When Will the Lord Come Back?

     I always feel sorry for people who predict the end of the world.   It happens once every couple of years.  Somebody has a prophesy that the Lord is coming back, and we are all in trouble.  The specific predictions always seem to fail, and the prophet looks silly for a little while, until we all get on to something else.

     Generally the comments of Paul in Thessalonians is mentioned in these predictions, about how we who are alive will rise to meet the Lord in the air.  This has come to be called the "rapture", and it is taken at face value by a number of fundamentalist Christians.  Here is another example of how a fragment of scripture can be taken out of context and a whole doctrine built around it.

     Paul's intent in that Thessalonian letter is to provide hope for those people.  He begins the passage with those wonderful words:  We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters about those who have died, so that you do not grieve as others who have no hope.  That is the point that Paul wants to make in all that follows; how at the trumpet call of God, the dead will rise first, and then we who are left will rise to meet the Lord in the air.  Paul was not attempting to create absolute doctrine here, he was offering hope to those who worried about the people who had died and were grieving for them.

     Grief is something that we all have experienced from time to time.  A few years ago when our little dog died, the veterinarian who put her down sent us a lovely poem about "the rainbow bridge", where she is waiting for us.  You have probably all read it, it is a fantasy about how our pets go on after death.  Our vet's sending us that poem was an attempt to console us at the loss of our dog, to somehow mitigate our grief.  It was a thoughtful thing to do, and it helped.  That is also the intent of the funeral services that we have for our loved ones who have died, that we can be consoled by knowing that God receives and loves those whom we have lost, and that many others in our community share our grief; also that the time will come when we will join them in eternity.  Comfort is what we all need in the middle of our grief.

     Loss is never easy.  One of the main reasons that we have community is to have people present for us in our losses and in our joys because loss is inevitable and joy is always to be yearned for and needs to be shared.  What an incredible help community is in providing comfort to us in the middle of these times.

     On All Saint's Sunday, we sang that powerful hymn "For all the Saints, who from their labors rest".  I have come to know all eight verses of that hymn by heart because of the large number of clergy funerals that I have attended.  It is usually sung as the processional at those events and I have always been comforted by the hymn's images, which are all about community; how we are all together in life's struggle and how we will continue in community even after our death.  The last verse is a magnificent tribute to inclusion:  From earth's wide bounds, from ocean's farthest coast, through gates of pearl, stream in the countless host, singing to Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Alleluia!  What more could we ask for in the loving inclusiveness of God for all of us?  In life and in death, that is what our relationship with God is all about.

     In his book "The Great Divorce", which is a kind of answer to William Blake's "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell", C. S. Lewis talks about how the people in the "Grey City", which is essentially Hell, get on a bus to go to Heaven.  When they get there, they often see people whom they don't think ought to be there and so they get back on the bus to go back to the Grey City, where nobody has a relationship with anybody and it rains all the time.  It is a good book and it makes a powerful point.  None of us really understands what Heaven is all about, even though we yearn for it and want above all things for our loved ones who have died to be there.

     At the beginning of Matthew's Gospel, Jesus tells the story of the ten bridesmaids and their lamps. Five had lamps as well as oil for them, and five had only the lamps.  When the shout of the coming of the bridegroom was heard, all of them trimmed their lamps.  The ones without oil asked the others to share their oil with them.  The others said that there wouldn't be enough for all of them if they did that, and to go and buy some.  While they were away buying oil, the bridegroom came and the wedding banquet started.  When the foolish bridesmaids came back the doors were locked and the banquet had started and they couldn't get in.  The story ends with the admonishment to "keep awake, for no one knows the day or the hour".

     Now, I can argue with the story.  Why would the bridesmaids not share their oil, and why not let all of them into the banquet?  That seems to me to be more in line with Jesus' teaching that the Love of God extends to all of us; but that destroys the point of the story, which is to remind us all to keep awake and to keep looking for the return of the Lord to this earth.  That is what I think is at the heart of the message of those "predictors" of the rapture.  They, like all of us, want the Lord to come back so that Justice and Mercy will rule in this world where there is so much misery and hardship.

