Texts: Isaiah 41:1-13; Matthew 18:21-35

In his book The Sunflower, Simon Wiesenthal tells the story of a wounded S.S. commander, who when he realizes he is dying, calls for a Jew to be brought from a work detail in a concentration camp.“Jew,” he says, “I am dying and realize that only you can do this for me.” Relieved but yet apprehensive, the Jew moves closer to the dying Nazi. “Several years ago, I had command of a unit that went into a village of Jews like you. I locked a family in a house and set it on fire. We watched them die, helpless and screaming. Anyone who tried to escape was shot.” “Why are you telling me this?” said the Jew. “Am I not suffering enough?” “Jew,” replied the Nazi, “Your God tells you to forgive. I want – I need your forgiveness!” he cried in desperation.

The Jew looked out the window, saw the sunflowers planted at the Nazi graves, with their blooms looking towards heaven; he then looked at the crematoriums with their smoke and the lime pits for the bodies stripped of everything, including the teeth, and said, “You ask me to forgive you for the murder of others, people I do not even know, people who share with me the fact that they were Jews? I will not forgive you!” The dying Nazi begged in the name of a God he feared he would face. The Jew walked out in silence.

But he could not forget the dying Nazi and after the war was over, he, one of only 34 survivors out of 150,000 in that camp, looked for what remained of the Nazi's family. He found the mother who talked about her son; he listened, said nothing and, again, left in silence. The book becomes an essay on the nature of forgiveness and whether anyone can forgive for a hurt or sin done to someone else. One of the contributors, Albert Speer, wrote that if the Nazi could not forgive himself, why should the Jew forgive him, especially in the name of other people.

This weekend, all sorts of religious – and non-religious – organizations are talking about forgiveness. The more thoughtful evangelical press talks about “loving Muslims, one at a time,” as if Muslims as a group were to blame for the 9-11 attacks rather than a perverted fundamentalism that, unfortunately, seems no respecter of religious belief. Religious extremism on the part of Christians is no different. Just two weeks ago in Nigeria a group of Christians attacked Muslims celebrating the end of Ramadan, hacking them to death with machetes, including women and children. The issue this weekend is not forgiveness but healing.

We were all wounded in the attacks on 9-11. The wounds go far deeper than the loss of life that day, as terrible as it was. Thirty seven of our townspeople lost their lives. The Twin Towers held people from all walks of life, from all over the globe. More than 90 countries lost people in the attacks and several dozen of the victims were Muslim. And, to make matters worse, in some cases, surviving family members were interrogated as possible terrorists, barred from traveling to attend memorial services as well as suffering other indignities. The wounds we all suffered include more than grief, but also fear, anger, a destruction of our civil liberties, and a ten year war that eats into our national psyche for fear of “losing” it, whatever that means, so it becomes like another Vietnam in our minds.

We were all wounded in the attacks of 9-11. The question for us is how to bind up our wounds and to heal them. Unfortunately, it is not as easy as going to the ER and getting some stitches, having the wound covered in Bacitracin and getting a Tetanus shot. The wounds of fear and anger bore more deeply into our national soul. In his book, The Wounded Healer, Henri Nouwen suggests that it is through acknowledging our own wounds that we can help to heal others.

All of us have suffered emotional, physical, and spiritual wounds in our lives. For some, it has been the loss of someone we loved; for others, a loss of mobility or health; yet for others, a loss of the faith we once held that gave us a comprehensive and coherent world view. The faith we once held may have been our faith in our Nation as impregnable,our government as honest or responsive, values that reflect a moral universe, or even our faith in God. We are all wounded in some way.

The question for us as Christians is how to use our own brokenness to heal the brokenness of others. Fear and anger are normal responses to such terrible loss, but as a Nation we need to move beyond those emotions that are so often misdirected. That is different from the forgiveness that Jesus speaks of in this morning's reading from Matthew. In response to Peter's question of how often he should forgive, Jesus not only responds with a number meant to be numberless but then goes on to tell the parable of the servant who is forgiven his debt but then refuses to forgive another the debt owed him. We can only be forgiven as we forgive; we can only heal others as we are wounded and let others in their wounds help to heal us.

In all the writing about 9-11 that is flooding the media this week – and there has been a ton of it, to be sure – one article suggested that we needed to move beyond our obsession with the attack or the attackers will have surely obtained their desired result. Our obsession and fear fortunately did not lead to the same kind of response as we had in World War II, interning thousands of Japanese based on their ethnicity alone, but it has resulted in unreasonable attacks on our Muslim brothers and sisters, not to mention an expansion of federal power that would allow the government to take any one of us –yes, any one of you --- and hold you for an indefinite period of time without access to counsel or family.

Now, you may say, really now, who would arrest me? But it is not an arrest but a “detention,” that mysterious never-never land from which people can never reappear. Under the USA Patriot Act you do not have the right to face your accuser or know the evidence on which your detention is based. And the wound of fear so grips this Nation that when it was reauthorized only 10 Senators voted against it in 2005; in 2001 only Russ Feingold of Wisconsin had voted against it. These are among the wounds we must heal to be a whole nation again.

We must move beyond our primal response to fear and use the brains God gave us to address the issues that face us as a Nation and as the people of God. Healing our wounds will not be easy. We have had ten years of obsession, war, loss, and grief; we have had ten years of suspicion and anger that gets re-stoked every September.

In Washington, D.C., there is a wall known as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. On that wall are the names of the 58,195 men and women who lost their lives in that conflict. Every day surviving veterans visit that wall; some in tears put their hands on the name of someone they knew, and cry, “forgive me.” The forgiveness they often ask is the forgiveness of survivors when others died in their stead. In the novel The Razor's Edge, Somerset Maugham explored this same sense of guilt human beings have: the guilt of survival. Healing from 9-11 involves moving beyond the anger that results from the guilt of survival and the fear of dying in yet another terrorist attack. We were all wounded on 9-11. Let us use our wounds to heal ourselves as well as others.

Let us pray: We come today to you, O God, who gives us strength to move beyond our wounds and gives us courage to heal. Help us to listen to the words of the prophet Isaiah who calls on us to take heart and help our neighbors. And let us embrace all as our neighbors, wounded as are we, so we may all heal through your grace. Amen.