Starting Over
Commentary
We all believe in justice; we all cry out to have our rights protected. Yet the power of revenge eventually takes us beyond where any of us truly want to go, for two reasons.
First of all, because of sin, we tend to be more zealous in our vindictiveness than we are in our love. I am much quicker to strike out at someone else and seek revenge against him for what he’s done to me, than I am to be that righteous myself.
If I make a promise to you and I break it, I’ll want you to brush it off lightly. I’ll want to say, “Never mind. That’s okay.” After all, in my want of thinking I’ve got a good excuse for breaking my promise.
But if you make a promise to me, and you fail to come through on it, I’m not going to let you get off so easily. You did me wrong, and I’m going to make sure you know that. I can’t count on you. You’re not very dependable, like I am.
That, says C.S. Lewis, is the way justice gets perverted because of sin. I still have rights, but you don’t.
The second reason the logic of vengeance breaks down is that the God who taught us justice has himself learned to temper it with mercy, and that’s a lesson we too often haven’t learned.
During a heated debate at a church’s board meeting, one of the overwrought members jumped to his feet, clenched his fists, and yelled, “I have my rights!”
The air was charged. The battle lines were being drawn in people’s minds. Then came this quiet word from one of the older men: “You don’t really mean that. If we had our rights, we’d all be in hell.”
It’s true. Were justice alone to serve us in life, the march would be stern and mean, and the inn at the eve of the journey would be the infamous “Hotel California,” where, according to legend and song, you can check in anytime, but you can never leave. Much better, according to the psalmist, is the place where God gathers us. There “love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other” (Psalm 85:10).
God knows how to temper his justice with the kiss of peace, but when it’s time for us to show mercy, we’re slow to the draw.
There is a greater power than the energy of vengeance. There is a higher logic than the instinct of revenge. And even though I really don’t think that’s possible, I know it’s true, because I have felt the power of love. I know it’s true, because I have experienced the logic of grace, where justice and peace kiss, where righteousness and forgiveness embrace. In moments of grace, “I have been to the mountaintop,” as Martin Luther King Jr. said, “and I have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”
It is from that mountaintop of God’s grace that each of the visions in our lectionary readings speak today.
Genesis 45:3-11, 15
Although Abraham hears a disembodied voice, and Jacob has a vision of heaven one night at Bethel, it is Joseph whose Genesis record is entirely shaped by dreams. Joseph enters the narrative as a self-absorbed, privileged son who foolishly antagonizes his family by reporting nighttime revelations that he is the most important among them, destined to become their lord and master (Genesis 37:2–11). His arrogance precipitates a plot among his siblings to get rid of him (Genesis 37:12–35), and this brings him to Egypt as a slave (Genesis 37:36; 38:1–6). Now the dreaming takes center stage again as Joseph is unjustly thrown in prison (Genesis 39:7–23), where he meets two men from the pharaoh’s court who are awaiting adjudication on treason charges (Genesis 40:1–4). They each have dreams (Genesis 40:5–8), which Joseph is able to interpret (Genesis 40:9–19) in a way entirely consistent with the events that follow (Genesis 40:20–22).
Joseph’s unique skills come to the attention of the pharaoh two years later, when the ruler’s nighttime reveries plague him like a nightmare and Joseph is brought in to make sense of it all (Genesis 40:23–41:36). This earns Joseph a spot as coregent of Egypt (Genesis 41:37–57), and it is from this position that he becomes savior of his family during the ensuing famine (Genesis 42–46). Joseph’s tale ends with his sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, gaining equal status with Jacob’s other sons in the inheritance distributions (Genesis 48–49) and Joseph burying his father with honors in Canaan (Genesis 50:1–14), while keeping alive the dream of having the whole family return there one day when the current crisis has passed (Genesis 50:15–26).
In its focus on dreams, the Joseph story cycle that concludes Genesis deals with two issues. First, it answers the question of how this nation of Israel, springing from such illustrious stock, become an enslaved people in a land not their own. Second, it creates a vision for the way the future is brighter than the past: along with their forebear, Joseph, they need only take hold of the dream of God for them.
