, but my tendency is to think, “Not me. I don’t support those wars. I have a great deal of respect for Islam. I don’t condone our fear-based behavior.”

And yet – what have I done to demand accountability for my nation’s actions? Not much.

Sure, I’ve honked my horn in support when I drive past the war protestors that still gather each Wednesday at the corner of Kirkwood and Walnut. But my tax dollars still fund a response based in fear and aggression.

I have not done all I can to engage my neighbors who disagree with me on how we should shape our response. When I see a bumper sticker that espouses hatred against followers of Islam, I shake my head in disgust. But I’ve never once sought out the owner of the vehicle to engage them in a conversation about their views.

We are all – all of us – in debt up to our eyeballs on this one.

If debt means losing your place in the world. If debt means putting yourself in a situation where you and your family are at risk. If debt means being shamed…well, then, that’s all of us.

There have been no real winners as a result of September 11, 2001.

And yet, ten years in, I hold out hope that forgiveness is possible.

If forgiveness means a reconciliation – a return to community, a return to a place where we can all respect ourselves and respect each other – if that is forgiveness, then we can all hold out hope that it will come.

I know this because Jesus tells us that we worship a God who forgives a debt of 10 kajilliony-jillion dollars for no good reason. No good reason except that it is the very nature of God to do so.

To be God is to be Pure Goodness, Lovingkindness, Mercy of All Mercies. To be God is to forgive.

And even in this age of uncertainty, there are still many billions of us the world over who are seeking to walk in the ways of the Holy One. We may call God by different names, but all of the world’s major religious confess that forgiveness is the very nature of God.

In the Qu’ran, God is referred to as Al-Ghafur, “The All-Forgiving One.”

I am holding out hope against all hope that those who worship Allah will find within themselves the strength to emulate the spirit of Al-Ghafur.

Though our sins of the past decade are great, I take solace in knowing that some of those we have sinned against worship one called Al-Ghafur, “The All-Forgiving One.”

I continue to hope that we will be forgiven and that we will find the courage to forgive.