Some of my most satisfying moments as a pastor and a priest—or
as a husband and a father, for that matter—come when the people around me find
a solution to a problem for which I can take no credit. I might have helped facilitate investigation
of the matter, offered some clarifying analysis or fruitful question, but I
have held myself back from providing what I think to be the answer, and in the
end this proves to be a good thing, when I discover that I had wrong idea. The insight that comes, the sense of the
right direction forward is one I would not have come up with. And the satisfaction of recognizing it when
it comes, the energy I receive from being able to join in to saying “yes,
that’s it”, is far greater than what I would have gained by insisting we try it
my way.
This is what you might call
“The Joy of Being Wrong.” Which is a phrase I got from the title of a book by
an English Catholic theologian named James Allison. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend you read the
book, unless you’re in the mood for a good, brisk, philosophical and theological
workout, but you don’t really have to, because the title tells you
most of what you need to know. Which is
that the joy that is at the heart of the Christian life, the joy that burst
with the brilliance of a billion suns from the empty tomb on Easter Day, and
still spreads contagiously around the world almost two thousand years later, is
the joy of being wrong.
Of course, the Judeo-Christian
sense of being wrong, is more far-reaching and profound than simply not knowing
the right solution to a practical problem in the affairs of one’s family or the
church. The subtitle of Allison’s book
is “Original Sin through Easter Eyes.”
And it isn’t only Roman Catholics who subscribe to the notion that there
is something essentially, you might even say congenitally, off-the-mark in
human nature. “I have been a sinner from
my mother’s womb” says Psalm 51.
Orthodox Calvinism teaches the doctrine of “total human depravity,”
which is reflected in the General Confession from the original English Book of
Common Prayer: “We have left undone those things
which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not
to have done; And there is no health in us.”
This wrongness is
not merely psychological, but is manifested in the social world we have
made. The Cross of Christ reveals
this. The powers that rule this world
are unmasked on the cross as the powers of sin and death. It is a world constructed on the
victimization of the innocent, on violence and falsehood pretending to be justice
and peace. And this is reflected in the lesser
instruments of death we wield against each other daily in our intimate
circles—the hardened heart and the cold shoulder, the accusing finger, the sugary
lips concealing a poisoned tongue, the deaf ear and the blind eye. We are wrong when we think that our
justifications, be they personal or cultural, religious or political, can make
such things pleasing to God. We are
wrong to believe that a world so in thrall to the power of death is a world
that can last.
But Christ’s resurrection
shows how wrong we also are when imagine we are helpless prisoners of that
world, or that our deep-dyed implication in its wrongness is a stain which cannot
be removed. The Easter joy of being
wrong is the freedom of seeing that there is no captivity in sin, in self-destructive
vice or self-righteous injustice, in death itself, that cannot be broken open
by the love and life of God. The story of Saul of Tarsus on the road to
Damascus is the classic Biblical
account of this truth. Phrases from the
story, such as “road to Damascus” itself, and “the scales fell from his eyes,”
have entered the English language as proverbial expressions for the moment of
amazing grace. And the irony that the
Lord Jesus should appear to this man, who has committed all his considerable talents
to stamping out the name of Jesus from the earth, and should call him to make that
name known to the nations, was not lost on Paul himself. It became, in some sense, the core of his
message, a compelling illustration of the power of the crucified and risen
Christ to break down the best-defended barriers of bigotry, arrogance, and ignorance
and create a new humanity in God.
But what is sometimes
overlooked is that this is not only the story of the conversion of Paul, but is
also about God’s call to a disciple in Damascus called Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision,
"Ananias." He answered, "Here I am, Lord,” which is the standard
Biblical literary form for the calling of a prophet. And what Ananias is called to do is to
complete the transforming action of Christ’s grace by ministering to Paul. To do this he has to overcome his own
well-founded suspicion of this man and his motives. He has to move from the posture of
traumatized victim to that of the agent of healing forgiveness. He has to take a risky further step in
trusting the transforming power of resurrection, in opening himself to the joy of being wrong.
We can see a similar vision in
the 21st Chapter of John.
When Jesus asks Peter three times, “Do you love me?” it is an
unmistakable reminder of the night he was betrayed, when they asked Peter three
times if he knew Jesus and he denied it.
The risen Christ comes to Peter and gives him the chance for a "do-over," to declare
three times not only that he knows Jesus but that he loves him. It hurts Peter’s feelings, but it also helps
him to release his guilt and to embrace the magnificence of his mission. It reminds of his cowardice, so he can take a
stand in his courage. It reminds him of
his faithlessness, so he can step forward in faith. It reminds him of his refusal, so he can be
whole-hearted in his acceptance. And
what is he accepting but a commission to do what Jesus himself has done—to be a
shepherd, to feed the flock of the Messianic community with words of life and acts of healing and
compassion.
In the same way, the dynamic of our
Christian ministry is always simultaneously giving and receiving forgiveness,
feeding and being fed. We do not hold
ourselves apart from the sin and suffering that are the common lot of humanity. We do not pretend that the world is other
than that it is, or wish to escape to a private island of material privilege or
spiritual transcendence. We engage with
the real stuff of life—which is why stories of resurrection in the New
Testament so often involve the sharing of food.
But we do so with a very particular perspective, one that is more of an
open inquiry, a wondering, than it is a prescription or a dogma. It’s a questioning that flows from the
knowledge that we are certainly wrong: And so we ask--how could God be present
in these circumstances? What possibility
of healing and transformation is here that Christ can see, even if we
can’t? Where are we blocking the energy
of love, that could create something new out of this mess? And what might we say or do, to release the
flow, so that we nourish, rather than slaughter, Jesus' lambs?
The breaking of bread which
the collect for this Sunday speaks about, the breaking of bread in which we
recognize the presence of the risen Christ, is not bread we break for ourselves,
but bread broken for us by a stranger, a stranger we are always only just
beginning to know. His is the body that
was broken on the cross, that is still broken every day in the victims of our
greed, fear, hate, and indifference—and at the same time it is the bread of
life. We do not simply see this broken
bread, we break it to share it, to take it into ourselves—it is the food of our
redemption and forgiveness. It nourishes
us with the faith and hope and love that animated Jesus, the faith and hope and
love of God for the world. It sends us
out to minister to that world in the joy of being wrong, bearing in our bodies
both the death of Christ, and the glory of his resurrection, and it opens our
eyes to see both cross and resurrection there.
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