Under chill, gray clouds that gradually gave way to patches
of blue, a quiet crowd gathered in downtown New York City on
Thursday to observe the seventh anniversary of September 11th,
the date that, for our generation, will live in infamy just as
December 7th became infamous a generation ago. Relatives of
victims killed at the World Trade Center gathered at ground zero
in lower Manhattan for readings from dignitaries and a recitation
of the names of the dead. Later that day, presidential
candidates Barack Obama and John McCain came together to ground
zero to pay silent respects.
"Today marks the seventh anniversary of the day our world
was broken," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. "It lives forever in
our hearts and our history, a tragedy that unites us in a common
memory and a common story...the day that began like any other and
ended as none ever has." (1)
The ceremony at ground zero included moments of silence at
8:46 AM and 9:03 AM, the times when two hijacked jets slammed
into the Trade Center buildings. Two more moments of silence
were held to mark the collapse of each tower. Family members and
students representing more than 90 countries that lost citizens
on September 11th read the names of 2,751 people killed in New
York, one more than last year. The city restored Sneha Philip, a
woman who mysteriously vanished on September 10, 2001, to its
official death toll this year after a court ruled that she was
likely killed at the Trade Center.
There was also a ceremony at the Pentagon to commemorate the
attacks. Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld mourned those
who "one morning kissed their loved ones goodbye, went off to
work and never came home" and the airline passengers "who in the
last moments made phone calls to loved ones and prayed to the
Almighty before their journey ended not far from where it began."
A 2-acre memorial park was unveiled and dedicated. It is located
at the spot where American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the
Pentagon's west wall and consists primarily of 184 cantilevered
benches, each bearing a victim's name.
As in many other communities around the nation, a ceremony
was held here in Warren to commemorate the tragic day and to
honor the true heroes of September 11th, the emergency service
personnel. Our own Tim Greenlund, former Warren County
Commissioner, was the keynote speaker for the event. He noted a
list of modern disasters to which the county's emergency
personnel have had to respond. "You are a phenomenal group of
individuals," Greenlund said. "You answer the call, whether it
is three in the afternoon or three in the morning. You are the
people who do the right thing, the people who step up and do the
right stuff." (2) Amen to that.
I admit I was a little taken aback by the column in
yesterday's paper reflecting on one young girl's experience in
school Thursday as, over and over, she encountered the September
11th date without attaching any significance to it at all until
the day was half done. Then she added,
As I got to thinking about it, I tested the people
around me, wondering if they were as naive as I had
been that morning. In my next period class, I
specifically asked one of my best friends what the date
was. Another of our classmates turned to me and gave
me the answer as though I were a lunatic. "Yes," I
told this classmate, "I know. I just wanted to see if
she remembered," I told her, indicating my friend.
Suddenly the latter was worried. "What? Oh my gosh!
Did I forget someone's birthday?" (3)
Hmm. Meanwhile, the hunt is still on to find Osama Bin
Laden, the mastermind behind the attacks. At last report, the
search is not going well.
Now we find ourselves in church and hear these words of
Jesus saying, "Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown
mercy?" Hmm. Not so difficult. We might not drown each other
in the milk of human kindness, but we are not bad. At least, we
generally do not go out of our way to be UNmerciful. As a matter
of fact, we might even go so far as to claim that mercy is an
American trait. We do not believe in kicking people when they
are down; we treat prisoners of war fairly (or at least, we used
to); we give billions to charities each year. We are a merciful
nation, and we do not find it all that unnatural to be that way.
Or are we? How about Osama? We do not feel particularly
merciful toward him. Should we?
"Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy." I
think it fair to say that we indeed are more merciful generally
than those who first heard these words. To the people of the
ancient world, mercy or compassion or sympathy were not held in
very high esteem. The Romans, for example, who held total sway
over civilization at the time were hardly known for any
gentleness of spirit. Human slavery was perfectly acceptable;
great enjoyment came from sports that put men and women up
against wild beasts, or that put men against one another to the
death; people who ran afoul of the state were treated with
extreme cruelty even to the point of execution by the torture of
crucifixion. It was not a very merciful world.
