By Rev. Robin Martin
Interim Rector
This past Wednesday morning I went to my local CVS to get my flu shot. As I signed in, the young woman said, in response to my question about the date, “September eleventh.” Instantly, each of exclaimed, “Oh!” in mutual recognition of what that meant. It was, of course, the thirteenth anniversary of one of those times in human history when most everyone who was old enough and aware enough can remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard what was happening, first in New York, then in Washington and rural Pennsylvania. Unlike times like Pearl Harbor Day on December 7 or the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, the date 9/11 itself requires no other name to evoke the events of that day. We human beings have a tendency to place particular importance on anniversaries of any kind so it’s not surprising that year after year on that date we‘re surrounded by exhortations to remember and often enough hear or read the remembrances of others, many of whom were much more deeply and permanently affected than most of us.
For many years I found myself sitting at the traffic light in Willow Grove where York Road intersects with Easton Road on the way home from my former parish, and through the years I observed the various incarnations of the store on the opposite corner. Several years ago it was a gym. Not a glitzy big-name gym like the Bally’s that was around the corner, but a smaller more home spun operation with a very rudimentary sign in the window that said CrossFit Gym. What I noticed one fall was a new addition to the signage in the window. It was actually a series of quite large letters that read NEVER FORGET. Never forget. I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard and read those words a lot through the years during the days and weeks that surround September 11. And seeing the sign in the window of the CrossFit Gymin Willow Grove that particular year made me suddenly wonder: Never forget what? The people who died that day and who continue to die in the aftermath of the attacks? The people who survive the dead or those who actually survived the attack itself? Those who planned and perpetrated the attack? Those who still wish us harm? Never forget “what” seems like an important question to think about.
When the people who chose the readings from scripture that you and I hear each Sunday were doing their job, they could never have imagined that one day the readings for proper 19 in year A of the lectionary that we hear today would fall on the Sunday closest to the anniversary of 9/11. They had no way to know that you and I would be year after year on this particular Sunday surrounded by calls to remember, to never forget what happened on an achingly beautiful fall day thirteen years ago and listening to Jesus tell Peter that forgiving someone seven times is not enough. “Seventy-seven times would be more like it,” he said. Since we are people who take the scriptures seriously but not literally, we don’t believe Jesus intends us to keep a running tab on everyone we need to forgive until we reach the magic number of seventy-seven and can stop. We know he means we’re called to forgive as many times as it takes. We know the theory, but here we are this morning at that time of the year when the theory is running smack into the reality of the most awful event some of us have ever known and the knowledge that the danger is not and may never be past in our lifetimes.
But it’s not just events like 9/11 that make us confront the radical demand to forgive. It happens at home, at work, at school. It can happen with a neighbor or a friend. It can even happen, as Peter points out, at church. When you think about it, every person, every situation, and every organization in our lives presents us with the possibility that we will need to exercise forgiveness an infinite number of times. What’s a girl to do in the face of that kind of demand? How’s a guy to cope with such overwhelming claims on his capacity to forgive? If, as I truly believe, God never asks something of you or me or any of his children we’re not capable of doing, then how do we go about it.
I think that’s where the question “Never forget what?” becomes critical. There’s a saying that encourages us to “forgive and forget,” but most of us know that for those major hurts this is simply not possible. The pain and injury we receive from someone may soften and recede from daily consciousness over time if the wound is not reopened somehow, but it never goes completely away. And it definitely will remain fresh and raw as long as we don’t relinquish the need to regularly remember and relive the hurt and anger in our hearts and minds. Thatkind of “never forgetting” makes it impossible to forgive freely and generously as Jesus would have us do. The fact is, there are some things we do need to forget or, more precisely, to let go of. If you and I would be faithful in this forgiveness business, it’s crucial that we pay attention to what we are actively never forgetting.
Being attentive to what we are “never forgetting” is one of the ways we can go about being the forgivers Jesus would have us be. But another and much more necessary thing is to recognize and admit that we cannot do this alone. We can only do it with God’s help, and we can only do it with others because God has already done it with us. That’s what the parable in the gospel is about. Before you and I ever confront our need to forgive someone else God has already forgiven us…many times over. So forgiving another person is not some harsh rule we must obey. It’s simply the loving response to the fact that we ourselves are already forgiven by God, and will be again and again and again and again and again and again……