SHADES OF GRAY: CONSIDERING FORGIVENESS

Matthew 18: 21-35

Vaughn Allex remembers this day 10 years ago with a shudder. “Something was taken away from me on that day” he said recently. I’ve never since gone out on a cloudless beautiful day and not said: ‘The sky is September 11th blue.’ That was taken away from me.” Vaughn was one of the traffic controllers who thought fruitlessly about what he could do on September 11th, 2001 to save passengers and re-direct planes. On that day, 19 young followers of a cowardly leader who stayed safely out of sight, wrongly taught them by twisting the tenets of Islam that they would become martyrs instead of just murderers. We see what their leader was made of since he got gullible young men to do his suicide missions. On that fateful day they hijacked our nation just armed with box cutters. There were countless numbers of people doing their jobs arm in arm who saved others on that day, and we will never forget them: including all the firefighters in New York, Washington D.C., and in Pennsylvania; people like Port Authority officials Frank De Martini and Pablo Ortiz who saved dozens of people in their tower but lost their own lives; and ones like Lt. Col Tim Duffy, called to patrol New York skies in an F-15 Eagle, but only arriving after American Flight 11 had hit the north tower and United Flight 175 had hit the south tower of the World Trade Center. In just those two tower disasters, 2,976 children lost a parent; while 2,752 people perished, blue collar and white collar, people of all ethnicities, and of all faiths, including 60 Muslims. One girl whose family attended a Mosque in New York before and after the attacks said recently through tears, “Those men were not even real Muslims. They showed so much hatred, but we share a love for and a devotion to God with others. I am remembering in my prayers all those who lost loved ones that day.” On that very same 9/11 morning, 5,600 commercial aircraft were in the air. As the situation became critical, the National Operations Chief of the FAA, Ben Sliney, was on his very first day on the job. He made the call that ordered every plane to the ground. The ones that did not land became targets of great national interest. Two of the planes that did not land were American Flight 77 that was being steered toward Washington D.C. It flew into the Pentagon, killing 125 persons. The other plane had people on board who had enough time to notify loved ones, and from those conversations, they learned that their hijackers most likely had a national target in mind for their plane too. But their plane had resourceful people like Todd Beamer, Jeremy Glick, Tom Burnett, Mark Bingham, Lou Nacke, and flight attendants such as Sandy Bradshaw, who filled coffee pots with boiling water to use as weapons and Cee Cee Ross-Niles, a former police officer. Their sacrificial move to subdue their hijackers kept that plane from continuing on toward Washington, instead plunging it 50 feet into the earth of a deserted field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. [Source: LET’S ROLL! Ordinary People, Extraordinary Courage, Lisa Beamer, Tyndale House, 2002, pp, 213+]

Sixty years earlier, December 7th, 1941 also became a date that will live in infamy, when the Empire of Japan deliberately attacked the United States of America with a surprise air raid on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. In that other unexpected attack on our country, 18 battleships were either sunk or severely damaged and 3,700 persons lost their lives. Both that attack and the 9/11 attack had casualties greater than 3,000 souls, with the Pearl Harbor attack drawing America into the Second World War, and the 9/11 attack drawing America into a War on Terror that spanned Iraq and Afghanistan, one that continues to this day. As America brought its forces to bear on Japan in 1941, and as our country defended itself again ten years ago, the entire nation became part of a war effort with changed civilian lives and the sacrifices of men and women in service to country. 9/11 had another army that fought until the finish: the Fire Departments and Police Departments of New York, Washington D.C., Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and the surrounding communities. As fire fighters and police officers sought to do their jobs amidst incalculable destruction, people called them heroes, and they have all been immortalized. And so it should be. Now the Pentagon has been rebuilt and strengthened and a memorial site is being dedicated today in Shanksville Pennsylvania. It took our country 60 years to erect a World War II Memorial in our nation’s capital, but in New York City, jthe architects, planners, tradesmen, and city managers have worked to get 1000 feet of Tower 1 WTC ready by today, the first of 5 planned reinforced towers to be created in a spiral pattern that will surround the site with descending and ascending towers. The workers were charged with the Herculean task of getting a floor completed each week in 2011, and they banded together in an exhausting effort to see a Phoenix rise from the ashes of terror today. New York is leading the drive to take back our power from a handful of hate-filled thugs. It is a sight to behold. And when Tower One, originally to be called “Freedom Tower” is completed, it will 1776 feet tall. Tower One the tallest of the new planned towers, will significantly be 1776 feet. As the words on our bulletin cover say in a prayer to God: “Teach us to build, O Master lend us sight, to see the towers gleaming in the light.”