Even the Jews, the people who might have been expected to be
the most merciful of the lot, had no real compulsion to mercy
toward anyone who was not a Jew, and even then there were limits.
You know the story of the Good Samaritan. Here was this poor
fellow who had been set on by robbers on the Jericho Road and
left for dead in the ditch. A couple of people came by who
ignored his plight, a priest and a Levite. There was no way to
tell whether or not this poor victim was a Jew, so there was no
real reason for them to do anything for him. And even if he had
been a Jew, he might have been dead, and to touch a dead man left
a Jew ceremonially unclean for seven days, and that would have
prevented these two from performing their temple duties. Mercy
had its limits. Fortunately, one finally came along to whom
mercy did not have limits, the Good Samaritan, and his story has
lived in human hearts ever since. But even for the people who
considered themselves God's own, there was not much mercy.
That would mean that these words of Jesus on the hillside
would have been just as unnatural to the audience seated at his
feet as all the rest of the Beatitudes. You see, the word that
we have in the Greek which is rendered in English as "mercy" was
not the word that these disciples heard at all. Jesus did not
speak Greek to them; he spoke Aramaic, the common dialect of the
Hebrew people. And the Aramaic word which we eventually have as
"mercy" loses a great deal in the translation. The Hebrew root
is CHESED and literally means "to get inside someone else's
skin." We have a similar expression in English when we say
something like, "You would understand if you were in my shoes."
But we all admit that there is nothing particularly natural about
looking at something "through another person's eyes." For those
in the first century, it was doubly difficult.
Perhaps the reason that mercy has always been more or less
difficult is that it involves a good deal more than just feeling
sorry for someone. We have some complexity here. There are
elements of justice, of power, of forgiveness, and even love, to
name a few.
Consider justice. Most people would think that justice and
mercy are mutually exclusive, but that is not true. We often
hear things like, "He threw himself on the mercy of the court."
Well, mercy would not have even come into play until justice had
been served. Why would anyone bother about mercy if a just
verdict had not already been determined? Justice has about it
the connotation of "doing the right thing," and when it is
mercifully tempered for some reason, the judge or jury is saying
in effect that "the right thing" in this particular case should
not involve the full penalty of the law.
You remember John Hinckley, the lovesick boy who tried to
assassinate President Reagan to attract the attention of a movie
star he had never met. There was no question that Hinckley
committed the crime - millions of people saw him do it over and
over again on videotape replays. He made no pretense of a
denial; he freely admitted what he had done. As the facts of the
case became clear though, it became obvious that this was no
rational man, and justice would not be served by punishing him in
the normal fashion. Fortunately, our American system has mercy
built into it for situations like that. It is called the
"insanity defense," and in Hinckley's case, it was surely
legitimate. On the other hand, had Hinckley been shown to be
Osama bin Hinckley, a terrorist bent on overthrowing the
government and making a political statement, that built-in system
of mercy would probably not have come into play. Mercy will, in
every case, make some sort of a determination about what is
right.
On top of that, it will involve the power to follow up on
that determination. In a courtroom, the spectators might be
tremendously sympathetic to the plight of some prisoner at the
bar. They might hear a harsh verdict pronounced and feel great
pity for the one convicted. But without the power to do anything
about it, all that really is is pity. Mercy only becomes
involved when there is the power to have an effect. But up at
the front of the room, there sits one who does have the power,
the judge. The discretion lies with him or her as to whether or
not forbearance in sentencing might be exercised. Mercy from the
judge will involve a holding back of the full punishment that
might be meted out.
Moving one step farther, mercy will involve forgiveness.
Very often, offenders are brought into court for a first time.
Up to this point, they have never had any difficulties with the
law, but for some inexplicable reason, they have now stepped
outside the bounds and are called to account for it. They
realize the error of their way, they are properly contrite and
promise faithfully never to do whatever they did again, and the
judge lets them go - guilty, but no verdict. It happens in
traffic courts all the time. In effect, they have been
mercifully forgiven for what they did. And the hope is that,
once forgiven, they won't do it again. It does not always work
that way, but that is the idea. To be merciful is to be
forgiving.
