Forgiveness and the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing

Forgiveness and the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing

Sept. 14 2014

14th Sunday After Pentecost

Holy Trinity Lutheran Church (ELCA) SE Portland

Grace Mercy and Peace from our Risen Savior Jesus the Christ.  So today is one of those days that they tell you about in seminary.  Today is the day when the sermon that I have prepared off the Gospel reading that I found assigned for this week is not the same reading as what is listed in our bulletins today.  So instead of me preaching off the cuff from the scripture in our bulletin today let me read to you the text I have prepared and deliver the sermon I wrote.  

Matthew 18:21-35

21 Then Peter came and said to him, "Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?" 22 Jesus said to him, "Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times. 23 "For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. 24 When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; 25 and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. 26 So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, "Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.' 27 And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. 28 But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, "Pay what you owe.' 29 Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, "Have patience with me, and I will pay you.' 30 But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. 31 When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. 32 Then his lord summoned him and said to him, "You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33 Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?' 34 And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. 35 So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart."

So where does this forgiveness come from?  In the gospel reading this morning we hear that when we are wronged we are to forgive not just 7 times but 77 times.  But what I do not know is  where does this forgiveness come from.  I don’t know about you but I know that I have a hard time forgiving someone for wronging me once, I have a hard time forgiving my friends or family let alone someone I do not even know.  So where does this forgiveness come from and in these times of forgiveness where does our christian faith lead us.  

Ok, ok ok I know the Sunday school answer, “we are able to forgive because we have been forgiven ourselves of our sin.”  Sure it is plain to say but it is not easy to do.  Yes, we are able to forgive because we have been forgiven ourselves but that doesn’t make it easy.  

You see Peter thought that he was making a wise and acute observation in this moment.  He knew that a rabbi would teach forgiveness for an offense when it occurred, maybe, depending on the rabbi, they might teach forgiven twice or three times for a repeated offense but never 7.  So Peter thought he was taking it to the next level.  There is this thought amongst scholars that Peter by suggesting 7 times was attempting to understand the calling of Jesus to take his life of faith to the next level.  It was a great attempt however, Jesus takes it even further.  

What Jesus is having us understand is that we are called to forgive and forgive again to the level and extent that we loose track…we are to forgive past the point of memory and then forgive some more.  Because if we are keeping track and tabs are we even forgiving at all?  It is not easy but it is our calling of faith to forgive and forgive again.

On Sunday morning September 15th 1963 a bomb exploded at 16th St. Baptist Church in Birmingham Al.  The explosion killed 4 young girls, Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley.  This tragedy occurred two and a half weeks after the historical March on Washington where Dr. King delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech.  On the morning of the bombing the sermon that was to be given that day was titled “The Love that Forgives.”  I would expect the same texts as today.  There was a joint funeral for three of the four girls and Dr. King was called to deliver the sermon…and he had this to say.

This afternoon we gather in the quiet of this sanctuary to pay our last tribute of respect to these beautiful children of God. They entered the stage of history just a few years ago, and in the brief years that they were privileged to act on this mortal stage, they played their parts exceedingly well. Now the curtain falls; they move through the exit; the drama of their earthly life comes to a close. They are now committed back to that eternity from which they came.

These children-unoffending, innocent, and beautiful-were the victims of one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity.

And yet they died nobly. They are the martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity. And so this afternoon in a real sense they have something to say to each of us in their death. They have something to say to every minister of the gospel who has remained silent behind the safe security of stained-glass windows. They have something to say to every politician who has fed his constituents with the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism. They have something to say to a federal government that has compromised with the undemocratic practices of southern Dixiecrats and the blatant hypocrisy of right-wing northern Republicans.  They have something to say to every Negro who has passively accepted the evil system of segregation and who has stood on the sidelines in a mighty struggle for justice. They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream.

And so my friends, they did not die in vain. God still has a way of wringing good out of evil.  And history has proven over and over again that unmerited suffering is redemptive. The innocent blood of these little girls may well serve as a redemptive force that will bring new light to this dark city.  The holy Scripture says, "A little child shall lead them." The death of these little children may lead our whole Southland from the low road of man's inhumanity to man to the high road of peace and brotherhood.  These tragic deaths may lead our nation to substitute an aristocracy of character for an aristocracy of color. The spilled blood of these innocent girls may cause the whole citizenry of Birmingham to transform the negative extremes of a dark past into the positive extremes of a bright future. Indeed this tragic event may cause the white South to come to terms with its conscience.

And so I stand here to say this afternoon to all assembled here, that in spite of the darkness of this hour, we must not despair.  We must not become bitter, nor must we harbor the desire to retaliate with violence. No, we must not lose faith in our white brothers.  Somehow we must believe that the most misguided among them can learn to respect the dignity and the worth of all human personality.