So structures and memorials are being erected; but what about the human soul; how are we doing in building, or rebuilding, the damage done there? Some have sought to learn about other people’s faith in an informed instead of a suspicious manner. Faith Clubs have sprung up around the nation spurred on by the honest dialogue and friendship built by a Muslim, Ranya Idliby, a Christian- Suzanne Oliver, and a Jew- Pricilla Warner: authors of the book, THE FAITH CLUB. I myself have gotten to establish a relationship with Rabbi Amy Mayer, our neighbor about 5 miles north of us at Temple Israel, who will be our speaker in our February Women’s Gathering. In addition, I have visited a Mosque, a Jewish Synagogue, A Buddhist meeting house, and a Hindu Temple. I don’t agree with all that they believe, but I was greeted warmly and welcomed; would that all of us, in the name of Jesus, do the same. But nursed by grudges, suspicions, and images in the media played over and over, consuming hatred continue to burn bridges, at times, instead of build them. What can we do to break the cycle of aggression and retaliation that has been around since time began? Surely it broke God’s heart, or gave God pause, to see Cain slay his brother Abel, recorded in Genesis 4. Verse 18 in that chapter describes 5 generations who were born from Cain and his wife. By the 5th generation according Genesis 4:19, Lamech had two wives. The locomotive of redemptive actions didn’t just run off the rails, it never got started down the right track! Look at what that demented man taught his wives: “I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain avenged sevenfold, truly I will avenge seventy-seven fold.” I wonder what terror Lamech caused in his day. This is a Bible character, and yet despicable, learning nothing of redemption and forgiveness to the fourth or fifth generation.

At long last God came to earth in the body, mind, and soul of Jesus Christ. He knew how the world was, and he needed to give an example of how to break the chain of generational aggression that had hit and hurt people instead of healing and bonding them. In his world there were absentee wealthy landowners, on site and modestly wealthy land managers, and slaves to work the fields. Jesus knew the tensions that arise from “haves” getting richer and “have-nots” getting poorer. We know that scenario today, don’t we? Anger grows, tensions rise, and cool heads are harder to find. In just this last weekend 67 people were wounded by gunfire in 52 separate shootings in New York City in spite of the progress at Ground Zero.[ NBC Evening News, Wednesday September 6th] So we look now at the New Testament. In Galilee, Peter, a tradesman, asks this question not about terrorists, but about other Christian believers: “If another church member sins against me, how often should I forgive them: seven times?” And perhaps thinking he would be praised for forgiving so much, he must have been disheartened to hear Jesus’ reply and his parable: “seventy-times seven” Jesus said. Could he have been trying to be radical in the opposite way; to counter the terrorist platform of “an eye-for and eye” or more drastically the “I will destroy your city because you hurt my brother” kind of mentality? Was Jesus trying to superimpose a new “normal” over the dreadful teaching Lamech taught his wives in Genesis 4? Jesus tells a parable about a king. The people in that day would not have thought “King Arthur,” they would have thought “King Herod,” with the power, fear, and paranoia that his name had commanded. Kings were generally not forgiving or generous in the first century. In the parable, then, a slave was brought to the king; he owed the king/ 10 thousand talents; such a number would be greater than what most of us could make in 30 lifetimes; it is an exaggeration, a device used for dramatic comparison. The ancient Historian Josephus said the sum would be equivalent to the amount of taxes Rome would receive from Judea in a decade. [Josephus, Antiquities, 14.78] The slave could not possibly ever repay the king. He threw himself at the foot of the king and begged for mercy; in a transformation from monstrous monarch to merciful monarch, the king forgives his debt! This gift cannot be overstated: an impossibly huge debt is forgiven by a king. If the King were Jesus, can you hear him say to the servant, “Go and do likewise.” One might expect the servant to do just that, to start a new action in place of the expected and ancient actions. One would think that such a great gift might create gratitude and forgiveness in the slave toward others, thereby jamming the gears of society’s grizzly sense of retribution. But does it? We see, to our alarm, that the forgiven man has not been changed one iota from the king’s actions. He throttles the throat of the servant who owes him a fraction of what he has just been forgiven. Instead of taking his servant, forgiving him, and inviting him to a party, he chokes him. What is wrong with this picture? Haven’t the worst attacks in our cities, our world, and in our lives happened out of rageful retaliation, or cold calculating desire to take a pound of flesh out of the one who caused an ounce of pain? Jesus is a great teacher; he not only says, “Do what I say,” he also gives an example so people can “do what he does.” Still men later condemn him unjustly; they trump up charges against him; they torture him, they rip at his flesh; and they cause him humiliation and immeasurable pain. Could he have seen that instead of taking the well-worn path of retaliation, that he could purposefully choose the way of life, the way of God, and “the road less traveled”, instead of the “way of Cain”? The cross was the ultimate day in his life when his actions matched his words. He went to the cross for things he did not do. And before he breathed his last, he said words that have been quoted by generations of people: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Forgiveness; could it be the one thing that can break the barbaric and retaliatory cycle of aggression; could Jesus’ actions have been the original paradigm shift, signaling a way of life and love away from one of death and destruction? Jake DeShazer must have thought so. “After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor that brought the United States into World War II, Corporal Jacob DeShazer became a man bent on revenge. As a bombardier in the Army Air Corp, he volunteered for a top secret mission and flew with the legendary Doolittle Raiders in their surprise attack on Japan. After successfully bombing their targets, the Raiders were forced to bail out over occupied China. Jake and seven other airmen were captured by the Japanese and imprisoned. He survived nearly 3 ½ years as a POW, enduring torture, starvation, and solitary confinement.” He seethed with a desire for revenge; his anger drove him to desire the way of Cain rather than the way of Christ. But then, when his captors delivered some books to the prisoners one day, he found that one, perhaps mistakenly, was a Bible. Jake began a personal relationship with God, and his life was never the same.” [Day of Discovery DVD, FROM VENGEANCE TO FORGIVENESS, program 2] The man who was tortured by the Japanese came to know Jesus Christ—the man who was tortured on a cross—and the way Jesus handled his torture change this Corporal’s heart, and changed his actions. After he became a Christian, he signed up to become a missionary to not only take the Christian message just anywhere, but mainly to Japan. His personal mission was to go face his captors and say that, in the strong name of Jesus Christ, he forgave them. Jake chose to break the cycle of aggression that was started by a barbarian named Cain.