     At the end of the Book of Revelation, when finally the story is told and is at an end, comes that very special word Marenatha, come Lord Jesus, come quickly.  That, in the end is what we all really want, for God's will to finally be done on earth as it is in Heaven.

Humbling and Exalting

     In 1983, when we visited the Holy Land, we landed in Amman, Jordan and entered the West Bank by way of the Allenby bridge over the Jordan River.  Israeli soldiers entered our bus halfway across the bridge, looked us over carefully and directed us to continue to the entry building.  There, we were frisked, our luggage was opened and checked, much more than in our airports today and we continued our journey to Jericho.

     It was an eye-opening experience for us in terms of the animosity that then existed, and still exists in the Middle East.  When we were in Israel, our passports weren't stamped.  Instead, the Israeli stamp was on a slip of paper inserted into them, which was removed when we left the country by way of Rafah at the extreme southern end of Gaza, when we entered Egypt.

     When we were crossing the Allenby bridge, I thought of Joshua and the horde of Hebrews, led by the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant crossing the Jordan river on dry ground by the will of God just as Moses had led the people out of Egypt on the dry ground of the Red Sea.  Here we were, crossing the river at another time of conflict, trying to comprehend what all sides were feeling in this seemingly endless dispute.

     What we found in 1983 was turmoil.  While we were in that country, terrorists bombed the United States Embassy in Beirut and it wasn't long before our marines were pulled out of there.  Palestinians and Israelis were at loggerheads over their territories, and they still are.  The Jordan river still flows under that bridge to the Dead Sea and the two sides (or are there three?) are still fighting over the same territory.  Will there ever be an end to this struggle?  Will the United Nations recognize Palestine as a member country and will Israel end its entanglement with these people?  It certainly isn't likely.

     Radical Orthodox Israelis keep the pot boiling over what they believe to be God's great gift to the Hebrew people through Moses.  It is almost impossible to talk to anyone about the political situation with the religious overlay that infuses itself, sometimes only subtly into any discussion.  People on both sides want to talk about freedom, justice and mercy, but quickly all of that is submerged in the religious expectations that are never quite laid on the table.

     It is dangerous for us to take sides in this dispute.  Jewish lobbies in this country heavily influence how congress thinks, and one crosses them at one's peril.  All of us know this, but we put it aside as the dispute rages on.

     In Matthew's Gospel, Jesus is talking to his followers about the extreme religious leaders in his time.  He talks about how they prance up and down with their broad phylacteries and their long fringes to show how religious they are.  "Listen to them", says Jesus, "but do not do as they do, because they don't practice what they preach"  We all know the truth of that.  Over the years, I have had some extreme religious people in my congregations.  They were always harsh judges of other people and didn't always practice the religion that they preached.

      Certainty is a terrible affliction.  It blinds us to our own failings and makes us sure of the failings of those around us.  It is the reason that we are afraid to love one another.  First, they have to change, then we will love them.  But change is not what God is asking us to require of our neighbors.  God says simply, "Love one another, as I have loved you."  That love comes from God without requirement.  It is the love that makes us change.  It is our love for one another that will produce change in our society.

     We have countless examples of this.  Martin Luther King took his crusade for human rights all over this country.  Who can forget his great speech at the Lincoln Memorial when he spoke of his great dream.    How all of us, white and black, will walk together hand in hand and this nation will be knit together in harmony.  He spoke like Moses, looking over the promised land from the top of Mt. Nebo, and like Moses, he died before reaching that exalted place, which we are still striving to reach.  But King's example is ever before us.  Because of what he did and what he made us look at in ourselves, African-Americans, women, gays and many others have the benefit of possibilities that he created with his life and his mission.

      This church continues to move forward in mission today because of the work and leadership of those who are not afraid of God's call to us to be inclusive.  Jesus told his disciples that those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.  That will always be true, especially for those who listen to the Gospel and follow where Jesus leads us.  May God continue to bless us on this journey.

Loving One Another Isn't Always Easy

     There is a lot of discussion in the media about the Occupy Wall Street protests, mostly agonizing about what it is that they want.   It seems to me that the media is mostly blind to what is going on.  But let's look for a moment a what these protesters want.  The answers to this are varied, but add up to the same thing:  they want the top one percent of those in power to stop controlling the rest of the country.

