(Luke 4: 21 – 30)

(All the stories used are taken from www.theforgivenessproject.com)

One type of comment that I hear during the week is someone saying to me: “Do you know what so-and-so did to me..?” or “Do you know what they said to me..?” My response when people say this type of thing to me is “So what! What are you going to do about it? You may not be in control of what people say or do to you but you always have a responsibility for how you chose to respond”.

In the passage today Jesus is met with anger and hostility in Nazerath. He could have said: : “Do you know what they did to me..?” He is trying to explain to people in his home town that God’s message of salvation is for the world and not simply for the Jews. He is in his own home. He wants his own people to try to understand him before the start off on his ministry. They don’t know what he is talking about and they are angry. (filled with rage). So what? What is he going to do about it. Here are some stories:

William died in 1992 aged 18 months following an operation to correct a non life-threatening heart condition. To put him to sleep they asked me to help get the gas mark on. He was kicking and screaming, his fists were flying. “Mummy no, no,” he kept crying. In the end the doctors saw how upset I was and pulled me out. I still feel terrible that I wasn’t there for him. He must have put up such a fight. After the operation there were complications and William went into cardiac arrest. “I’m very sorry, your son’s body has gone into shock,” said the consultant, holding my hand. I went into another room to ring my sister. She was asking me what had happened when the whole team of doctors came into the room, quietly, one by one. “He’s dead,” I said.

As I heard my sister wailing down the phone, suddenly this overwhelming sense of peace flooded over me. My body and my mind were totally calm, and I prayed. I prayed to get through the next few days and months, and I prayed not to have a breakdown. I also made a vow. I vowed not to allow the death of my son to destroy my family. And somehow, despite all the sadness and grieving, we started to rebuild our lives. Until five years later, that is, when I read an article about how Alder Hey hospital had taken the organs of a dead baby without asking permission from the parents. Immediately I phoned the hospital. I had to know if they had taken anything from William. A hospital support worker gave me a straight answer; “Yes, we have his brain, his lungs, his spleen, his liver, his kidneys, his intestines, and his reproductive organs,” he said. He told me it had been for teaching and research purposes. “But we were never asked, I signed no consent form,” I said. Over the next two years we had two more burials – the first for William’s organs, the second for the tissue blocks, slides and cerebellum. On both occasions I invited the press. I wanted to make a public statement to the government.

There was a lot of anger among the Alder Hey families, because no one was prosecuted. Justice hadn’t been done, and people felt betrayed and let down. Forgiveness was a not a word I used at first, but hearing the bitterness and anger I knew I didn’t want to go down that road. So I prayed to be able to forgive. In the end I came to forgive the surgeon who did the illegal stripping, and the hospital management. I chose forgiveness because I did not want to be destroyed by bitterness. What happened was out of my control, but how I respond is within my control.

Less than an hour after Bob was murdered, I stood in the emergency ward beside his body, overwhelmed by a sense of peace, knowing that wherever Bob was now, it was much safer than the place he had just been. Then I went home to tell my four-year-old twins, Emma and Sam, that their Daddy was dead. I looked into their eyes and knew that I could not allow their lives to become dominated by their father's death. I promised them and I promised myself that underneath the horror of what had just happened we would find a gift.

Eventually, after four years, Ryan Aldridge was arrested. That same day, as I was leaving the police station, I spotted him on camera, alone in the investigation room. The police had left the tape rolling and I stood and watched him falling apart. I didn’t want to leave him. After his arrest, police officers showed Ryan a video I’d made for him urging him to dig down deep to find the words to say, “I did this.” Four years of silence, grief and fear then fell away as he fulfilled my wish and confessed to the crime. Those words would begin the healing process for both of us. He then stunned police by asking to meet me, and so, less than 24 hours after his arrest, I found myself face-to-face with the man who had murdered my husband. As he sobbed it was all I could do not to hold him. Second to the day I gave birth, it was probably the most human moment of my life. I’ve been able to forgive Ryan because of the immense sympathy I have for his mother. I understood her loss. We haven’t met yet but we write and I cherish her letters. Forgiveness isn’t easy. Something happened when Bob died and I found my voice. Forgiveness became an opportunity to create a new and hopeful beginning.

