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40 Graces for Forgiveness (Day 40: Resurrection)

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  The beginning is the end is the beginning. Here we are at Day 40 of this journey toward forgiveness, and we’ve reached Christ’s resurrection. Without this eternity-shaking event forgiveness would not be possible for us, and would be that much harder (and less imperative) for us to extend to others. When Jesus appeared during the 40 days (what is it with the number 40?) between his resurrection and ascension, he granted his disciples the right to forgive people’s sins. This perplexes me, honestly. Again, remembering that disciples are supposed to do what their master does/did, and recognizing that Jesus also gave his disciples tongues and healing and every other Holy Spirit gift, it seems that we, as believers, are permitted to forgive or not forgive. Is it ever godly to not forgive, though? We saw earlier that if we don’t forgive others’ trespasses against us, God will not forgive our trespasses against him. Scary stuff, that. I feel like Jesus gave the disciples way more authority t
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40 Graces for Forgiveness (Day 39: The Dark Night of the Soul)

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  For three days Jesus was gone. However, all four gospels skip straight from his burial to the morning the women found the tomb empty. I wish they hadn’t passed over that time. I’d like to see what the depths of despair and disillusionment looked like on the disciples. Maybe the writers left it out because it was so ugly to witness. I occasionally sink into melancholy. After more than four decades of living with myself, when the darkness slips over me I can usually recognize what’s happening. Sometimes it’s cyclical in nature— “let the reader understand” —but other times there doesn’t seem to be any reason for it. My psyche simply goes under and there’s no way I’ve found to get past it except to go through it. Fortunately it normally takes just a day or two of wallowing into and back out of the gloom and dejection. But if you read my psycho-chicken-scrawled journal entries on those days you’d swear I was about to off myself. But even at my lowest, most despondent and disconsolate mome
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40 Graces for Forgiveness (Day 38: Death)

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  My first child, a son, was born in September. That December I was asked to read at the ladies’ Advent evening at my church. The poem they gave me was written from the voice of Mary, about experiencing the birth, life, and crucifixion of her firstborn. I was weeping before I whispered the first word of it, and choking back sobs by the end. Still awash in pregnancy hormones, and overcome with unimaginable love for my little boy, I could hardly take the thought of ever watching his death. Apparently my performance was poignant; I only remember suffering both unutterable despair and profound embarrassment. I cannot imagine losing a child, but even less losing one at the hands of another person. I have no wisdom or insight into this, and I pray I never will. If you do, my heart breaks for you. I’m so sorry. God knows about it, though. His perfect, cherished son suffered and died a bodily death at the derisive, hate-filled hands of the very people for whom he went to the cross and refused
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40 Graces for Forgiveness (Day 37: Peter's Denial)

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  The day of Jesus’s crucifixion wouldn’t even  begin  before he’d be rejected. Three times. By one of his closest friends. Faithfulness (or maybe faithlessness) hits me where I live. When someone treats me in a way I hope I would never treat them—maybe by doing something they vowed never to do—forgiveness is an uphill, rutted road over potholes and mud pits and through thunderstorms. I’ll be honest, I’ve been feeling pretty good the last week or so about my relationship with forgiveness. This 40-day journey has been exactly what I hoped—convicting and convincing about God’s intentions and my duty regarding forgiveness. Then this week someone close to me treated me kind of shabbily. I don’t know what I did to cause the rift, and my apology for offending has been received but not accepted. I’ve been cut off with little explanation and no opportunity to make amends. Happily, I feel right about how I handled it. And even more happily, I harbor no bad feelings toward that person. Not even
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40 Graces for Forgiveness (Day 36: Silence)

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  An apologist I once heard said that some questions have no right answers. He gave an example he employed in primary school after discovering that conundrum. He would go to a classmate and say, “I want to ask you something, but you can only answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’, okay?” Once the kid agreed, the question was posed: “Does your mother know how stupid you are?” I don’t know if Jesus stood silent in front of Herod because he knew that no matter what he said he’d be found guilty anyway—we’ve probably all been in that  damned-if-I-do-damned-if-I-don’t  position. Maybe Jesus refused to speak because he knew that nothing he said would be meaningful to or understood by his interrogator. Or perhaps there was some other reason he declined to comment. Silence can be golden, or it can be deafening. Sometimes it’s a window, other times it’s a weapon. I’ve been granted space to think, but I’ve also been given the silent treatment. (And I’ve been on the giving end of the silent treatment, too.) In the
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40 Graces for Forgiveness (Day 35: Betrayal)

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  The last time they ate a meal together before he went to the cross, Jesus washed his disciples’ feet. More than unexpected or unusual, this act of service turned on its head the established order: servants washed their masters’ feet; the master did not wash the servants’. Jesus did this to impress upon his disciples (then and now) that as he did for them they were to do for others. Only recently did a very significant, yet textually unremarked-upon, detail jump out at me: Jesus washed Judas’s feet, too. And the scripture says that Jesus already knew it was Judas who would betray him. Jesus  washed the stinking, filthy feet  of the man who would send him to his undeserved death just a few hours hence. I don’t care to serve anyone who doesn’t treat me properly, or whom I feel is less deserving of respect than I am. Right now signs are pointing to the possibility that I will soon find myself under the management of someone who I find prideful and inexperienced. The idea of serving under
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40 Graces for Forgiveness (Day 34: The Cursed Fig Tree)

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  Jesus was hungry. He saw a leafy fig tree in the distance. He went to get himself a nosh, but the tree had no fruit on it. So he cursed it, that it would never produce again. Yikes. I have  h-anger issues  myself, but that’s taking it to a whole ’nother level, Jesus. The Bible doesn’t waste any words—there are no throwaway narratives. So… might this account suggest that there are cases when Jesus won’t forgive? Keeping in mind that I am not a trained theologian, I will now explore this question a bit. Scriptures tell us that not everyone will get into heaven: There’s  the separating of the sheep and the goats ; and  those who were part of the kingdom, but then turn away ; as well as  the sexually immoral and the coveter  (isn’t that an interesting pairing?). If we ever thought that Jesus is too good and kind and loving to turn anyone away at the gates, I guess we need to think again. He is good and he is kind and he is loving—and he makes it very clear that heaven has standards, and
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