1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50
Near the end of Paul’s long letter of response to the Corinthian congregations list of important questions of faith, comes his powerful reflection on the meaning of Jesus’ resurrection and its implication for each of us who lives and dies (1 Corinthians 15). Beginning with eyewitness testimonies about the reality of Jesus’ return to bodily life, Paul traced the necessity of Jesus’ physical resurrection for the affirmation of human existence itself. Then Paul went on to explain the metamorphoses that all humans go through, when one day they share in both Jesus’ death and his resurrection. Paul’s final words on this subject are a marvelous bit of encouragement: “Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the world of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58).
Paul’s eschatology was rooted in the reality of Jesus’ physical resurrection. Throughout his letters, he focuses on these aspects of this really good news. First, the resurrection of Jesus was the confirmation that Jesus was the Messiah foretold by the prophets. It was
also the most profound sign that the new messianic age had arrived. Since the messianic age was part of the promised “Day of the Lord,” a time of divine judgment was sure to arrive soon.
Second, Jesus’ first coming brought the beginnings of the blessings of the messianic age, but it delayed the judgments of God for a time, so the followers of Jesus could spread the news of salvation far and wide. Splitting the “Day of the Lord” in two was an act of kindness on God’s part, providing more opportunity for people to respond in faith. It also kindled in the church a missionary urgency. The reason Jesus left his followers behind during the gap between his ascension and return was to send them as ambassadors of hope to the nations.
Third, the return of Jesus was imminent and was likely to take place within weeks or months. This was the expectation that made any trials, persecutions, or difficulties endurable. Knowing that one can outlast an opponent, no matter how nasty or strong, gives great resilience to hang on and survive with dignity.
Fourth, all who trusted in Jesus when he returned would share in his glory and power. But so too would those who had believed in Jesus and died before Jesus made his return. This teaching profoundly changed the burial habits of Christians and altered expectations at dying. Rather than closing doors to human existence, death instead opened them to eternal life. Many early Christians welcomed death by martyrdom, knowing that through this act they were immediately secure in resurrection hope.
Fifth, the yawning gap of time that had been widening since Jesus’ ascension required meaningful explanations for the delay of his return. Answers came in three major varieties. Some saw this lengthening “in-between” age as evidence of divine grace: God was not going to bring final judgment until more people could respond to the gospel message in faith. Others declared that the delay was a tool for testing the faithfulness of those who said they believed in Jesus. A final group called to mind Jesus’ words about signs that would appear before the final days and tried more closely to define the number of specific events that must still take place prior to his return.
These three aspects of eschatological expectations became deeply integrated into the church, instilling in Paul a sense of missionary urgency and a steadfast ethical stance. The church must speak to everyone with loving passion about Jesus. At the same time, Christians were responsible to live in a profound moral simplicity that assessed every behavior by the question, “What should we be doing when Jesus returns?”
Luke 6:27-38
Frederick Buechner wrote that anger is the most fun of the seven deadly sins. Anger makes us feel like we are feasting on a banquet fit for a king: we lick our wounds; we smack our lips over grievances long past; we roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations to come; we savor to the last morsel the pain we are given, and the pain we give back.
There is only one problem, according to Buechner. In the end, when the meal is over, we find that we have eaten ourselves. We have consumed our own flesh, and we are the ones who have died.
Buechner based his ideas on what Jesus speaks about in today’s gospel reading. If you do not settle matters with someone who has become your enemy, you yourself will die a slow death in the prison of your bitterness. The word resentment could be defined to re-feel, to feel again and again and again. Every time you feel it, the pain gets deeper, the agony grows, and the bitterness wraps itself tighter. Someone hurts you once, but then you keep hurting yourself again and again and again as you think about it, and remember it, and go over every detail in livid color.
There is a wise saying in the Hebrew Talmud: “A person who carries a grudge is like a man who accidently cuts one hand with a knife, and then stabs his other hand because it slipped.” Imagine a hunter skinning his game with his hunting knife. He holds the warm flesh with his left hand while he slits the skin with the knife in his right hand. But the knife slips and cuts deep into his left hand. Blood spurts and the hunter shouts in pain.
What is he likely to do? Will he clean the wound and bandage it? That would be wise. But imagine the hunter instead becomes angry with his right hand for causing the wounds to his left. His left-hand gropes for the fallen weapon and stabs his right hand, returning pain for pain, avenging the first cut with a deeper gash. If we were to watch this incident we would roll our eyes at such idiocy.