In Laura Hillenbrand’s remarkable non-fiction bestseller called UNBROKEN, she describes the extraordinary true story of Lou Zamperini, an American Olympic champion who served his country in World War II as he flew in the war against Japan; a man whose plane was shot down who, together with two other men, survived more than a month on a raft at sea, and then there were but two. Thinking they were on the cusp of being rescued they, instead, had the cruel joke played on them that emaciated nearly dead men were captured and became prisoners of war. No matter what nature or the enemy threw Louie’s way, he remained “unbroken.” He would not let any of them take his spirit, or his life. The treatment he received at the hands of nature and enemies was almost too hard to read. But when he, by his indomitable spirit and the defeat of Japan, got to come home, he had to rebuild his weakened body. He had thoughts of anger and revenge. But then he went to hear a Billy Graham Crusade, and the message of Jesus Christ also gave him the direction to break the cycle of aggression. It was hard to believe he sought to return to a defeated Japan to try to find the tyrannical Japanese officer whose mission seemed to be to demean and beat him until he died, and to tell him he forgave him. Jesus’ action on the cross again broke the cycle of aggression in a man’s heart.

In the book in our church library, LET’S ROLL, the story of Todd Beamer and the hijacked United flight 93, his wife Lisa said this: “Although I’d never before heard of Todd reciting the Lord’s Prayer in pressure situations, I wasn’t surprised to hear he had quoted it…. Part of the prayer that intrigued Todd was the line in which Jesus taught us to ask God to forgive our trespasses, or sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” Said co-author Ken Abraham, “When Lisa told me Todd had prayed that particular prayer, I felt certain that, in some way, Todd was forgiving the terrorists for what they were doing. Following the prayer, 911 operator Lisa Jefferson, who was on the line with Beamer, said that Todd recited the 23rd Psalm [and that] other[s] apparently joined with him….[911 operator ‘After that,’ Lisa Jefferson recalled, “He had a sigh in his voice, and he took a deep breath….’ ‘Are you ready?’ He said to the others. ‘Okay. Let’s roll!’” [p. 213-214] Had Jesus also transformed Todd Beamer, doing what he had to do to save others even as he forgave perpetrators? Here was a man with a wife and children and everything to lose, yet his prayer showed him protecting others as he followed Christ.

Jake DeShazer, Louie Zamperini, and Todd Beamer were just three people who decided to act differently toward others because of their relationship with Christ. Now it is your turn. You can leave this place with your cherished prejudices, or ground-out grudges, and with the fire in your heart and the tension in your guts for your enemy, whoever that may be. You can pop antacids, or have chest pains fueled by your rage or desire for revenge. Or you too can be part of the legacy of the cross from 30 A.D; Jesus’ parable reminds us that a gracious king has forgiven us; will we now throttle those who have sinned against us? We have considered the way of Cain; will you, instead, consider the way of Christ? Jesus just had a handful of followers step forward to become martyrs in his lifetime; but the list grew over the ages, and the power of his message changed people in the 20th century and now even in the 21st century. Will you not only call him Lord, will you do more? Will you let him change the way you think, and also change the way you act? Today is our day, and our time, on this anniversary, to at least consider forgiveness.

Jeffrey A. Sumner September 11, 2011