     That isn't hard to understand.  Certainly there are some strange people involved in the protests, enough to provide some humor for us all; but the essence of it all is economic:  how to get the homeless off the street, and find ways to provide jobs for the many, many unemployed people who are trying to find a way to provide for their families.  The fact that the media and the politicians don't quite get it is more of a symptom than a problem.  Actually, it is somewhat amusing to see the well fed pundits and politicians criticizing the occupiers, because what they really want is for things to stay the same as they are and for all of the troublemakers to disappear.  Their own welfare is tied to an economy that has shut out many people and allowed the profit to rise for the one percent who control the money.

      At the Republican debate this week, Herman Cain lambasted the protesters.  He said, "Don't blame Wall Street.  If you don't have a job and if you aren't rich, blame yourself!"  There is the problem in a nutshell.  The powerful don't understand, and they don't want to understand.

     In Matthew's Gospel, the Pharisees confronted Jesus after he had silenced the Sadducees.  The Pharisees were the ones who kept the law perfectly and looked down their noses at everyone who didn't, according to their own judgment.  They asked Jesus, "Which commandment in the law is the greatest?"  Jesus answered them with a sentence that has become what we call The Summary of the Law:

     "Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, your soul and your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment, and the second is like unto it, love your neighbor as a person like yourself.  On these two commandments, hang all the law and the prophets."


     There, again in a nutshell, Jesus gives us the law and teaches us to love one another as ourselves.  The gospel says that the Pharisees eventually shut up and didn't ask him any more questions.  That seems to be wise of them, but they were simply biding their time, waiting to bring Jesus up on charges, which they certainly did before Herod and Pilate before crucifying him on Good Friday.  Their charges were that Jesus didn't keep the law, preached heresy and rebellion among the people.  Certainly he did some of these things, but his teaching is so wonderful about God's attempt to get creation back to the way that it was intended from the beginning.

     If we would simply pay attention to what Jesus told us about the law we would be almost there.  He asked us to "love one another as we love ourselves"  That is simple enough, isn't it?  Certainly we do a lot for the poor, we contribute to food banks and other charities that take care of human need, but that isn't all that we are being asked to do.  Loving our neighbor as ourselves means not only the person afar by also the person near.  The one who lives beside you on your street, or who sits in the pew next to you or behind you.  Jesus would like us to make this loving as personal as possible.  That we have failed in this is demonstrably obvious.  But every once in a while we are reminded about our obligation to love one another.

     At Trinity Cathedral a number of years ago, we had a funeral for a man who was then our suffragan bishop.  All of the clergy were there, the pews were filled from front to back.  When the time came for communion, the family left their pews to go to the altar to receive.   Down the center aisle came a bedraggled person dressed essentially in rags, a Pittsburgh street person.  He settled into the pew that had been vacated by the family.  Quickly, ushers in tails and cravats moved him out of there.  He then went into one of the pews that were vacated by the clergy who had then gone to the altar to receive the sacrament.  Again, the ushers moved him out of there and he walked unsteadily down the aisle.

     There was an empty pew between the clergy and the lay people.  Here he settled, but the problem wasn't over.  Two priests came down to give communion to a woman in the first row of the laity.  Again the ushers moved the man out, and he worked his way farther down the aisle.  As he was moving in the church somebody asked, "Who is that man?"  Quickly the answer was almost whispered, "It is the Lord"

     When we left the church in procession, I saw him in a pew on the end near the back of the church where he had found a place.  He never gave up.  If that wasn't the Lord who came into the cathedral that day, it was a close approximation.  He went to all of the places where he couldn't be accommodated but eventually found a place to be comfortable.  He stayed among us and never left.   I have thanked God for that experience that day more times than you can imagine.  I learned a lot from it about how it is that we receive one another.  Our Lord comes to us in curious garb sometimes.  It is always important for us to receive him.  He may be sitting next to you now.  What are you going to do about it?

About Golden Calves

      We have protests going on on Wall Street even as we speak. People are camping out in a nearby park, the police are thickly patrolling and the signs abound.  The signs speak eloquently sometimes of greed and ask how long the merchants of wealth will forget the people who are without jobs and enough money to pay their mortgages.

