Sermon: Can Forgiveness Go Public

Text: Matthew 18:21-35

Date: September 11, 2005

Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church

Theologian Karl Barth once famously said preachers should preach with a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. Never is that admonition more challenging than on a day like today, the fourth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on our nation on September 11, 2001. A day like today brings to light the two worlds that overlap for us on a Sunday morning. In the calendar of the church, it is the 17th Sunday after Pentecost. It’s a joyful day as we begin another year of Sunday school and youth groups and welcome the choir back, as we look forward to sharing food and fellowship together after the service for our fall Homecoming Sunday. On the calendar of the world outside these walls this day is not so congenial as we recollect the shock and horror that has seared this date into our memories.

When Bart spoke about holding both the newspaper and the Bible I don’t think he meant that they should be kept at arm’s length from each other. I think he was challenging preachers to bring them together, to let each speak to the other, and to let both address us on our spiritual journeys. Particular texts and current events make this task of bringing the Bible and the newspaper together to interpret each other either simple or difficult. Some days the text we are given (through our voluntary commitment to using the common lectionary) and the day or week we are given seem made for each other, fitting effortlessly together into one satisfying, meaningful whole. Imagine, for example, reflecting on Jesus’ teaching about considering the lilies of the field on a perfect summer Sunday when you’ve got an afternoon of unhurried gardening in your fully blooming flowerbeds ahead of you.

There are other occasions when the text and the newspaper almost repel each other, like magnets being pushed together at the wrong end. Is this one of those days? How can we consider a radical text on almost unlimited forgiveness against the backdrop of the events of 9/11/01? Does the Christian principle of forgiveness have anything to say to our attitude and action subsequent to 9/11? Does forgiveness have any relevance to the relationships between nations or peoples, or is forgiveness a private principle that is only applied to one-on-one relationships? In other words, can forgiveness go public, or is it restricted to the private realm? If it can go public, when is forgiveness appropriate? When is it appropriate to offer forgiveness, or to ask for it?

Theologian Marjorie Suchocki opens her reflections on the lectionary at the Process and Faith website with an exclamation: “Such a text for such a day!” The gospel portrays Peter asking Jesus, “How many times should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus answers, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” And a disturbing parable follows in which a king forgives an impossible debt and the slave who is forgiven refuses to forgive a debt owed him, and the king’s forgiveness is revoked. Such a text for such a day! Suchocki writes,

Is this a text we wish to hear on September 11th? We, who are so righteously angry at the terrible deed of terror inflicted upon civilians by Islamic extremists? The deed was certainly egregious, burned into our living memories as the televised sight of an airplane heading intentionally into a tower, burning flames, cries of the trapped, suicidal falls from floors too high for any other escape from fiery death, cell phone good-byes, brave firemen, destruction, terror, profound loss. Surely our best response to such evil is to lash out in revenge upon civilians in other lands to scourge the perpetrators, even as they have scourged us. Forgiveness can have no place against such hellish wrong![1]

Do you believe that? That forgiveness can have no place against such a hellish wrong? If so, you are not alone. We certainly could not, as a nation, bring the events of 9/11 and the concept of forgiveness together in the immediate aftermath of the attack. One of my computer resources included an ABC news poll taken late on the evening of the 2001 attack. At that moment, nine in ten – 94 percent – supported taking military action against the groups or nations responsible for the attacks. More than eight in 10 favored military strikes even if they led to war. And two in three said they were willing to "give up some of the liberties we have" to crack down on terrorism.[2] A Gallup poll showed similar results, with these added details: 71% thought the government should conduct military strikes only against terrorist organizations responsible for the attacks, even if it took months to clearly identify who they were. 21% wanted quicker action, to conduct military strikes against known terrorist organizations, even if it was unclear who was behind the attacks. Just 4% opposed any military retaliation at all.

There appeared to be a massive consensus, at least at the time, that retaliation was the only appropriate response. And so, predictably, we did meet violence with more violence, and so it goes, and so it goes, and so it goes.

Is there anything in the gospel to interrupt this destructive spiral, if we suppose that the gospel has got anything to do with public life? Marjorie Suchocki opened my eyes to an aspect of Matthew’s parable that may be relevant. Part of what was so shocking about the 9/11 attacks was the sheer amount of destruction, over 3000 lives lost, government interrupted, lives disrupted, thousands displaced. It was huge. Suchocki points out that the debt that was forgiven by the king in the story was an almost unimaginably large amount of money—equivalent to 200,000 years of labor for an average working guy at the time. The king who is at least at first the exemplar of forgiveness doesn’t let the immense size of the debt dissuade him from writing the whole thing off out of pity. We who would like to judge the 9/11 assault as unforgivable might wish the servant in the parable who is forgiven didn’t have such an enormous debt, because the implication is that the size of the debt doesn’t disqualify it from forgiveness.

This is an occasion when the gospel inspires questions, more than answers. Is there a scale of sin that is unforgivable? Where is the line crossed in scale between forgivable sin and unforgivable sin? How many lives? How much destruction? Is Jesus’ teaching in his answer to Peter’s application of the number 7 being the limit in the number of times one ought to forgive with the answer that points in biblical symbolism to an innumerable scale applicable to such a question? If numbers don’t apply, is forgiveness on the table even for such a heinous attack?

