Ten Years Ago Today

 Today it’s ten years since the bombing of the Twin Towers in New York.  As with other pivotal events in history, many of us remember exactly where we were or what we were doing when we first realized what was happening and became glued to the horrifying images on the nearest television screen.  I was in my first year of working as a counsellor, specifically as an Intern in the counselling program of the theological seminary where I studied for my Master’s degree in counselling psychology.

With such an impressive-sounding credential almost complete, you’d think I’d have known how to respond to the shock and horror expressed by the people I was counselling and the students I was supervising.  And I did try as hard as I could to be that balanced and stable presence that everyone was seeking that day.  But, whenever I had a break, even just a few minutes to myself, I closed my office door and cried.  I wanted to pray but had no idea what to pray.  Like everyone else that day, I was stunned, horrified, and afraid at the way the whole world had changed in just a few minutes of evil.

I think now that it was a good thing that I didn’t know how to respond anymore than my clients and students did.  This was an event that no one could have known the “right” response to.  Actually, in our shock and our grief, we all had the only response that made any sense at all.  By the end of the day I was telling my students exactly that; that tears, grief, horror, and incomprehension were the only appropriate responses and sharing our feelings was the only way to get a little comfort.

Ironically, the readings of the liturgical calendar for today are all about God’s forgiveness and graciousness.  In the first reading we heard that “anger and wrath … are abominations yet a sinner holds on to them.”  It’s easy for me to apply those words to the terrorists who crashed their planes into the Twin towers and the people who planned those cruel actions.  I am quite sure that God must hate the anger and wrath that fueled those evil, vengeful actions.  Certainly I still feel the hurt and the grief of that terrible day ten years ago.

Ah, does that mean that I am being angry and wrathful, that I am harbouring in my heart the bitterness and desire for vengeance?  If I’m honest, I must admit that I wanted those terrorists to be caught and punished for what they did to the world.  For a time I felt that the United States and the American people were justified in any response they chose over the next few months and years.  Even when I suspected that vengeance was the prime motivation, I found it hard to disagree with their choices.  Then how am I going to reconcile the words of today’s psalm,

            “[God] will not always accuse,

            nor will he keep his anger forever.

            He does not deal with us according to our sins,

            nor repay us according to our iniquities.”  (Ps 103)

with my hard heart that wants vengeance for the crimes of 911?

I most certainly like the lines that promise that God will be merciful to me and won’t treat me as I deserve for my pettiness, my anger, my lack of forgiveness, and my unfaithfulness to love.  I fear that I am too much like the steward of today’s Gospel reading who, when he was forgiven a great debt by his master, went out and refused forgiveness to another who owed him a smaller debt.

And all of these uncomfortable thoughts put me in mind of another parable of Christ’s in which several groups of workers were hired at different parts of the day to work in a landowner’s field but, at the end of the day, they were all paid the same wage, whether they had worked the whole day or only an hour.  The landowner basically tells the complainers (those who thought they deserved more for working the whole day) that it’s none of their business what he does with his money; they got what he had promised them, so they had nothing to complain about.

In the same way, it’s none of my business how God deals with the people responsible for 911.  It will be difficult at times to remember that I have no right to revenge and I’m only responsible for my attitudes and my sinfulness.  I deserve no greater reward in heaven than the terrorist who may have repented at the last minute before he crashed the plane into the wall of the tower.   Actually, it’s my job to hope that he did repent and to rejoice if I think he’s in heaven! 

            “For as the heavens are high above the earth,

            so great is his steadfast love

            toward those who fear him;

            as far as the east is from the west,

            so far he removes our transgressions from us.”  (Ps 103)

Many years ago, when I was probably only about ten or twelve years old, my mother was talking to me about God’s mercy, probably in response to one of my never-ending questions about things religious and philosophical.  “I wonder what we’ll do,” she said, “if we arrive in heaven and find that Hitler is there.”  I’ve never forgotten her wise words, words that gave me a real way to think about the immensity of God’s mercy and forgiveness and how God's ways really are very different from ours. 

Today, remembering 911, and hearing the challenge of the liturgical readings we might well say, “I wonder what we’ll do if we arrive in heaven and find those terrorists there?”  Do we get upset at the thought?   Maybe we think that if those terrorists could achieve eternal bliss with God, then we deserve an even greater reward because we’ve never done anything that bad, we’ve lived kinder and gentler lives.  If so, are we any different from the steward who was so blind to the gift he received he could think only of how to get more out of someone else?  Perhaps we’re a little more like those fieldworkers in the other parable than we realize.

And that's our challenge as Christians: to outgrow our human insistence on our own standards of fairness and justice and let God be God.  As long we keep God in a box of our own making we are actually taking over from God and deciding how things should be settled.  That's a responsibility that I don't want ... do you?