      There certainly is a profound worship of money in this country.  It is almost as if some of the lawmakers and the corporate giants are lusting after the nineteenth and early twentieth century, when greed abounded.  When the poor were forgotten in an era of absolutely unchecked corporate avarice.  There is a shamelessness about it.  Many of the commentators seem to be afraid to call this avarice for what it is as they kowtow to the CEOs.   There are many others who seem to be enamored of those who create wealth for the few at the expense of the many.

     The excesses of the past were dealt with by creating government regulations that reined in the greed and established in the New Deal years of the Roosevelt administration programs such as Social Security for those of retirement age and jobs through the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps for those who were hopelessly out of work in the throes of the Great Depression.  In the Sixties,  under the Great Society, Medicare was established for the elderly who are in need of health care.

      That was a more compassionate time.  Our hearts were more open to care for those in need and we weren't so afraid of our own welfare.  It seems in our time, we have lost our focus on the poor and the outcast, and our economy is in despair that consumes our political parties in endless confrontation and debate.  We have skyrocketing unemployment and jobs being exported overseas at an alarming rate.  When was the last time that you called on the phone for help and didn't get someone from Mumbai to answer your questions?

     When Moses went up on Mount Sinai to receive the Tablets of the Law from God, his brother Aaron was left in charge of the Hebrews at the foot of the mountain.  Aaron told the people to bring their rings and their ear bobs and other gold to him.  He melted it all down and created a golden calf which was erected before the people.  "Here is our god," said the people as they worshiped the calf.

     Up on the mountain, Moses was told by God that his people were behaving shamelessly and that He was about to destroy them for their disobedience.  Moses pleaded with God to withhold his wrath from the  people.  He then went down the mountain and confronted the Hebrews with their insubordination and their flaunting of Moses' rules.  Moses had after all told the people that it was the Lord God who had brought them out of Egypt, and the people had seen the might of God in the destruction of the Egyptian army at the Red Sea and the parting of the waters to allow the tribes to cross over on dry land.  There had also been manna provided for the people to eat when they were hungry and water from the rock for them when they were thirsty.  Now, when Moses was away, they created and worshiped a false god with impunity.

     If all of this sounds quaint and strange to you, look at our own behavior.  The reason that people are protesting on Wall Street is because of the same worship of gold that infected the Hebrew people in the absence of Moses.  We have created a new god to worship who is more tangible than the Holy God who brought us all out of misery and gave us this bright new land.  We even want to restrict immigration because we are afraid of dark skinned people taking over our jobs in this difficult economic time.  We are not a bit different from the Hebrews at the foot of Mount Sinai.  We love our wealth and we are afraid of those who have a lot of it.

     The Wall Street bankers made a lot of mistakes when the various bubbles burst, but they were bailed out by the government.  Now many people are making noises about taxing the rich.  Those who oppose this call them "job creators" although there is little evidence that any jobs have been created.  They want the government to reduce spending by cutting programs, even Social Security and Medicare, which makes people very nervous.  They even want regulations that restrict corporations reduced or eliminated so that the lust for wealth can continue unchecked.

     We live in a frightening time.  What needs to be the response of Christianity to this mess?  I would suggest that remembering Jesus' command to us to care for the poor and the outcast is primary to our lives and to the worship of the God whom we all profess to love.  Keeping the rich happy is not a part of God's agenda, nor should it be a part of ours.  Giving of a part of ourselves and what we have to help our neighbors is God's command to us.  Above all other considerations, we need to take that seriously.  Political considerations are not at all a part of God's plan.  We have been told what to do.  The agenda is clear.  We simply need to be about this critical work.

The Cornerstone of the Kingdom

     I loved to ask my confirmation classes to put the Ten Commandments in order of their importance.  Not killing usually came in first, followed closely by not stealing.  Coveting generally came in last, with adultery somewhere in the middle.  Sometimes I would have to explain to them what "coveting" and "adultery" meant, though the second one always produced snickers.

     The purpose of all of this was to create a discussion about the Law, why we have it,  and what it means for all of us.