At the heart of the parable is the servant’s refusal to let being forgiven for an enormous debt change the way he does business in the world. The parable leads the hearer to be astounded at the servant’s lack of empathy for his fellow slave, who has a much smaller debt to be forgiven. The protagonist’s sense of himself as a debtor who just got a “Get out of jail free” card is nowhere evident in his dealing with his colleague. Where is the gratitude for the debt forgiveness he has received? Where is his understanding of his fellow slave’s situation? Entirely absent.

Is it possible there is a parallel in the way our nation conducts its business in the world? As professor and author Walden Bello points out in an essay entitled “In the Eyes of the World,” the 9/11 attack was not the worst act of mass terrorism in U.S. history. We are the ones responsible for the atomic raids on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing some 210,000 people, most of them civilians. We and our allies firebombed dozens of cities in Japan and Germany, killing tens of thousands of civilians, and not by accident—we targeted civilian populations to achieve our ends. We continued this practice in Vietnam, detonating 13 million tons of high explosive from 1965-71 (the equivalent of 450 Hiroshima nuclear bombs), killing many thousands of civilians.[3] Are these cases completely different because they occurred in the context of war? It has been said that war is the terrorism of the rich and terrorism is the war of the poor.

Is such a review of history relevant to how we view 9/11? Insofar as we are led to remember that we, too, have been responsible for the deaths of innocent people, and that we, too, are in need of forgiveness, our past is relevant. There’s no high horse for us to get up on. The high horse which we would mount to claim our moral superiority and innocence stepped on a landmine a generation ago. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. We say it every week. The gospel makes a connection between being forgiven and being forgiving. That connection is not altogether comfortable, to be honest. We would like to think we’ll be forgiven for everything regardless of how we offer forgiveness to those who sin against us. The gospel, in this parable and Jesus’ prayer, prods us to wonder whether this is so. Does the connection apply to the public realm as well as the private? Will we be forgiven as a nation only insofar as we have been forgiving?

We have been forgiving as a nation, especially in the years following WWII. We did a great deal to restore the fortunes of Japan and Germany. This raises another question---is the enemy making an unconditional surrender the only condition in which mercy may flourish? What if that never happens in the War on Terror? Are we trapped in the role of seeker of vengeance, like being in a Charles Bronson movie that never ends?

To forgive does not necessarily mean to let someone go scot free. Again I want to turn to Marjorie Suchocki’s commentary. “Forgive-and-forget is hardly the solution to something like September 11th! Unfortunately for us, biblical forgiveness is never so easy as forgive-and-forget. Rather, biblical forgiveness calls on us to care about the well-being of the transgressor, which includes the care that they reform from murderous hatreds and ways. It is not a condoning care, but a transforming care. The question then is, how is this care best accomplished in the horrors of September 11th? Is capture and killing the most faithful living out of this text?...Forgiveness is not ignoring a terrible wrong, but it is participating as much as is possible for us in creating social and global conditions of caring.”[4]

That may seem like an almost laughably naïve thing to say—“creating social and global conditions of caring.” But look where the alternative path is leading us. I’ve told you one of my favorite sayings by Joan Baez before: “Non-violence is a big flop. The only bigger flop in violence.” How much evidence do we need before we try a different way of being in the world? Does the gospel have anything to teach this “Christian nation?”

The events of 9/11 and its aftermath still offer us an opportunity for spiritual growth, as does every crisis. The good that came out of people drawing together after the attack should also be remembered. We have seen again and again that terrible events often bring out our best. Listen to this poem written in the aftermath of 9/11 (author unknown):

As the soot and dirt and ash rained down,
We became one color.
As we carried each other down the stairs of the burning building,
We became one class.
As we lit candles of waiting and hoping,
We became one generation.
As the firefighters and police officers fought their way into the inferno,
We became one gender.
As we fell to our knees in prayer for strength,
We became one faith.
As we whispered or shouted words of encouragement,
We spoke one language.
As we gave our blood in lines a mile long,
We became one body.
As we mourned together the great loss,
We became one family.
As we cried tears of grief and loss,
We became one soul.
As we retell with pride the sacrifice of heroes,
We become one people.

That last line is what it’s all about. I believe the gospel teaches us that we are all one people. The world is not divided between the light skinned and the dark skinned, the rich and the poor, the east and the west, the Christian and the going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket. The world is not divided between the good guys and the bad guys. We are all one people. We are all one people subject to the judgment and the truly amazing grace of One God. Thomas Long wrote, “We know too well that the little boat in which we are sailing is floating on a deep sea of grace and that forgiveness is not to be dispensed with an eyedropper, but a fire hose.”

Opening our hearts, even just a little, to our enemies, may have no practical effect at all. But we have seen where the road of vengeance leads; is that where we want to dwell? If all the Christians in America prayed for the strength to forgive our enemies, how might our future be different?

Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

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[1] Suchocki, Marjorie Lectionary commentary posted on the website for the Center for Process and Faith

[2] Washington Post-ABC Poll (Tuesday, September 11, 2001; 11:24 PM ):

[3] Bello, Walden “In the Eyes of the World” Making Peace: Healing a Violent World Bainbridge Island: Positive Futures Network, 2003, p. 66-67

[4] Op cit, Suchocki