Yet, in some way, this is what Jesus is trying to tell us. If we carry a grudge against someone who offends us we are not seeking healing; instead we are replaying the hurt to bring greater pain. We are as foolish as the hunter, more maimed than if we had sought healing instead of revenge. If I react to hurt by paying someone back tit-for-tat, then, as with the hunter, two wounds bleed instead of one, and no healing can begin. I lose my brother, and I lose something inside myself that becomes monstrous against him. Only when love and I have “the wit to win,” when we draw “a circle that [takes] him in,” do I gain something of myself back again.
Application
Dale Galloway wrote of a friend who had a very shy son named Chad. The other children didn’t usually include Chad in their circle of friends. Every afternoon his mother saw the school bus stop and all the children pile off in groups, laughing, playing, and joking with each other. Chad would be the last to come down the steps, always alone.
One day in late January, Chad came home and said,” Know what, Mom? Valentine’s Day is coming, and I want to make a card for every single person in my class!”
Chad’s mother felt terrible. She thought Chad was setting himself up for a fall. He was going to make valentines for everyone else, but nobody would think of him. He would come home all disappointed and just pull back further in his shell.
Still Chad insisted. So they got paper and crayons and glue. Chad made thirty-one valentine cards. It took him three weeks. The day he took them to school, his mother cried. And when he came off the bus, alone as usual, no valentine cards from anyone else in his hands, she was ready for the worst.
But Chad’s face was glowing as he marched through the door triumphantly. “I didn’t forget anybody!” he said. “I gave them all one of my hearts!” (Dale Galloway, Dream a New Dream [Wheaton: Tyndale, 1975]).
That day Chad gained something more than friends. He gained himself. He won a sense of dignity and worth.
That’s how Jesus wants us to live. Circles of hatred erased by circles of love. Circles of bitterness blurred by circles of caring. Circles of death that give way to circles of life.
Isn’t that what God has done for us? “While we were still sinners,” says the Apostle Paul, “Christ died for us!” (Romans 5:8). When we had drawn God out of circles, his love drew us in. When we counted him as our enemy, he called to us as his friends. When we hardened the walls of our hearts against him, he softened us with his love.
After all, couldn’t Edwin Markham’s poem be the conversation of heaven, the talk between the Father and the Son about you and me?
He drew a circle that shut me out —
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
Love is stronger than death. The day Jesus drew a circle of love that took us in is the day death died. Now we are free to live and draw circles like our Savior.
Alternative Application (Luke 6:27-38)
Lewis Smedes wrote of his friend Myra Broger. Myra, said Smedes, was an actress and a beautiful woman. A few years ago she was nearly killed by a hit-and-run driver. Now she is crippled.
At the time of the accident, she was married to another actor, a TV and film star. He stayed with Myra long enough to see that she didn’t die from the accident. Then he divorced her. He couldn’t be encumbered by her crippled weight. He was off with other women who were not crippled.
Myra hated him, of course. She hated him for what he did to her. She hated him for the vows he broke, and for the meanness that left her alone, just when she needed him most.
Lew Smedes asked her one time if she had ever been able to forgive him. After she thought about it for a while she nodded her head with slow deliberation. Yes, she thought she had begun to forgive him.
Smedes was curious. How did she come to that conclusion? How could she tell if she had forgiven him?
Myra replied, “I find myself wishing him well.” Just that simple.
Smedes was unsure. Could this really be the case? He probed further by asking a pointed question. “Myra, suppose you learned today that he had married a sexy young scarlet. Could you pray that he would be happy with her?”
Smedes says that he expected her to bristle at the thought, but she didn’t. She responded almost casually, he says, and she told him, “Yes, I could and I would. Steve needs love very much, and I want him to have it.”
That’s not a blazing declaration of absolution of his crimes, but it is a crack in hell’s armor. As I sat at my desk reflecting on these words of Jesus, I asked myself about my relationship with the person in our own story of Ken’s tragedy. Do I wish that person any good in life? Do I desire for that person any of the grace of God? Do I hope the sunshine falls on that person in any moment of delight?
It’s a moment of truth we all have to face, for not one of us can walk away from Jesus’ words without a good hard look in the mirror. After all, when the scales of justice are balanced on judgment day, it will be love that gathers all God’s children home. On that day no one will clamor for revenge, and then we will be so thankful that love never kept to the safety of heaven. For love took the form of a servant. Nothing should have been done to love that was done to him. It was a hideous way to treat the kindness of God. Yet love endured the wrongs and unleashed the powers of a world waiting to be born.