May I now say a word to you, the members of the bereaved families? It is almost impossible to say anything that can console you at this difficult hour and remove the deep clouds of disappointment which are floating in your mental skies. But I hope you can find a little consolation from the universality of this experience. Death comes to every individual. There is an amazing democracy about death. It is not aristocracy for some of the people, but a democracy for all of the people. Kings die and beggars die; rich men and poor men die; old people die and young people die. Death comes to the innocent and it comes to the guilty. Death is the irreducible common denominator of all men.

I hope you can find some consolation from Christianity's affirmation that death is not the end. Death is not a period that ends the great sentence of life, but a comma that punctuates it to more lofty significance. Death is not a blind alley that leads the human race into a state of nothingness, but an open door which leads man into life eternal. Let this daring faith, this great invincible surmise, be your sustaining power during these trying days.

Now I say to you in conclusion, life is hard, at times as hard as crucible steel. It has its bleak and difficult moments. Like the ever-flowing waters of the river, life has its moments of drought and its moments of flood.  Like the ever-changing cycle of the seasons, life has the soothing warmth of its summers and the piercing chill of its winters.  And if one will hold on, he will discover that God walks with him, and that God is able to lift you from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope, and transform dark and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of inner peace.

And so today, you do not walk alone. You gave to this world wonderful children.  They didn't live long lives, but they lived meaningful lives.  Their lives were distressingly small in quantity, but glowingly large in quality.  And no greater tribute can be paid to you as parents, and no greater epitaph can come to them as children, than where they died and what they were doing when they died.  They did not die in the dives and dens of Birmingham, nor did they die discussing and listening to filthy jokes.  They died between the sacred walls of the church of God, and they were discussing the eternal meaning of love. This stands out as a beautiful, beautiful thing for all generations.  Shakespeare had Horatio to say some beautiful words as he stood over the dead body of Hamlet. And today, as I stand over the remains of these beautiful, darling girls, I paraphrase the words of Shakespeare:  Good night, sweet princesses. Good night, those who symbolize a new day.  And may the flight of angels  take thee to thy eternal rest. God bless you.

Now Dr. King does not use the words forgiveness when speaking of the people that committed this act.  But there is a very interesting turn that Dr. King makes in this sermon that reminds us of our calling.  

And so I stand here to say this afternoon to all assembled here, that in spite of the darkness of this hour, we must not despair.  We must not become bitter, nor must we harbor the desire to retaliate with violence. No, we must not lose faith in our white brothers.  Somehow we must believe that the most misguided among them can learn to respect the dignity and the worth of all human personality.

We are called to keep our hearts open to forgiveness and the hope that all might see their misguided ways and work for the fullness and wholeness of life.  In the darkest and most dire times Dr. King is calling his community to not seek revenge, to not lash out but instead to keep that hope alive.  In no uncertain, terms he is telling us to forgive and focus on hope.  In one of the darkest moments in not just the civil rights movement but in the history of mankind Dr. King is pointing and reminding his community that there is a higher calling and a different path, because retaliation just leads to more violence.  

I am sitting and writing this sermon on Thursday September 11th 2014, which leads me to this question.  How do we as we remember the events of 13 years ago and reflect that forgiveness?  What are the words of hope and restoration that we are hearing from our community but also our faith in light of September 11th?  Are we falling into the same revenge and retaliation or are we finding a new way to move forward into a new reality and with a revived hope of forgiveness and salvation?  I can barely answer that question for myself so I surely cannot answer that for you or for our community.  However, if we are hearing words from Dr. King of hope for his white brothers and sisters then I am here to preach hope and forgives for our extremists and terrorist brothers and sisters.  Part of our calling as Christians is for us to hope for even the most misguided to discover and understand the dignity and worth of people from all walks of life.  

Now do not get me wrong, I am not speaking and preaching a message of blind hope or forgives.  That is not how I believe that we are called to live, it would be unsafe and unwise to blindly forgive and to let our guard down.  But that does not mean we cannot forgive and work to find a way for a new reality together.  We need to be aware of our surroundings and the ways of the world, but we need to approach all situations with forgiveness on our tongues and the possibility of a new reality in our minds.  This will require creativity but that is where the Holy Spirit comes in.  We are called to forgive and seek a new reality where the prior offense will not repeat itself with God’s guidance.  

We are able to have this hope, this forgiveness on our tongues and this revisioned reality on our minds because of Jesus.  We are able to forgive because we have been forgiven of so much…we have been forgiven of everything.  You see the 77 times we are called to forgive is extravagant, the debt owed to the king in the parable is multiple lifetimes worth of work, the sin that we are guilty of is something that we can never over come and can never repay.  But we have been forgiven of that and that is our sense of strength and our sense of hope for a revisioned reality and future.  We can forgive because we have been forgiven of so much it’s true, we can keep that hope alive and find a new way to take part in God’s saving work because of that forgiveness.  We experienced that forgiveness in our baptism, and we are reminded of that each time we remember our baptism.  We experience it each time we gather around the altar rail and receive communion, in those moments we are experiencing that forgiveness and that grace that calls us to forgive.  It is in that forgiveness that we are an active part of letting justice roll on like a river and righteousness like a never ending stream!

amen.