13th Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 19A (10th Anniversary of 9/11/01)

13th Sunday after Pentecost—Proper 19A
September 11, 2011
It was my second day of seminary at the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church in New York City. I was just beginning to fathom what I had done—having left behind my Mississippi home and family and moved to NYC (with my faithful cat) to follow God’s call into the priesthood.
I was in a small group session on this second morning of classes with some of my classmates, and we were discussing our first book we were reading as seminarians. It was a book titled Resurrection by a man named Rowan Williams—whom none of us had really heard of but who was soon to be named the next Archbishop of Canterbury. And it was a fascinating book about how Jesus’s resurrection and the Christian interpretation of the Easter gospel is the foundation of the Christian life, and the book explored new ways of interpreting the resurrection in our daily lives.
In this little book, Williams talks about how all of creation is caught in this cycle of victims and oppressors and how, periodically, the victims rise up, overthrow the oppressors, and then change places-- with the oppressors becoming the victims and the victims becoming the oppressors.
Williams says that it is Jesus’s crucifixion and his resurrection that finally breaks this cycle—for Jesus the victim does not become the oppressor. Rather, through his resurrection he offers forgiveness to those who crucified him and to those faithful disciples who abandoned and betrayed him, and he offers to all reconciliation and salvation.
It is a provocative little book, as Williams peels back the layers that have built up around the notion of resurrection and invites us to see Christ in the face of all victims—even those who perpetrate great crimes.
Our small group was in the thick of our mid-morning discussion on these issues when the chapel bells started ringing incessantly. Now we’d only been in class two days, but we knew this was odd. The chapel bells rang, as scheduled, three times a day for worship, and it was currently class time and not time for worship. We continued our discussion somewhat distractedly as our tutor, Chris Keller, a seasoned parish priest and PhD student, went to find out what was going on. When he came back, his face was stark white and he said to us, in a breathless kind of voice, “Someone has bombed the World Trade Center! We all need to go to the chapel!”
Confused and alarmed we headed to the seminary chapel where the others students, faculty, and staff were already gathered and praying the Great Litany in the BCP while the 1st Tower burned and chaos erupted less than two miles away.
For weeks following that horrible day, as the ashes blew over NYC and the smell of burned metal hung heavy in the air, I struggled to hold onto hope in the face of so much hatred and so much suffering.
And 10 years later, I still struggle. How do we follow the way of Christ in the face of this? How do we hold on to the hope of the resurrection in the face of evil and suffering? How do we preach about forgiveness on today of all days? How do we hope for healing of these old, deep wounds that we all carry around with us and that don’t ever seem to get healed?
My brothers and sisters, there is good news on this day. There is hope of resurrection. First, there seems to be chaos and destruction for the enemies of Israel and Yahweh in today’s Old Testament reading. It seems to be good news for us because our ancestors in the faith, the Children of Israel are saved from slavery under the Egyptians in one divisive act by God, as they walk through the Red Sea unharmed and then all of Pharaoh’s army and their horses drown in the Red Sea. But it’s rather a grisly picture if we take a moment and think of all those dead bodies floating in the Red Sea, and it’s certainly not good news for the army of Egypt. How can something that is good for one people and so terribly bad for another be good news in the Kingdom of God?
There’s an old Hasidic tale that says that the angels were rejoicing over the deliverance of Israel at the Red Sea. They were playing their harps, blowing their horns, singing and dancing and laughing with joy. When one angel noticed something and said to the others, “Look! The Creator of the Universe is sitting there weeping.” When the angels approached God and asked “Why are you weeping when Israel has been saved and delivered by your power?” The Maker of the Universe answered, “I am weeping for the dead Egyptians washed up on the shore—somebody’s sons, somebody’s husbands, somebody’s fathers.”i
The story of the God weeping over the Egyptians is our story too—the story of God weeping for those who died in the attacks on September 11th, 2001; it is the story of God weeping for the families who lost loved ones, mothers, fathers, and children. It is the story of God weeping over the deaths of those who have died in combat since then, fighting for peace. It is the story of God weeping over the deaths of the terrorists who perpetrated such evil and those who still seek to do others harm.
It is the story of God weeping for us, who cannot lay aside our own wounded-ness and fragmentation; it is God weeping for us who continue to hold onto old wrongs, old grievances rather than relinquish them to God, asking forgiveness for our own hardness of heart and offering our own forgiveness. The Maker of the Universe weeps for all of creation in our wounds and in our suffering whether we are the good guys or the bad guys, the winners or the losers, the victims or the oppressors. God weeps for all and longs for reconciliation with and forgiveness for all.
In this week’s reading from the Letter to the Romans, Paul writes, “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.” Anybody recognize this passage from a service in the Prayer Book? I’ll give you a hint. (sing portion here: “For none of us has life in himself/ and none becomes his own master when he dies. For if we have life, we are alive in the Lord,/ and if we die, we die in the Lord. So, then, whether we live or die/ we are the Lord’s possession. I am resurrection and I am Life, says the Lord.”) It’s in the BCP on page 491--the opening anthem for our burial liturgy. It’s the liturgy of the church in which we find the most comfort, the most meaning in the Resurrection of our Lord; it is where we say that no matter what happens to each of us in this life, we find our hope in Christ’s resurrection which proves, once and for all, that God’s love is stronger than anything, even death. It is how we, as the Body of Christ, find hope and meaning in the midst of our sadness and suffering, by giving our hearts to the hope that the lives of those who are the Lord’s possession will always be the Lord’s possession.
In the gospel reading, Peter asks Jesus, “Lord, if a brother or sister sins against me, how often should I forgive?” Peter and the other disciples are embroiled in some minor dispute or offense among them stemming from their previous discussion of who is the greatest, and Jesus says to him, “Not seven times, but I tell you, seventy-seven times.” Do not ever cease in offering forgiveness, Jesus tells them. It’s important to remember what happens in the rest of Peter’s story—how he denies Jesus, abandons him in his most difficult hour, and after the resurrection, Jesus appears to Peter alone, and he forgives him and restores the relationship with him.
Peter tastes the grace of God in Jesus’s forgiveness, and he is formed and shaped by it; he carries this taste of grace into all other conflict he encounters in spreading the gospel of our Lord.
Finally, it is important on this day, to remember that not just our little lives and our individual hurts and wounds will one day be healed and reconciled. All of creation which now groans and longs for fulfillment, for its hurts and its wounds to be healed, will one day become a new creation through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is not something that happened once long ago. It continues to happen, continues to break into our reality and Christ’s resurrection continues to restore not just individuals but the whole big story of all of humanity.
So while you might not be yet healed of your deep wound, your deep sadness, your deep grief, through the Lord’s resurrection, you will be. And while all of humanity may not be healed of our deep wounds, our deep sadness, our deep grief, we will be, through the Lord’s resurrection.
Did you know that every Sunday in the church is a feast day? It is a celebration of the Lord’s resurrection! A sort of mini-Easter, every Sunday. Every week, we are an Easter people, a resurrection community. So even as we wait for the fulfillment of the resurrection in our lives and in our world, we celebrate Easter, we celebrate resurrection.
And we wait. We hope. We pray for healing. We taste the graciousness of God, and we invite others to taste God’s grace. We forgive others, again and again and again. We ask for our own forgiveness. We allow ourselves to be forgiven. And we allow ourselves to be healed.
i. Referenced in 9/6/11 Christian Century article “Living by the Word” by Theodore J. Wardlaw (18). Originally from Albert C. Winn’s sermon ‘A Way Out of No Way: Exodus 14:5-31’ published in Journal for Preachers.