The evidence is seen in lives like ours. Remember Blake’s words:
Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself any care,
But for another gives it ease,
And builds a heaven in hell’s despair.
First of all, because of sin, we tend to be more zealous in our vindictiveness than we are in our love. I am much quicker to strike out at someone else and seek revenge against him for what he’s done to me, than I am to be that righteous myself.
If I make a promise to you and I break it, I’ll want you to brush it off lightly. I’ll want to say, “Never mind. That’s okay.” After all, in my want of thinking I’ve got a good excuse for breaking my promise.
But if you make a promise to me, and you fail to come through on it, I’m not going to let you get off so easily. You did me wrong, and I’m going to make sure you know that. I can’t count on you. You’re not very dependable, like I am.
That, says C.S. Lewis, is the way justice gets perverted because of sin. I still have rights, but you don’t.
The second reason the logic of vengeance breaks down is that the God who taught us justice has himself learned to temper it with mercy, and that’s a lesson we too often haven’t learned.
During a heated debate at a church’s board meeting, one of the overwrought members jumped to his feet, clenched his fists, and yelled, “I have my rights!”
The air was charged. The battle lines were being drawn in people’s minds. Then came this quiet word from one of the older men: “You don’t really mean that. If we had our rights, we’d all be in hell.”
It’s true. Were justice alone to serve us in life, the march would be stern and mean, and the inn at the eve of the journey would be the infamous “Hotel California,” where, according to legend and song, you can check in anytime, but you can never leave. Much better, according to the psalmist, is the place where God gathers us. There “love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other” (Psalm 85:10).
God knows how to temper his justice with the kiss of peace, but when it’s time for us to show mercy, we’re slow to the draw.
There is a greater power than the energy of vengeance. There is a higher logic than the instinct of revenge. And even though I really don’t think that’s possible, I know it’s true, because I have felt the power of love. I know it’s true, because I have experienced the logic of grace, where justice and peace kiss, where righteousness and forgiveness embrace. In moments of grace, “I have been to the mountaintop,” as Martin Luther King Jr. said, “and I have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”
It is from that mountaintop of God’s grace that each of the visions in our lectionary readings speak today.
Genesis 45:3-11, 15
Although Abraham hears a disembodied voice, and Jacob has a vision of heaven one night at Bethel, it is Joseph whose Genesis record is entirely shaped by dreams. Joseph enters the narrative as a self-absorbed, privileged son who foolishly antagonizes his family by reporting nighttime revelations that he is the most important among them, destined to become their lord and master (Genesis 37:2–11). His arrogance precipitates a plot among his siblings to get rid of him (Genesis 37:12–35), and this brings him to Egypt as a slave (Genesis 37:36; 38:1–6). Now the dreaming takes center stage again as Joseph is unjustly thrown in prison (Genesis 39:7–23), where he meets two men from the pharaoh’s court who are awaiting adjudication on treason charges (Genesis 40:1–4). They each have dreams (Genesis 40:5–8), which Joseph is able to interpret (Genesis 40:9–19) in a way entirely consistent with the events that follow (Genesis 40:20–22).
Joseph’s unique skills come to the attention of the pharaoh two years later, when the ruler’s nighttime reveries plague him like a nightmare and Joseph is brought in to make sense of it all (Genesis 40:23–41:36). This earns Joseph a spot as coregent of Egypt (Genesis 41:37–57), and it is from this position that he becomes savior of his family during the ensuing famine (Genesis 42–46). Joseph’s tale ends with his sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, gaining equal status with Jacob’s other sons in the inheritance distributions (Genesis 48–49) and Joseph burying his father with honors in Canaan (Genesis 50:1–14), while keeping alive the dream of having the whole family return there one day when the current crisis has passed (Genesis 50:15–26).
In its focus on dreams, the Joseph story cycle that concludes Genesis deals with two issues. First, it answers the question of how this nation of Israel, springing from such illustrious stock, become an enslaved people in a land not their own. Second, it creates a vision for the way the future is brighter than the past: along with their forebear, Joseph, they need only take hold of the dream of God for them.
1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50
Near the end of Paul’s long letter of response to the Corinthian congregations list of important questions of faith, comes his powerful reflection on the meaning of Jesus’ resurrection and its implication for each of us who lives and dies (1 Corinthians 15). Beginning with eyewitness testimonies about the reality of Jesus’ return to bodily life, Paul traced the necessity of Jesus’ physical resurrection for the affirmation of human existence itself. Then Paul went on to explain the metamorphoses that all humans go through, when one day they share in both Jesus’ death and his resurrection. Paul’s final words on this subject are a marvelous bit of encouragement: “Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the world of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58).
