When I was a child, my parents built a bomb shelter in the basement. It was the height of the Cold War. We lived in New Haven Connecticut where the Yale intellectuals were telling us that nuclear war was simply a matter of time. We watched the movie The Day After in which we saw the effects of nuclear war. Most likely the Soviets would strike New York City, so New Haven would receive residual effects. Our hair would all fall out, our bodies slowly disintegrate. Only cockroaches would survive.
Sometimes, when my parents were fighting, I would go down into the basement. It was usually at night. I would run my hands over the thick walls filled with sand until I found the light switch. Then I would sit alone in that tiny room. We had some cans in the corner, bottles of water. I felt safe in there but I also felt sad, lonely, even depressed. I remember thinking, “If we are ever attacked, why would we even come down here? What kind of life is this?”
When the Hebrew people were fleeing from slavery, God rescued them. In this dramatic scene, full of violence and hope, God parts the sea with a huge wind, leaving dry ground in the middle. The Hebrew people travel safely with God as their protection. And then the enemies come, and God destroys them. God is so active, so protective, so brilliant. It is a wonderful moment, a moment remembered for thousands of years. God fought for us!
I want to know why. Why didn’t God blow a great east wind when the first plane came towards the World Trade Center? Why didn’t God push that plane off course, make it land somehow?
We never thought that an airplane could become a weapon until that day. When the first plane hit, I thought it was a terrible accident. The pilot lost control. I could not fathom a person deliberately flying a vehicle full of people into a building. How could someone think like that? How could they even consider it? And later, we would hear about how they were crying out Allah Akbar! They were calling to God…Calling to God while performing an act of unspeakable evil.
When a tragedy of this magnitude happens in the life of a human being, we cannot make sense of it, so we retreat. How could this happen? How could God let it happen? We go inside of ourselves. We don’t know how to explain it and it hurts so much, so we run away, deep inside ourselves. When a young woman is raped and beaten almost to death, she changes dramatically. She hides within herself. When a child is molested or wounded, when a loved one dies in a tragic accident, we go into the bomb shelters of our hearts and we hide there. There is very little light in the place where we go, but it is safe. And we need safety. We need safety because we are afraid.
Some of you may think that we are making too much of this day, this tenth anniversary of 9/11. You may think that this country has gotten over it, but I think that most Americans have not gotten over it. Some have buried it deep inside. Others have just tried to forget it. On that day, and for a few days afterwards, we were united as a country. We cared for one another and valued one another. And then, when the chaos died down and the immensity of the event began to sink in, we hid from the pain and went back to bickering amongst ourselves.
In the Episcopal Church, like the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches, we have Scripture assigned to us each Sunday so that we read the entire Bible within the space of about three years. Today’s gospel is assigned for today. I did not select it myself. And in this gospel, Jesus talks to Peter about forgiveness.
“How many times must I forgive my neighbor?” Peter asks. “Seven times?”
“Not seven times, but seventy-seven times,” Jesus replies. Over and over and over again. You must forgive over and over and over again.
Does this mean that God is telling us to forgive the terrorists – those 19 hijackers and their leaders who slaughtered innocent people on that beautiful September morning? And how in the world can we do that? I myself do not know how. How can you forgive an act of unspeakable violence, an evil act which ends in the death of thousands of men and women, an act that left hundreds of children motherless and fatherless? How is that possible? And is it even the right thing to do?
The ancient word for forgiveness is afiemee. Let me first tell you, very clearly, what it does NOT mean. It does not mean to forget. It does not mean to say that everything is OK. It does not mean to like the one who hurt you. It does not mean to go back to life the way that it was before you were hurt. And it does not mean that you will ever be the same.
Afiemee means just one thing: Release from bondage. Release from imprisonment. It means that one day, when you are ready, you leave the bomb shelter deep in the basement of your heart and you learn to live again. It means that, one day, you will no longer be afraid.
We need to understand that God did not leave us to die alone that morning. God was there, in the towers. God ran into the buildings with the firefighters. God held hands with the chaplains and prayed. God stood by the windows as people got ready to jump. And God was there in the rubble and the dust, crying.
That’s what Jesus came to tell us, that God stays with us in the midst of tragedy and violence. God never leaves us.
9-11 is our cross. It is an event which has marked us as a nation and we have been changed forever. We will never be the same. But we have not yet experienced the full forgiveness of God, of our enemies, or of ourselves. We have not yet experienced true resurrection. We have imprisoned ourselves since that day. Never has this country been more divided than it has since that day ten years ago. We are fighting amongst ourselves in ways that go beyond the normal differences of political parties. And this must end.
In my first year out of college, I worked in an emergency room at Yale New Haven Hospital. One day, I was called to the burn unit to translate. A Russian man had been brought over to this country for treatment. I went to his room.
The curtains were drawn and the room was quite dark. “Come closer,” he said. “The light hurts my eyes.” I found out that he had been just 18 years old when he was asked by his government to fly over a town called Chernobyl and drop cement onto the site of an accident there. He wore a protective suit but his hands and his face were burned. The cancer had spread all over his skin and into his bloodstream. He was swollen and red, his hair was singed off. “I am here so that they can study my illness he said. I know that I am going to die. All my life I have wanted to see America. But the light hurts my skin and my eyes so much that I cannot go outside.”
After a few days and much paperwork and discussion, some of the nurses and I managed to get permission to take the Russian soldier outside. We covered him with strips of cloth, even over his face and hands. He wore dark sunglasses. We took him to my old station wagon. And we drove him around America. I will always remember his words, ‘I see it, Kate!” he said, “I see it!” He died three days later.
My Russian friend had the courage to leave his little room even when he knew that he was going to die, to see the light even though it hurt his eyes. We need to have the same courage, the courage to forgive, to be released from bondage.
Our country has always had this remarkable spirit, this remarkable gift of freedom and creativity, the ability to make something new and inventive in the midst of chaos and uncertainty. Jesus tells us to lift up our cross and follow him. That means that we are not to forget 9-11 but to let it become part of who we are. We are to define ourselves not by our hatred but by our ability to step out in the future. To lift it up and remember it as a day on which everything changed for us.
This is a day of remembrance. We will toll bells for those who died. It is also a day of hope, for there will come a time when we will stop bickering with each other and remember who we really are. There will come a day when we are ready to join hands again and step out into the light.
I don’t know when or how forgiveness happens. It is a gift from God. You know when you have forgiven, it just happens to you, from within. Suddenly, you are no longer afraid. I pray for that day, for all of us, when we can join hands once again and together step into the