Now, up to this point, we have been looking at this quality
of mercy from a very institutional standpoint. But Jesus was not
speaking to institutions; he was addressing individuals - common
folk like you and me, people who wanted to live lives pleasing to
God but who needed a little help as to what direction they should
take. So he gives them and us some advice. Do not misunderstand
though, "Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy,"
should not be considered as a commandment, but simply a statement
of fact. Mercy is not so much a SHOULD-BE-attitude as a WILL-BE-attitude in the lives of those who call themselves God's people.
The evidence for that is very similar to what we found in
thinking about the courts. First of all, mercy will involve
justice. As that Samaritan came along that rocky road and spied
the poor fellow lying stretched out in the ditch, his first
thought probably had nothing to do with, "Hey, this is not fair;
it is not right." In his heart of hearts he of course knew that
there was nothing fair or right about robbery and attempted
murder, but the first thing that probably popped into his head
was more likely, "Hey, I had better do something here." As the
story went on to show, he did indeed "do something here," and his
mercy has been an example for all to see for almost 2,000 years
now. There was nothing right, there was nothing just, about
someone being beaten and left for dead, so this attitude of mercy
on the part of the Samaritan went into action.
To be sure, what he did involved power. Had the Samaritan
not known anything about first aid, primitive though it might
have been, he would not have been able to show the kind of mercy
he did. He might have pitied the poor fellow, but without the
ability to act, that is all it would have been: pity. He was
able to get the man down to the local inn and even able to pay
the innkeeper for seeing to the man's needs. That simply made
the act of mercy all the more appealing to us. But had the
Samaritan not had the strength to lift the victim onto the
donkey, had he not had the wherewithal to pay for the lodging and
care, had he not had the power to do all these things, the story
would not have been the same.
"Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy."
Seven years ago, as we were all still reeling from the September
11th attacks, and as we heard our leaders vowing vengeance as
they encouraged us to go shopping, I shared a thought with you
that was not original with me, but was intriguing enough for me
to wish it had been. It was on the internet. Listen: (4)
For some time now I have been considering what
would be the best response to WTC attack and now,
having just read that Afghanistan is in the grip of a
3-year famine and the UN estimates 5.5 million Afghans
will soon be starving, the answer has suddenly become
obvious.
America should send aid to Afghanistan on a scale
not seen since the Marshall plan. Against the will of
the Taliban, America should feed the starving, pour
food and materials into the country. Can you imagine
it? The response to the outrage is not an act of
revenge but an act of mercy. At a stroke, the entire,
predictable cycle of response/outrage/response/outrage
would be smothered at birth. It is so bizarre, so
unexpected, and yet it would be so very effective.
Think about it...What sweet revenge it would be to
see the people scrambling for American food in the dust
created by their Taliban masters! What subtle revenge
to see in the eyes of those peasants, not the easy
hatred inspired by war but the uneasy question: "Can it
really be Satan that feeds the starving?" We could
smile to hear the Taliban, Iran, et. al. try to summon
contempt for this ludicrously unjustified act of Love.
We could out-righteous the masters of righteousness and
smile benignly as their followers deserted them so they
could feed their children. This IS a religious war
after all, so let us fight them with the weapons we
have: If ever the Christian message...had strategic
relevance, it is now.
"Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy."
That may seem preposterous and unrealistic as an instrument of
national policy in light of September 11th. It is just like all
the Beatitudes - upside-down, inside-out. But, you know, so far,
the other ways have not worked. And on top of that, this IS the
word of the Lord. Thanks be to God!
Amen!
1. Amy Westfeldt, "Nation marks 7th anniversary of terror attacks," Associated Press, 9/11/08
2. Dean Wells, "Remembering 9/11," Warren Times-Observer, 9/12/08
3. Hillary Anderson, "Never Forgetting," Warren Times-Observer, 9/13/08
4. Posted on news://news.devx.com/off.ramp
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