As I lay waiting, trapped in what resembled a train carriage - but was now a blackened, smoke filled indescribable 'room' of destruction and devastation - I was able to think. This period of time, some 40 minutes, was to prove to be the most insightful and blessed gift that I am yet to receive, apart from the ultimate gift of a second chance at life. As the blood poured from my body (despite the scarf I had tied on each leg as a tourniquet to stem the flow) I felt incredibly weak, fighting to hold on, to survive. There were two voices holding a very powerful, conflicting conversation in my head – one voice willing me to hold on, to remember those who love me and need me here, the other calling me softly to let go, to drift away into a peaceful deep and permanent sleep. Both sides were stating their case – asking me to choose between life and death. I thought about all the things that mattered to me –my then partner and now husband Joe, my brother Graham, my family, my dear friends – I wanted to spare them this pain. They gave me the strength to choose life. I made a decision and the conversation ended. I wasn't going to die in the carriage, not there on that day; I had to wait for a light.

Help did come and each person who 'saved' me did so not knowing who I was. It didn’t matter if I was rich or poor, black or white, female or male, muslim or jew, religious or not – what mattered to each of them – the police, the ambulance, the paramedics, the surgeons, the nurses –was that I was a life that hung in the balance, a life they were so desperate to save. I arrived at the hospital as 'One Unknown' – an estimated female.

When I awoke I was euphoric to be alive and to have survived. I feel like a very blessed person – filled with emotions of love and compassion and joy. I am able to appreciate life – but a different life than I had before, one that is rich and fulfilled and not consumed by anger and hatred. I wish the world would Stop – just stop and give us all the time to see what is happening. Why are we killing each other – everyday? It may sound naïve, simple, maybe too simple to take seriously – but – I don't understand why we are 'accepting' and 'tolerating' war and destruction and famine and poverty and oppression. When will the final bomb explode? When will enough be enough?
The cycle has to stop – I can not hate the person who has done this to me; the cycle must end with me. I don’t see it as my place to forgive the act, yet I am compelled to understand – to offer an open heart, to try to hear and ask Why?

Forgiveness does not mean condoning what has been done. It means taking what has happened seriously and nor minimising it; drawing out the sting in the memory that threatens to poison our entire existence (Archbishop Desmond Tutu www.theforgivenessproject.com accessed 20/10/05).

“I was covering the Toronto Film Festival as a journalist on September 11. It was a bright sunny morning when my mum rang. ‘Andrew, are you alone?’ she asked, and a kind of dread came over me. She told me David had rung to tell her that a plane had hit the World Trade Centre but that he was OK: it had hit the other tower. I rushed to the pressroom of my hotel and as I walked in I saw the second jet hit. I was hysterical now and ran back to my hotel suite. I turned on the TV to catch the first tower collapsing. At this point I just let out this terrible shriek, overwhelmed by the certainty that David was dead.

David and I were always close. As teenagers we were both wild - we dropped out of college and partied too much until our twenties, when we both sobered up. The process of sobering up makes you face yourself and makes you understand that everyone has good and bad in them. When David was killed it helped me to handle my grief and anger.

When the New York Times published its “Portrait of Grief” of David, I was too distressed to take it in, but some months later I looked at the newspaper again and was shocked that in that same edition - just six days after the attacks - Vice President Cheney was saying, ‘if you’re against us you’ll feel our wrath’. The nation was in shock, like clay waiting to be moulded, and here were our leaders saying we would rid the world of evil. There was a battle going on inside me - the visceral part was saying ‘we’ll show them’, but the more rational part was saying ‘force won’t help’. Then, as reports of civilian casualties came in from Afghanistan, I found myself getting more and more upset that ordinary people like my brother were losing their lives.

Later, a group called Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation were contacted by the mother of the alleged 20th hijacker, Zacharias Moussaoui, who has been held in solitary confinement in Northern Virginia since September 11. She had a unique request. She wanted to meet some of the families of the victims and ask for their forgiveness.
We were nervous; scared of our Government finding out, and scared it would be just too upsetting. But finally a small group of us agreed to meet Madame al-Wafi in New York City in November 2002. As we waited in a private university building, a mother whose son was killed in the World Trade Centre went down the hall to meet her. We heard footsteps, then silence. Then we heard this sobbing. Finally they both came into the room, both mothers with their arms around each other. By now we were all crying. Madame al-Wafi reminded me a lot of my own mother, who had cried so much after David died. She spent three hours with us and told us how the extremist group had given her mentally ill son a purpose in life. One day I’d like to meet Zacharias Moussaoui. I’d like to say to him, ‘you can hate me and my brother as much as you like, but I want you to know that I loved your mother and I comforted her when she was crying’.

My attitude is not all altruism. Of course I’m angry, but there’s a spiritual supremacy. I’m protecting my brother’s spirit by putting a barricade around him. I’m refusing to fall in line with what “they” want, which is visceral hatred between two sides; this gives me permission to reconcile. Those people crying loudest for retribution so often seem to be the least affected.”