When
I was a little boy there was a huge plate on a shelf overlooking the
living room in our house. We had often been told that my great grandmother
had given it to my grandmother and that she had passed it on to my
mother on her wedding day. It was a invaluable family heirloom. One
afternoon my brothers and I had a pillow throwing session. Suddenly
the plate came crashing to the ground. The silence that followed was
as loud as the crash. We were all scurrying for shelter awaiting the
furor when my parents would come home. Do you recognize this kind
of high voltage situation?
The Gospel today recalls one such scene. For three years Jesus had
been training his disciples. When the final crunch came they had behaved
disgracefully. Judas betrayed him, Peter denied him and they all ran
away. They had been called to leave all to follow Christ. Mark gives
a parting picture of a bare bottom disappearing into the darkness.
A disciple had left all - even his clothes - to run away from Christ!
By any standard they all got failing grades.
Imagine
the tension when the risen Lord appears in their midst. Would he berate
them and scold them? Would he fire the lot of them and seek replacements?
They must have been very tense as they waited for a sign of how he
was taking it all. And then he said "Shalom, peace be with you.
As the Father has sent me so I also send you. Receive the Holy Spirit.
When you forgive sins they are forgiven. When you hold them back they
are held back." What an unexpected and total surprise. He expresses
peace, love and confidence in them in spite of their failure and incompetence.
Instead of firing them in disgrace he promotes them and missions them
as his envoys. Now, as never before, they know that they are loved.
To be loved after failure is to be loved for yourself and for who
you are. In a sense it is only the one who has failed who can be loved.
There is no testing in being positive towards those who please us
all the time. But knowing that they have failed and are forgiven the
disciples can go out full of confidence not in their sinful selves,
but in the Lord who sent them. Their confidence comes from being sent.
"As the Father has sent me, so I also send you."
But
Jesus knew that it would not be easy for these, his incompetent insecure
envoys, to continue the mission with so much hurt in their hearts.
He was aware that to err is human, to blame others is even more human,
and to forgive is a divine gift. So he gives them his Spirit to empower
them for their task. "When you forgive sins they are forgiven,
when you hold them back they are held back." Very simply he says
to them, "I know that by your own power you cannot go on working
together and you cannot fulfill the mission that I am giving you.
There is too much pain and hurt among you. To forgive that hurt, which
you cannot do of your own power, I give you my spirit to empower you
to forgive as I forgive. Take that power and use it and you will set
yourselves free. Refuse to take and use it and you continue in your
self imprisonment, your sin." His words had a special power in
the light of his own on-the-spot example.
The
capacity to be loving to the one who has failed is a gift of the Holy
Spirit. In this account it is the Spirit's first gift. And the first
recipient of it must be ourselves. It is only when we humbly accept
ourselves as forgiven sinners that we know that we are loved and become
capable of showing a similar love towards others.
In
mediation we do just that. We be still without any self condemnation.
We repeatedly experience our failure in the simple work of saying
the prayer word. And in this simple failure we learn the acceptance
of our selves and of all others who fail.