Paul’s eschatology was rooted in the reality of Jesus’ physical resurrection. Throughout his letters, he focuses on these aspects of this really good news. First, the resurrection of Jesus was the confirmation that Jesus was the Messiah foretold by the prophets. It was
also the most profound sign that the new messianic age had arrived. Since the messianic age was part of the promised “Day of the Lord,” a time of divine judgment was sure to arrive soon.
Second, Jesus’ first coming brought the beginnings of the blessings of the messianic age, but it delayed the judgments of God for a time, so the followers of Jesus could spread the news of salvation far and wide. Splitting the “Day of the Lord” in two was an act of kindness on God’s part, providing more opportunity for people to respond in faith. It also kindled in the church a missionary urgency. The reason Jesus left his followers behind during the gap between his ascension and return was to send them as ambassadors of hope to the nations.
Third, the return of Jesus was imminent and was likely to take place within weeks or months. This was the expectation that made any trials, persecutions, or difficulties endurable. Knowing that one can outlast an opponent, no matter how nasty or strong, gives great resilience to hang on and survive with dignity.
Fourth, all who trusted in Jesus when he returned would share in his glory and power. But so too would those who had believed in Jesus and died before Jesus made his return. This teaching profoundly changed the burial habits of Christians and altered expectations at dying. Rather than closing doors to human existence, death instead opened them to eternal life. Many early Christians welcomed death by martyrdom, knowing that through this act they were immediately secure in resurrection hope.
Fifth, the yawning gap of time that had been widening since Jesus’ ascension required meaningful explanations for the delay of his return. Answers came in three major varieties. Some saw this lengthening “in-between” age as evidence of divine grace: God was not going to bring final judgment until more people could respond to the gospel message in faith. Others declared that the delay was a tool for testing the faithfulness of those who said they believed in Jesus. A final group called to mind Jesus’ words about signs that would appear before the final days and tried more closely to define the number of specific events that must still take place prior to his return.
These three aspects of eschatological expectations became deeply integrated into the church, instilling in Paul a sense of missionary urgency and a steadfast ethical stance. The church must speak to everyone with loving passion about Jesus. At the same time, Christians were responsible to live in a profound moral simplicity that assessed every behavior by the question, “What should we be doing when Jesus returns?”
Luke 6:27-38
Frederick Buechner wrote that anger is the most fun of the seven deadly sins. Anger makes us feel like we are feasting on a banquet fit for a king: we lick our wounds; we smack our lips over grievances long past; we roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations to come; we savor to the last morsel the pain we are given, and the pain we give back.
There is only one problem, according to Buechner. In the end, when the meal is over, we find that we have eaten ourselves. We have consumed our own flesh, and we are the ones who have died.
Buechner based his ideas on what Jesus speaks about in today’s gospel reading. If you do not settle matters with someone who has become your enemy, you yourself will die a slow death in the prison of your bitterness. The word resentment could be defined to re-feel, to feel again and again and again. Every time you feel it, the pain gets deeper, the agony grows, and the bitterness wraps itself tighter. Someone hurts you once, but then you keep hurting yourself again and again and again as you think about it, and remember it, and go over every detail in livid color.
There is a wise saying in the Hebrew Talmud: “A person who carries a grudge is like a man who accidently cuts one hand with a knife, and then stabs his other hand because it slipped.” Imagine a hunter skinning his game with his hunting knife. He holds the warm flesh with his left hand while he slits the skin with the knife in his right hand. But the knife slips and cuts deep into his left hand. Blood spurts and the hunter shouts in pain.
What is he likely to do? Will he clean the wound and bandage it? That would be wise. But imagine the hunter instead becomes angry with his right hand for causing the wounds to his left. His left-hand gropes for the fallen weapon and stabs his right hand, returning pain for pain, avenging the first cut with a deeper gash. If we were to watch this incident we would roll our eyes at such idiocy.
Yet, in some way, this is what Jesus is trying to tell us. If we carry a grudge against someone who offends us we are not seeking healing; instead we are replaying the hurt to bring greater pain. We are as foolish as the hunter, more maimed than if we had sought healing instead of revenge. If I react to hurt by paying someone back tit-for-tat, then, as with the hunter, two wounds bleed instead of one, and no healing can begin. I lose my brother, and I lose something inside myself that becomes monstrous against him. Only when love and I have “the wit to win,” when we draw “a circle that [takes] him in,” do I gain something of myself back again.
