I couldn’t turn on the radio or the internet all week without hearing something about Nine Eleven. Conversation, reporting, commentary. Stories about what’s changed and what we remember.
In self defense, I kept the TV tuned to House Hunters.
Because all week, it’s felt like bleeding from an open wound. And I was looking for a bandaid.
It’s different if you were there that day, or if you were here. Different for each of us. But wherever you were, on Tuesday ten years ago, you probably remember.
And then life goes on.
Not just after Nine Eleven, but after a death in the family, after a terrifying diagnosis, the loss of meaningful work or the breakdown of an important relationship.
It’s not always welcome news that life goes on. But it does, so we look for a thing called “closure.”
We heard about closure in May when Osama bin Laden died.
We heard about it in September and October and November 2001 in the long search for missing persons and something to bury.
And, in fact, we heard about it – ever so briefly – in the gospel today.
“How many times do I have to forgive?” Peter asks Jesus. “Say, seven times??”
Peter’s being generous. He knows he’s already been forgiven much himself, he knows that miracles and grace are more abundant than he’d expected. So he wants to forgive as much as possible.
But still he wants closure. He wants to be able to be done with forgiving.
He may want to know when he doesn’t have to try anymore, but I rather imagine he wants to know when it will stick. When forgiveness will be complete, and he’ll have “closure” for the pain of being hurt.
But Jesus says, Seventy times seven.
(The gospel math is ambiguous. It could be 77, it could be 490. Either way, Jesus’ actual answer is No.)
No, you can’t count the times you have to forgive.
No, you can’t forgive in order to be finished.
“Forgive and forget” is probably one of the most misleading sayings out there.
If you forgot, you wouldn’t need to forgive. And forgiving – really forgiving – won’t really help you to forget.
Because forgiveness is not a bandaid.
It’s open heart surgery.
It’s about opening up all that’s blocking the flow to our heart, in and out, in all our relationships. About not letting pain cut off the vibrant, complex strength of those relationships.
When we love someone - parents, children, siblings, spouses, friends - we will get hurt. And we’ll hurt those we love. Same for living in community – a community like Calvary, or like our nation. So we have to keep turning back to those relationships with open hearts after angry words, and careless mistakes, and major trauma.
And then do it again.
And we need forgiveness that washes over and over and over our souls, over the raw anxiety, sorrow and fear of having done wrong or hurt someone else.
Forgiveness is the other extreme from closure. And it’s even more healing, because its continuous nature makes us resilient, able to dream and hope and act to make our visions real.
When I’ve been hurt, what I usually want most is for the pain to stop.
There are times when hurting someone else runs a very close second. But mostly I want to block off the pain, to walk away or “forget” with an act of will. To turn on House Hunters and ignore the grief and anger and fear of memory. To ”move on.”
That helps with the pain, which is not a bad thing. And sometimes it is the very best thing we can do.
But it’s not forgiveness. Not the forgiveness Jesus is talking about.
Because forgiveness doesn’t set limits, it opens doors.
It’s not something we do by ourselves or by an act of will.
It’s what we do when we let God flow through us, when we open our hearts wide to God, through God’s people.
When I close my eyes and think about September 11, I don’t see the towers any more.
I see first responders: firefighters and police and paramedics. I see frightened, confused people reaching out to take hands with strangers, and making safe space for others in even greater pain and fear. I see people carrying those who cannot walk.
I see people who literally reached into that burning wound and pulled it further open trying to save and to heal. People who breathed the physical form of loss and heartache and horror. People who did that because they wanted desperately to help and people who did it just because it was their job, or because they happened to be there.
I see the glory and the grief and the steadfast love.
And I go ahead and cry.
Because I can’t separate the pain from the grace. And that's probably a good thing.
It might be the way God looks at us, day in and day out.
To stay in relationship with us, God doesn’t fence off the angry words and careless mistakes of our everyday sins from our everyday acts of grace. Nor does God separate the intentional murder of thousands from the wild outpouring of compassion and unity and self-sacrifice that happen in the same place at the same time.
But over and over and over and over again, God turns an open heart to us, refusing to let grief or anger block the flow of love and grace.
We need this, and we pray for it in confession and in the Lord’s Prayer.
And we are invited to do the same. To turn our open hearts toward God and to one another and to strangers, and let the grace flow with the pain, so that nothing can block or limit the hope and love and caring and strength that God offers us and we give to one another.
I haven’t forgiven the hijackers, or the sheer impersonal pain and fear, or the nation of liberty and justice for all for not living up to our dream. And I haven’t forgiven – or been forgiven – all the errors and omissions of family life, and life with you, and the rest of my communities.
But I am forgiving them, and I will be, with God’s help, the rest of my life.
After this weekend the TV, radio, and internet will fill up with other news: football scores, Washington politics, traffic, and the everyday working of Murphy’s law. We’ll talk less and less about the particular tragedy of September 2001, and more about our other tragedies and joys and daily routine.
The wound won’t be as open.
But closure isn’t the good news.
The good news is that it isn’t over. That we are still, always, forgiving and forgiven, for that day and for every day.
Because as our hearts stay open to living with memory and grief and fear, great or small, we stay open to unlimited, lively compassion and love. We stay in stronger relationship with one another, with our community, with our dreams, and with God.
And that’s what living is for.
September 11, 2011
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