In a stunning biblical slap in the face, our gospel reading for this morning also served as the lectionary text ten days after 9/11 — ten days after Ground Zero became a devastating reality in our nation’s history. Love our enemies? Offer forgiveness? God, you have to be kidding!

That first week after 9/11 — after the terror struck — after our world changed forever — I kept reading about other ministers who were preaching about forgiveness. “How can they do that?” I asked myself. You see, I simply was not there. At that point, all I could do was grieve, cry, and worry — and rage in aimless ways at the monsters who did this. Now, years later, with feelings more modulated, with a nation transformed and reshaped in a way we could not have imagined, and with the shadows of terrorism still ass…