Application
Dale Galloway wrote of a friend who had a very shy son named Chad. The other children didn’t usually include Chad in their circle of friends. Every afternoon his mother saw the school bus stop and all the children pile off in groups, laughing, playing, and joking with each other. Chad would be the last to come down the steps, always alone.
One day in late January, Chad came home and said,” Know what, Mom? Valentine’s Day is coming, and I want to make a card for every single person in my class!”
Chad’s mother felt terrible. She thought Chad was setting himself up for a fall. He was going to make valentines for everyone else, but nobody would think of him. He would come home all disappointed and just pull back further in his shell.
Still Chad insisted. So they got paper and crayons and glue. Chad made thirty-one valentine cards. It took him three weeks. The day he took them to school, his mother cried. And when he came off the bus, alone as usual, no valentine cards from anyone else in his hands, she was ready for the worst.
But Chad’s face was glowing as he marched through the door triumphantly. “I didn’t forget anybody!” he said. “I gave them all one of my hearts!” (Dale Galloway, Dream a New Dream [Wheaton: Tyndale, 1975]).
That day Chad gained something more than friends. He gained himself. He won a sense of dignity and worth.
That’s how Jesus wants us to live. Circles of hatred erased by circles of love. Circles of bitterness blurred by circles of caring. Circles of death that give way to circles of life.
Isn’t that what God has done for us? “While we were still sinners,” says the Apostle Paul, “Christ died for us!” (Romans 5:8). When we had drawn God out of circles, his love drew us in. When we counted him as our enemy, he called to us as his friends. When we hardened the walls of our hearts against him, he softened us with his love.
After all, couldn’t Edwin Markham’s poem be the conversation of heaven, the talk between the Father and the Son about you and me?
He drew a circle that shut me out —
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
Love is stronger than death. The day Jesus drew a circle of love that took us in is the day death died. Now we are free to live and draw circles like our Savior.
Alternative Application (Luke 6:27-38)
Lewis Smedes wrote of his friend Myra Broger. Myra, said Smedes, was an actress and a beautiful woman. A few years ago she was nearly killed by a hit-and-run driver. Now she is crippled.
At the time of the accident, she was married to another actor, a TV and film star. He stayed with Myra long enough to see that she didn’t die from the accident. Then he divorced her. He couldn’t be encumbered by her crippled weight. He was off with other women who were not crippled.
Myra hated him, of course. She hated him for what he did to her. She hated him for the vows he broke, and for the meanness that left her alone, just when she needed him most.
Lew Smedes asked her one time if she had ever been able to forgive him. After she thought about it for a while she nodded her head with slow deliberation. Yes, she thought she had begun to forgive him.
Smedes was curious. How did she come to that conclusion? How could she tell if she had forgiven him?
Myra replied, “I find myself wishing him well.” Just that simple.
Smedes was unsure. Could this really be the case? He probed further by asking a pointed question. “Myra, suppose you learned today that he had married a sexy young scarlet. Could you pray that he would be happy with her?”
Smedes says that he expected her to bristle at the thought, but she didn’t. She responded almost casually, he says, and she told him, “Yes, I could and I would. Steve needs love very much, and I want him to have it.”
That’s not a blazing declaration of absolution of his crimes, but it is a crack in hell’s armor. As I sat at my desk reflecting on these words of Jesus, I asked myself about my relationship with the person in our own story of Ken’s tragedy. Do I wish that person any good in life? Do I desire for that person any of the grace of God? Do I hope the sunshine falls on that person in any moment of delight?
It’s a moment of truth we all have to face, for not one of us can walk away from Jesus’ words without a good hard look in the mirror. After all, when the scales of justice are balanced on judgment day, it will be love that gathers all God’s children home. On that day no one will clamor for revenge, and then we will be so thankful that love never kept to the safety of heaven. For love took the form of a servant. Nothing should have been done to love that was done to him. It was a hideous way to treat the kindness of God. Yet love endured the wrongs and unleashed the powers of a world waiting to be born.
The evidence is seen in lives like ours. Remember Blake’s words:
Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself any care,
But for another gives it ease,
And builds a heaven in hell’s despair.
