Grace and Peace
“Who are we?” “What does it mean to be human?” This is the ever-present question that every person and generation is called to wrestle with.
Depending on where and when we ask this question will in some ways determine what we discover or uncover. Quite often we are forced to ask this question in moments of death and tragedy and great vulnerability. I guess it is because in these moments our humanity feels most exposed and most in need of being held in renewed understanding.
Calvary is one such place that begs for our humanity to be understood.
In the shadow of the Cross we are convicted to ask: “Who are we?”
The Cross answers in haunting and hopeful tones about our humanness.
Hauntingly the Cross declares: “We are those who all carry the cruel capacity to crucify”. Hopefully the Cross announces: “We are those who all carry the powerful potential to love”. Hauntingly we can cowardly and lovelessly inflict suffering on others and hopefully we can courageously and lovingly respond to suffering.
According to the Cross, we are not one or the other. We are one and the other. We are both with each taking turns to lead and be led although almost certainly not in equal measure; but who is to know for certain.
Yet we are tempted to forget that we are both. This is true in how we think of ourselves as well as how we think of others. For some reason we are drawn to a singular narrative or truth. The “one or the other”.
“Both” seems too much for us to hold onto. In so doing we credit one of the narratives as all-powerful, in that it dismisses and even deletes the other. This over-powering narrative actually says more about us and our own needs, fears and prejudice than anything else.
This “one or the other” approach regularly crystalises in relation to those we most revere as well as those we most fear. We have seen this play itself out in South Africa this past week. We tend to paint our heros as untouchably perfect and our villains as altogether evil. When we do this we deny the rich and disturbing truth of their humanity revealed by the Cross.
We not only deny what the Cross reveals of our humanity but we deny what the biblical narrative reveals as a whole. Think about it, every biblical character of any significance crisscrosses between saint and sinner repeatedly. In these Easter days think of Peter as just one example: Peter is the one who confessed Christ to be the Messiah, but he was also the one who Jesus bluntly told to “get behind me Satan”. Peter denied even knowing Jesus and yet was named by Jesus as the Rock upon which the church would be built.
The honesty of the biblical narrative is what makes us return to it time and again. We return to read it and most importantly to be read by it. Its ability to hold light and dark, weed and wheat, disciple and satan, tax-collector and evangelist all together is what enables us to deepen our understanding of who we are.
Grace,
Alan
