Forgiveness

When I was a kid, I sang in the Trinity Cathedral choir in Pittsburgh. When Palm Sunday came, when it was time for the Gospel, we all sighed when we discovered that it was so long. This was before the time when the Gospel was dramatized and members of the congregation took parts, sometimes dressed up, and made the Gospel come alive. the problem was that the church didn't take the Gospel as seriously as it might have. Us "little ones" just had to listen to it. I guess that they hoped that by constant repetition over the years, it might sink in. Well, they were right, it did sink in, but not by constant repetition. I learned that the Gospel for Palm Sunday was significant when I went to seminary and came face to face with the reality of the Passion. The very idea that God came to earth to live as one of us, and we killed him was not something that I learned in Sunday School. Jesus' death on the cross was always for me something that "they" did. "They" being the Pharisees and the other religious leaders in Jesus' time. When I discovered that it was me who killed Jesus, it put another face on it. I began to understand what forgiveness really meant. It wasn't simple "sins" that were being forgiven, it was my arrogance in believing that everything was about me. That is what Jesus' passion is all about. When I think of that, it brings me up short every time. On Palm Sunday, I like to think that Easter isn't necessarily going to happen. All of the Easter preparation that we do, the baskets, the bunny, the eggs, the candy are all ways to dress up this holiday so that we don't really need to think about what it means. The Resurrection of Jesus is an incredible event. It means for us all that we are forgiven the arrogance that makes us the center of the world.

I have known so called "born again" people who don't know this. They make their faith the center of their lives and push it forward as judgment on the rest of us. They need forgiveness too. We all do. The beautiful thing is that they have it. Jesus died for them as well as the rest of us. In terms of the real horrible evil that there is in the world, Jesus died for that too. Those with evil at the core of their being are loved and forgiven also by God. That little core of goodness that lies at the heart of every created person is exposed and loved by the God who created us all. That is what "heaven" is all about.