     The Ten Commandments was the first of God's attempts to set our creation right; to reproduce the purity that was lost when Adam and Eve listened to the serpent and acquired the ability to know about good and evil, an acquisition that has plagued us ever since.  God wanted to establish a set of principles that we could follow to make this world a better place; to return God's creation to the way that it was intended to be from the first.

     We love to enshrine the Ten Commandments in stone, to hang them up in court rooms and outside schools; to embroider them and create wall plaques with them prominent.  We all know the value of the commandments very well.  The problem is that we can't keep them.     

     When it became obvious to God that we couldn't keep the commandments, God sent us the prophets, who pointed out to us how we have failed to keep the law and be the people of God.  The Pharisees in Jesus' time believed that they kept the law perfectly and they despised those whom they believed didn't keep it very well.  They accused the disciples of Jesus of breaking the law when they cut grain on the Sabbath because of their need; and accused Jesus of breaking the law when he healed on that day, even though the healing brought great good to the people who needed it.

     Not honoring the commandments was one of the charges leveled against Jesus when he was arrested and brought before Herod and Pilate.  The parable that Jesus tells the Pharisees and the Chief Priests follows right on the heels of the story that he told them earlier in the Gospel about the two sons who both obeyed and disobeyed their father.  Both of these stories are aimed right at the religious leaders.

     The parable tells the story of the father who sent his servants to the tenants of the vineyard to receive the produce.  The tenants beat one of them and killed another, so the owner sent another group of servants to the tenants.  They did the same thing to the second group.  He then sent his son to the tenants, but the tenants conspire to throw the son out of the vineyard and kill him because he is the heir to the vineyard.

     Jesus asks his hearers, "now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what do you think he will do to those tenants?"  They answered Jesus, "he will put those tenants to a miserable death and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at harvest time"  Jesus then asked them if they had read in the scriptures, "how the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, and the Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to people who produce the fruits of the Kingdom."


     The gospel goes on to say that the chief priests and the Pharisees heard those parables and realized that Jesus was talking about them.  They wanted to arrest him, but were afraid of the crowds, who thought that Jesus was a prophet.

     So there, in this parable, we have the whole story of how God tried to perfect his Kingdom:  first, we have the Law, the Ten Commandments.  When God knew that we couldn't keep them, the prophets were sent to remind us of our responsibility to our God.  When we didn't listen to the prophets, God sent Jesus, his Son, and as it says in the parable, we threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

     Now, what is God going to do to us?

     The wonder of the story of the crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection is the incredible mercy of God to all of us who participated in that event.   We crucify Jesus just about every day of our lives in the way that we disobey God and his law.  Despite that, we have God's mercy before us as the enduring proof of God's eternal Love.

     Jesus forgave from the cross those who crucified him.  That in itself is astounding, but forgiveness is the cornerstone on which the Kingdom of God is built.

     I worked in Western Penitentiary for twenty-two years as a part time chaplain.  I had a man in my group who had killed a woman about ten years before I met him.  He had a life sentence without any possibility of ever getting out of prison.   He wouldn't talk about his crime in group, although the purpose of the group was to create enough trust to allow that to happen.

     One day, he got a letter from the parents of his victim.  They wanted to come to see him.  We talked about that letter in group and decided that it was important for him to honor their request.  When the day came for the visit, he went to the visiting room and found the father and the mother of his victim.

     "We have come to forgive you," said the father.  "Please know that this comes after years of anguish over the death of our daughter, but we need to bury her and get on with our lives.  Let me tell you how serious we are.  When you were being transferred from the county jail to the court house for your trial, I was on a roof down the street with a rifle.  I wanted to kill you.  But I couldn't do it, so we have come here to forgive you, and as much as it is possible to put this terrible thing to rest, and get on with our lives."


     My group member came back to us with his story.  Over the succeeding weeks, it became apparent that their forgiveness had changed his life.  He talked about his crime and got on with his life behind bars in a different, much less bitter way.  Forgiveness changed him and it changed that family, as it is supposed to do.  It really is the foundation on which the Kingdom of God is built.

     May God's blessing be upon you and may God's forgiveness become the cornerstone of your lives.

