It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over: Doing the Hard 'Math' of Forgiveness (a sermon delivered on the 10th anniversary of 9/11)

[Peter asked Jesus] “How often should I forgive? As many as seven times?"

Jesus said to him, "Not seven times, but...77 times.

          – Matthew 18:21-22

     Good old Peter: blunt as a brick and twice as dense. When Jesus starts teaching his disciples about forgiveness, Peter goes straight to the bottom line.

     “How many times?” Peter wants to know, “Seven times ought to be enough, right?” Which, roughly translated, means, “How long ‘til I’m done? Or “When is it over?”

     Jesus’ reply takes it to the next level…and beyond.  Literally translated, it could mean seven times seven, seventy plus seven, or seventy times seven.  But I think the best translation might be, “Peter, Peter, Peter… It ain’t over ‘till it’s over.”

     Ten years ago today we all became victims – victims of suffering and death, violence and rage, hate and despair, loss and mourning, our own and others’, our country and the world.  Everybody lost something on that day.  And we’ve all been struggling with it ever since. And not just us, but the whole world. Nearly 3,000 people died on that day: people from the U.S. and over 90 countries. Over 50,000 have died over the last ten years as a direct result of 9/11 – friends, foes, and those in between – each sending out ripples of loss through fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, husbands and wives, friends and colleagues, lovers and fiancés.

     Speaking of fiancés, a few days ago I heard a story on the radio the story of one of those thousands of people: a man who lost his fiancé in the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. His name was John Milton Wesley; hers was Sarah Clarke. He was director of communications for the Baltimore Housing Authority. She was teacher with the D.C. schools. Friends for two decades, they had been dating for seven years, and had recently become engaged. On Sunday, September 9, they went out and bought their wedding rings. Two days later, Tuesday morning, they kissed goodbye, and she left their Columbia, Maryland home for Dulles Airport to chaperon a group of children going to a science conference in Santa Barbara, California…never to return. Her bench now lies at the north end of the memorial to the 183 people who died when American Airlines Flight 77 was flown into the Pentagon.

     John’s life since then has been profoundly influenced by his loss. Some parts of it seem frozen in time: engagement ring still on the dresser where she laid it, keyboard still in the same corner where she played it, same bottles in the wine rack, rooms of the house still painted the same yellow, orange, and blue that she chose. He still reads the Bible every morning at the same time they used to before she left; still comes home precisely at 5:00pm. So many things he has held on to so very tightly.  Letting go was so nearly impossible to bear that he could have easily gotten stuck there, imprisoned by his own laser-like focus on his lost love. And yet it was that very same focus that began to set him free: free to live and to grow, rather than just exist in stasis.  Every morning, when he woke up, he would ask Sarah, “What do you want me to do today?”  

     And he got answers. “Go back to church” was the first thing she told him. “Start working with children,” was the next. Then it was “Get closer to your family.” The thing that really go him going was, “Get back involved with your music.”  Since then he’s composed more than 40 songs, some about loss, some about making the best of every moment, some about both at once. The cumulative effect was that over time Wesley started to allow other people get close to him again: most recently, a woman named Gladys.  He asked Sarah about that, too.  That very night he dreamed about Sarah, and she was laughing and smiling and telling him how good he looked. It says it was as if she were telling him “I can go now…you can let me go.”  And that’s when he realized that it was important to let her go “to her new life,” as he put it, “in the place that she is when she’s not here with me.”

     “How often should I forgive? Seven times?”

     “No. Seventy times seven.”

     You might think that the story I just told you is not about forgiveness, but about coming to terms with loss. But I tell you that all forgiveness is about coming to terms with loss: of letting go of that which was taken from us, of loosening our grip on our grievances – of acknowledging and feeling and ultimately releasing our anger at those we hold responsible for our losses:  the perpetrators, obviously, but also at some unexpected suspects:  at ourselves for not figuring out a way to avoid it, at our lost loved ones for leaving us behind, and ultimately at God, in whom we all live and move and have our being, but in whom we now wonder if we can trust.

     “How often should I forgive? Seven times?”

     “No. Seventy times seven.”

     My spiritual director once told me “the most damaging thing to your spiritual health is a justified grievance.” And it all has to do with anger. In and of itself anger is neither a bad thing nor a good thing; it just is. The good and the bad of anger lies in we do with it. If we own it and feel it and openly acknowledge it, it can be a cleansing thing, both for us and for others. But if we hold on to it – nursing it and speaking to it and telling it that it is justified (even if it is…especially if it is) – then it becomes a consuming fire that rages uncontrolled from person to person, stealing the life from ourselves and everything we touch, and leaving nothing but ashes and dust.

     “How often should I forgive? Seven times?”

     “No. Seventy times seven.”

     Do not think that I am saying forgiveness is quick and easy…

     “I forgive you.”  Those three little words may sound simple, but they are only easy to say if you don’t mean them. Forgiveness is a hard work of the heart: not a “one-off” proposition, but an action that has to be repeated again and again, as our anger resurfaces again and again. And forgiveness is not something that one person can tell another person to do, but something that only the victims can decide for themselves, and even then only as they come to understand how holding on to their grievances is warping their lives.

     “How often should I forgive? Seven times?”

     “No. Seventy times seven.”

     In fact, if we take Jesus at his “proverbial” word, forgiveness is the work of a lifetime and impossible to do on our own. But the more we experience of Christ’s love for us and experience God’s forgiveness of us, the more we become able to love and forgive. And the more we are able to pass along that love and forgiveness – to each other, to our families and friends, to our neighbors and colleagues, and even, as Jesus said, to those who hate us and wish us evil – the more we are doing the work God has given us to do: the work of reconciling the world to God and setting its people free from hate: one by one, one person at a time, starting with ourselves.

This sermon was delivered on 9/11/11 at St. Nicholas Church, 15575 Germantown Road, Darnestown, Maryland - www.saintnicks.com