Dear Friends,
In a discussion with the Sadducees of His day about the
resurrection (which the Sadducees didn’t believe in), Jesus said: “You
are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.” (Matthew
22:29). How true that is of many of us, particularly of life-long churchgoers
who just seem never to ‘get it’; for whom the ‘be all’ and ‘end all’ of this
whole religious enterprise is to maintain the ‘status quo’ even though the
‘status quo’ may be, as one joker defined it, ‘the mess we’re currently in!’
I came across a TRUE story recently which deeply moves me
every time I read it or share it – but I know that there are people reading
this who simply won’t believe it is true, because of a deep level cynicism
which accepts the popular but wholly unbiblical maxim that ‘a leopard can’t
change its spots’ but more so because “they do not know the Scriptures or the
power of God.”
Imagine this scene from
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa after the demolition of
apartheid. A frail black woman stands slowly to her feet. She is about 70 years
of age. Facing her from across the room are several white police officers, one
of whom, Mr. van der Broek, has just been tried and found implicated in the
murders of both the woman`s son and her husband some years before.
It was indeed Mr. Van
der Broek, it has now been established, who had come to the woman`s home a
number of years back, taken her son, shot him at point-blank range and then
burned the young man`s body on a fire while he and his officers partied nearby.
Several years later,
Van der Broek and his security police colleagues had returned to take away her
husband as well. For many months she heard nothing of his whereabouts. Then,
almost two years after her husband`s disappearance, Van der Broek came back to
fetch the woman herself. How vividly she remembers that evening, going to a
place beside a river where she was shown her husband, bound and beaten, but
still strong in spirit, lying on a pile of wood. The last words she heard from
his lips as the officers poured gasoline over his body and set him aflame were,
"Father, forgive them."
And now the woman
stands in the courtroom and listens to the confessions offered by Mr. Van der
Broek. A member of South Africa`s Truth and Reconciliation Commission turns to
her and asks, "So, what do you want? How should justice be done to this
man who has so brutally destroyed your family?" "I want three
things," begins the old woman, calmly but confidently. "I want first
to be taken to the place where my husband`s body was burned so that I can
gather up the dust and give his remains a decent burial."
She pauses, then
continues. "My husband and son were my only family. I want, secondly,
therefore, for Mr. Van der Broek to become my son. I would like for him to come
twice a month to the ghetto and spend a day with me so that I can pour out on
him whatever love I still have remaining within me."
"And,
finally," she says, "I want a third thing. I would like Mr. Van der
Broek to know that I offer him my forgiveness because Jesus Christ died to
forgive. This was also the wish of my husband. And so, I would kindly ask
someone to come to my side and lead me across the courtroom so that I can take
Mr. van der Broek in my arms, embrace him and let him know that he is truly
forgiven."
As the court assistants
come to lead the elderly woman across the room, Mr. van der Broek, overwhelmed
by what he has just heard, faints. And as he does, those in the courtroom,
friends, family, neighbours — all victims of decades of oppression and
injustice — begin to sing, softly, but assuredly, "Amazing grace, how
sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me."
How many times have you and I religiously prayed, “Forgive us
our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us” and simply don’t mean a word
of what we say, or believe that it’s possible (or necessary?)
Oh well, never mind ‘as it was in the beginning is now and
ever shall be, world without end. Amen.’ Or shall we take heart from this
remarkable woman’s example and begin to live differently?
Yours uncynically,
John