What is the mission of the Church?

     When Rosie and I were in Jordan a number of years ago, we visited Petra, a stone city in the south of the country.  We rode donkeys down a long trail through cliffs until we came to the carved tombs where the Nabataen pirates buried their dead.  Legend has it that these cliffs were the place where Moses struck the rock to provide water for the tribe of Hebrews who were on their way to the promised land who were both hungry and thirsty and who were blaming Moses for bringing them out of Egypt simply to perish in the desert.

     Legend is a chancy thing; who knows if this story is true as it stands, or if Petra was even the place where it all happened, but it was wonderful for us to be there and to think of the Hebrews preceding us there.

     There is a lot of experience in our collective past, experience that speaks of a closeness with God.  A closeness that we don't notice so often today.  We have become much more self sufficient and need God's help in less critical ways.

     Those who sleep in doorways or under our bridges who are without homes and jobs are still hungry and thirsty and need God's help in very specific ways.  They pray that their primary needs will be filled.  I think that is our task and our ministry in this terribly broken world.  To touch the poor and the outcast with the healing touch of God is the highest calling to which we can aspire.

     Often it is the outreach portion of the parish budget that feels the ax most quickly when we need to find balance.  We only have so much resource, we say and the electric bills are so high and we have all of this real estate that we have acquired, and outreach after all is discretionary spending, isn't it?

     That is certainly true as far as it goes, but the problem is that the outreach is the reason that we are here.  It is the reason for the electric bill and the real estate and indeed all that we have.  We are here to make a difference in God's world for God's people.  It is certainly clear enough in all of our scripture that the poor and the outcast are the primary object of God's concern.  Jesus held them up constantly as those whom he favored.  He chose his disciples from among the common people.  Some of them were fishermen, one at least a tax-collector, and all of them were simply people looking for something beyond themselves.  Jesus pointed to the needy as the object of his ministry and instructed all of us to pay attention to them.

     He healed, he taught and constantly urged his followers to pay attention to the people around them who were in need.  Like the Hebrews who were hungry and thirsty in the desert, Jesus' stories are instructive to us.  There is the one about the widow who puts her "mite" in the box while the religious leaders put in much more of their wealth.  He says that she has given all that she has, while the others put in a pittance.

     In Matthew 25, Jesus talks about the sheep and the goats.  The sheep are the ones who feed and clothe him when he needs it and care for him when he is sick or in prison.  The goats simply pass him by.  It is honestly very hard to understand why Christianity hasn't gotten the message in all of its more than two thousand years.

     When we were in England, we visited many, many cathedrals.  These were beautiful buildings that had the effect of increasing my faith.   The dedication of the workers at Salisbury in the eleventh century is astounding.  They built that place as an offering to God.  In Yorkshire, there is a place called Fountains Abbey, a place that was built about the same time by a group of monks who were caring for the poor in that area.  Eventually, the abbey fell to ruin, but it remains one of the most spiritual places that we visited on our trip.

     Down the road about two miles is Ripon Cathedral, a modern church trying to be a Christian center in a time when Christianity is becoming increasingly out of favor.  It occurred to me that the only difference between Ripon Cathedral and Fountains Abbey is that both are ruins, but one doesn't know it yet.

     In the twenty-first chapter of Matthew, the Pharisees ask Jesus by what authority he does his work.   Jesus asks them in turn if the baptism of John was inspired by heaven, or if it was of human origin.   Sensing a trap, the Pharisees tell Jesus that they don't know.  Jesus then tells them the story of the man who had two sons.  He told the first to go to work in the vineyard.  The son said that he wouldn't, but later changed his mind and went and worked.  The second son told him that we would go and work, but didn't do anything at all.  "Which of these did the will of the father", Jesus asked.  "The first", replied the Pharisees.



     That mission hasn't changed one bit in all of the years since.  We are still called to be the visible face of God in this world.   That mission involves not only our real estate and our electric bill, but primarily our outreach.  And God will bless richly what we do.

