That was then - this is now
From Wellington Cathedral of St Paul
That was then – this is now: 11th September 2011: am: The Very Revd Frank Nelson
- Psalm 114
- Exodus 14: 19 - 31
- Romans 14: 1 - 12
- Matthew 18: 19 - 31
That was then – this is now.
I heard one the commentators at the opening of the Rugby World Cup on Friday night say something like that. He of course was referring to when the All Blacks won the very first World Cup in 1987 – the only time they have won. In those days all the players were amateurs and went back to their jobs on Monday morning. Twenty-four years later so much has changed, and one has to wonder how relevant what happened back then is to today. After all, that was then – this is now.
Ten years today ago the world stopped and watched in horror as first one, then two, airliners were flown into the World Trade Centre. Among the nearly three thousand people who died in New York that day were people from all over the world. It is one of those days that changed the world for ever. A whole new set of words came into our everyday vocabulary – nine-eleven, Al-Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, the War on Terror, Guantanamo Bay. Nor was it only New York to be hit. A plane crashed into the Pentagon, and a fourth, United Airlines Flight 93, crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. The lives of every single airline traveller changed that day as security at airports was stepped up. We quickly became used to making sure nail files and pen knives were not in hand luggage, using plastic cutlery, and expecting delays as we filed through X-ray machines. That was then – this is now.
About two thousand years ago a man in a pretty obscure part of the word told stories that made people stop and think. One of them was about a king and a slave. The slave owed the king an absurd amount of money, quite impossible for him to repay. In an act of unequalled generosity and pity the king forgave the debt and let the slave go free. The story should have ended there, with the slave going home to his wife and family, rejoicing at the king’s mercy. But no, the story-teller continued. On his way out of prison the forgiven slave seized one of his mates who owed him a pittance by comparison. The rest you know from this morning’s Gospel reading. That was then – this is now.
Perhaps three and a half thousand years ago a rag-tag band of people fled from a country. I imagine it was the sort of flight we often see when war breaks out and people take what possessions they can carry and move out. These people were escaping from slavery, a land where they were treated with utter contempt, their boy babies killed so as not to grow into a threat, and where they had to work hard at building for their masters. In a quite miraculous way they managed to escape their pursuers, passing safely through the sea and then turning to watch as their enemies drowned. The story of that escape came to be told and retold through the years and centuries. It fashioned a nation. It is a story still told today. This morning’s psalm (114) suggests the singer thumbing his nose at his enemies – the sort of thing children do when they know they have got the better of someone through no real merit of their own. Look at our God, how strong he is. Much stronger than anything you can come up with. The sea, the river, the mountains and hills – even they jump when God says jump! And he is our God! That was then – this is now.
The Rugby World Cup, the Word Trade Centre, a parable of Jesus, the story of the Exodus – all come together this weekend in our news and our Bible readings. They invite us to think about God, about life, about our life, our world. They invite us to think about terror and courage, about forgiveness and the very human desire to want revenge on those who hurt us. Can you picture the enjoyment of those ancient Hebrew people as they sat round the camp-fire in the desert and told how their enemies, the Egyptians, had drowned in terror? Some think that the oldest fragment of the Old Testament is the song of Miriam, supposedly sung by Moses’s sister after watching the Egyptians drowning. Exodus 15: 21 reads, Then Miriam sang: “Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and the rider he has thrown into the sea.” There is precious little about forgiveness here, and, we might ask, why should there be?
The parable Jesus told about the slave being forgiven and then immediately demanding of his fellow what was owed, comes in the context of Peter’s question to Jesus: “How often should I forgive?” Who of us would forgive anyone even seven times? Yet Jesus says not seven, but seventy times seven! That’s impossible – especially when it is things like the deliberate acts of terrorism such as we witnessed on 9/11. It may be impossible too on the sporting filed when it comes to a disputed try, a pre-match meal in Johannesburg which allegedly led to the food poisening of a rugby team, or an under-arm ball which takes a wicket. That’s just it. It is impossible to forgive so often, so much. Yet isn’t that the point of the Gospel? God’s grace is so much more than we can ever begin to comprehend. St Paul puts it succinctly in Romans 5: 8 – “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
For myself, I can never read today’s Gospel reading about forgiving seventy times seven without being reminded of a chilling passage in Genesis chapter 4. As the writer of these early chapters of Genesis describes the descent into chaos he has Lamech say these words: “If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-seven fold.” Jesus tale about the unforgiving servant is, if we are honest, uncomfortably close to the truth. It is not too difficult to put ourselves in the place of that servant. How easy it is to vilify people, to rejoice when a Bin Laden or Gaddafi is killed. One of the great tragedies of the last ten years must surely be the tens of thousands of people who have been killed, and continue to be killed and injured, in the war on terror. And I make that statement without apology, and without being drawn into the rights or wrongs of the war.
An ancient Jewish prayer has this to make us stop and think: O Lord our God and God of our Fathers, we pray that, in this moment of victory, we may remember the legend handed down to us by our Doctors: that when, after the crossing of the Red Sea, Miriam raised her voice in exultation, and the angels at the throne of your glory began to take up the refrain, you rebuked them, saying: “What! My children are drowning, and you would sing?”
In May this year the Revd Dr James Cooper, rector of Trinity Church, Wall Street in New York, visited Wellington and this Cathedral. A few years ago I found myself profoundly moved by my visit to St Paul’s Chapel – literally across the road from Ground Zero. Part of the Trinity parish, St Paul’s became, for six months after 9/11, the centre for rest and refreshment of those working initially to rescue and then to recover what was left of the World Trade Centre. Some of you may have heard him interviewed by Kathryn Ryan on Radio NZ last Wednesday. Writing to the people of Trinity Church as they prepare to keep this tenth anniversary of 9/11 he has this to say: “Ten years ago, the final act of many 9/11 victims was one of love. Facing the unthinkable, their parting gesture was to reach out to their families, friends and colleagues. Ten years later, let us ‘Remember to Love’ those who are gone, those who remain and those to come. Let us further remember and honor those who perished by generating a post-anniversary community committed to reconciliation and peace.”
That was then – what is now?
