9-11-2011 Sermon on 9/11 by Reverend Tim Greene

SERMON FOR PENTECOST XIII AT HOLY INNOCENTS EPISCOPAL CHURCH, SAN FRANCISCO ON 09/11/2011

Fr Tim Greene

…  When morning gilds the skies, Our hearts, awakening, cry,

May Jesus Christ be praised!

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

My dear friends!  It was just such a day ten years ago, with morning gilding the skies over New York City, that our national life was shattered by planes used as bombs to bring down the Twin Towers and to destroy in horror the lives of nearly three thousand innocent people.  Morning brightness turned suddenly to darkest mourning!

Our national outrage knew no bounds.  Our fury was reminiscent of Pearl Harbor.  In response, we started a war of vengeance in Afghanistan to kill Osama bin Laden and his followers.  Our wounded national pride and our super patriotism led to a wide-spread culture of aggression against Muslim peoples throughout the world.  Revenge by hunting terrorists became our new national business.  Even as we always remain on alert for new atrocities, today again we keenly grieve the tragedy of 9/11.  This morning, deeply moving memorial services are being held in NYC, in Washington DC, and around the world.

Jesus, in today’s Gospel, speaks to our national story, calling us to a different perspective.  He calls us to forgiveness.  “You must forgive seventy times seven,” He insists.  “What!” we respond.  It is inconceivable that we could forgive the destruction in NY City.  Neither could we ever forgive nor forget the great Holocaust in Germany in the last century.  But Jesus is insistent.  His message tells us that a continuing obsession with terrorism and revenge will separate us from the love of God and will lead us in a terrible spiral down to spiritual death as a nation.  It is an impossible dilemma!  We rightly believe we must remain vigilant against terrorism!

And in our hearts we know that crimes against humanity must be sought out and punished.   Our spiritual world cannot contain such a vacuum of injustice.  How can we possibly forgive?

Hear what Pope John Paul II said about the 9/11 tragedy.  In a message on the World Day of Peace in 2002, John Paul wrote:

          There exists therefore a right to defend oneself against terrorism, a right which, as always, must be exercised with respect for moral and legal limits in the choice of ends and means. The guilty must be correctly identified, since criminal culpability is always personal and cannot be extended to the nation, ethnic group or religion to which the terrorists may belong.”  Then John Paul goes on to say: “Forgiveness is above all a personal choice, a decision of the heart to go against the natural instinct to pay back evil with evil. The measure of such a decision is the love of God who draws us to himself in spite of our sin. It has its perfect exemplar in the forgiveness of Christ, who on the Cross prayed: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

Pope John Paul practiced what he preached.  In 1983, two years after he was shot four times in St. Peter’s Square by a would-be assassin, he visited his young Turkish attacker in prison, sitting with him in a cell, quietly talking and forgiving him.  This young Turkish man proved to be mentally unstable, calling himself Christ.  But at the end of the visit he pressed the Pope’s hand to his head in a Muslim gesture of respect.

As we remain on guard against attack in this country, we must also be constant in extending non-judgmental generosity toward the Muslim people living in our midst.  Muslim people did not create 9/11; rather, 9/11 was caused by a handful of sociopathic fundamentalists calling themselves Muslims.  For our health and for the health of the Muslim community, we must keep these two groups very clear and separate.  In addition, we must create a national attitude – a national culture of generosity and forgiveness that seeks world peace as its goal. 

Here is a story to illustrate.  In 2002, two mothers came together to talk.  One was a Jewish woman named Phyllis Rodriguez whose son Greg was killed on 9/11.  The second was a Moroccan Muslim woman named Aicha el-Wafi, living in France, whose son Zacarias was convicted for his role in 9/11and given a life sentence.  The two mothers met, fell into each other’s arms, and wept.  Aicha told how sorry she was for her son’s part in the tragedy.  Phyllis tells how she received enormous sympathy for the loss of her son.  Aicha explains that she received no sympathy.  These women spent several hours talking.  They acknowledged that they both suffered immense common grief over the loss of their sons.  Since then they have appeared together talking to groups, especially young people, to promote a culture of non-violence in the world.  You can see them together on YouTube (http://blog.ted.com/2011/05/02/911-healing-the-mothers-who-found-forgiveness-friendship-now-on-ted-com/), but you’ll need a box of Kleenex.  It is a transcendent story of generosity and forgiveness.

We have now had ten years of vengeance war in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The Iraq war has cost almost 800 billion dollars.  The war in Afghanistan, called Operation Enduring Freedom, has cost so far over 450 billion dollars.  Together that’s well over a trillion dollars.  And together it has cost the lives of over 6000 soldiers.  Our Commander in Chief, President Obama, has promised to bring home 10% of the troupes at the end of this year, and another 10% by next summer, but he says we will stay in Afghanistan at least until the year 2014 and possibly beyond.  We must call on Obama to end this obscene and pointless war NOW.  Let us call on our student populations and our labor force and on all middle class Americans to rise up in protest.  Let us demand that Obama stop seeing himself as a victim of Congress or as a victim of terrorism and use his great power of office to end both these senseless wars. 

God in His wisdom has seen fit to place us, not in a perfect universe, but rather in an evolving universe – where relationship with reality often seems fiercely harsh.  But in the unfolding of time, it is our growth into loving and generous human beings that will be our greatest accomplishment – if we follow the teachings of Jesus, Who calls us to a level of moral maturity that transcends rage and revenge and that creates a national culture of peace and generosity. 

Let us end with words from Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address.  In 1865, Lincoln said,

 “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” 

Amen.