Forgiveness and 9/11

     When I hear that powerful story of the crossing of the Red Sea by the Hebrews, with Moses stretching out his staff to part the waters, I think of Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments, and I smile to myself because it is such a wonderful image; standing above it all with his arm straight out, his beard giving him a gruff appearance, and his stentorian voice leaving no doubt that he will save his people.  Computers today would make that scene even more realistic, but what they did in that movie was enough.  It almost became  a caricature, but it certainly stuck in our minds.  I almost felt sorry for the Egyptian soldiers who were drowned in the sea, but in the biblical economy, the lives of oppressors don't have much traction, especially in the Old Testament.  God is always smiting Philistines, Edomites and others who have created havoc in the lives of those whom God loves.  Those are people we have a hard time forgiving for anything that they did.

     We are in the process of commemorating the tenth anniversary of the events of September 11, 200l, 9/11 as it has become so vividly known to all of us.  On that day airliners smashed into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon, and into a field in Shanksville, PA, killing over three thousand people.

     I'll never forget where I was on that day and neither will most of us.  I was returning from taking the dog for a walk.  The television set was on and the first plane had just hit the North Tower.  In that brief interval, we thought that it had been some kind of terrible accident.  In moments, the second plane hit and then there was no doubt at all about what had happened.  This was something infinitely larger.  Then the third and fourth planes crashed and we knew that there had been a monstrous attack.  None of us will ever forget that day and the feelings that mounted up inside us.  As the days went on, these became feelings of grief and anger and also gratitude for the first responders and the New York firefighters and police who gave of themselves without question.

     But for our anger, we wanted revenge.  That is what took us into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and fueled what we so blithely call the "war on terror", as if terror is an enemy that can somehow be defeated by our military.  Our reaction to this terrible day has changed all of us and has changed our country.  We have lashed out at Muslims and become paranoid about air travel and immigration.  We turned on each other and have created sometimes ridiculous scrutiny of persons entering buildings or boarding aircraft.  All of this seemed perfectly understandable, we have been under threat and our government has been trying to keep us all safe, even if in the process, it has created considerable inconvenience for us all.  How else could we have responded?  It was a horrible day for everyone.   The stories of people falling from the buildings, the charred bodies, the sifting dust all over everything.  We have carried those feelings with us every day for these past ten years, and we have hated with a passion those who created those events.

     I think that our passion has erupted in the terrible disagreements that we have had in our political system over so many things in recent times.  If we can't quite forgive the perpetrators of 9/11, can't we find a way to forgive one another?  That is what I believe lies at the heart of our problem.

     I was disturbed at the recent Republican debate when moderator Brian Williams asked Governor Rick Perry of Texas about the 234 executions in his state, that the audience erupted in spontaneous applause at the question.  Applause not for the confrontation, but for the executions!  What is the matter with us?  Have we become so callous that the deaths of so many people can be met with applause?

     Jesus has a parable for us in the eighteenth chapter of Matthew's Gospel.  I am somewhat startled to see in this parable that those who don't forgive others are destined for the same fate as the Egyptian soldiers in the Red Sea.  Peter asks Jesus a question:  "Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how many times should I forgive, as many as seven times?"  Jesus replies to him: "Not seven times, Peter, but seventy times seven!" An exaggeration that simply means infinity.  He tells them a story about a servant who was forgiven an enormous debt by his master who then goes out and refuses to forgive a small debt by a fellow servant.  The master hears of this and throws the first servant into prison to be tortured until he pays the whole of his debt to him.  Jesus goes on to tell his disciples that is how we will all be treated unless we learn to forgive one another.   That is a particularly difficult parable for all of us, especially in light of our feelings about 9/11.  What we are taught by this is God's absolute priority for forgiveness.  Not only does God forgive us for what we do and what we are, but he expects us also to forgive each other.  As we say in our confession, "we have not forgiven others as we have been forgiven, we are truly sorry and we humbly repent."  But forgiveness isn't easy, it is one of the hardest things that we do in our lives.  Forgiveness is most times the last thing that we want to do.

     But the truth of forgiveness is that it isn't for the person whom we forgive.  It for us.   We are the reason that we need so desperately to forgive.  If our lives are to be more free, more clear, we need to put aside those things that so terribly divide us, not only between nations and cultures, but between each other.  That is only way that we can help our God to build his Kingdom.