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Peace Be With You

By Charles Rush

April 19, 2009

[ Audio (mp3, 6.6Mb) ]

r text is quite abnormal, Jesus visiting from the other side of death. Yet, it shares some elements that are familiar to us from the death of loved ones. Over the years, I have heard regular reports of people having visits from loved ones after they died. Few people actually talk about them but from what I can tell, they appear to be a regular phenomenon.

I knew a man whose wife had died in a freak car accident in the middle of the week. He was left with their two children. Immediately after she died, in addition to the complex array of emotions that would attend anyone enduring the death of a spouse, he felt vaguely guilty and anxious, all through the days leading up to the funeral and shortly after it.

They had been married for 17 years when she died. On the whole it was a good marriage but in the couple weeks immediately preceding her death, they had been through a rough patch in their relationship. They had issues, not the little ones, but some bigger ones that sometimes attend us during this phase of our lives. Both of them had been keeping some distance from each other. He actually was ready to go see a counselor and begin to work on things and right in the middle of this distance she gets hit by a car.

It wasn't the kind of thing that he wanted to talk about with anyone but it kept coming back as people commented to him over and over how wonderful she was. In addition to everything else he was feeling, he felt anxious, almost kind of guilty that they left one another on these terms. He almost felt like it was his fault or that he was responsible or something… It was hard to describe but this feeling came back at odd times during the day and night like it was stalking him.

Very early one morning, he was restless. It was, in the wonderful phrase of a Van Morrison song, 'in the space between the twilight and the dawn'. He wasn't awake and he wasn't sleeping either.

He had a dream about her. But it wasn't like a regular dream, it was more like it was really happening. She was sitting in the kitchen just wearing one of his T-shirts. She was pulling her hair behind her ear, looking very cute and endearing. She was smiling at him and saying something that he couldn't hear. She was twirling her checkbook with the other hand on the kitchen table next to her purse, just smiling at him.

He got out of bed, wandered around his house, went and got her purse. He walked into the kitchen, put it on the table, took out the checkbook and stood by the kitchen sink just looking at it.

He left it there that day. The next night he wakes up in the middle of the night, goes down stairs and is standing next to the sink, looking at the kitchen table, the purse, the checkbook. After a while, he walks over to the purse, looks through the contents of the purse, puts it down. He reaches down for the checkbook, looks over the list of most recent checks that were written, puts it down on the table.

He picks it back up again and looks in the flap behind the checks, pulls out a scrap of paper. It was a little poem that he had written her on Mother's Day almost ten years ago. It was an affectionate little note that said how happy she had made him since they met. She had kept it all these years. He had no idea. He reached in the flap and there stuck on the plastic was a photograph they had taken years ago when the kids were just babies. They had all gone to an arcade at the beach and the two of them got in a photo booth together and taken half a dozen shots. They were laughing and kissing. They were so young, so happy. He had forgotten about those photos until he saw this one again. She had it all these years. He had no idea.

Suddenly a deep weep washed over him like a great release. They really did mean a lot to each other. They had the love. And even if they weren't able to say 'goodbye' on the terms that they wanted to part on, this reminder of the love they had for each other was just what he needed to hear from her again. He felt like she had blessed him from the other side. Did she really come to him? Was it just his deep inner-psyche resolving a contradiction in his own soul subconsciously? Who knows. It just is what it is.

Jesus comes back to the disciples after the resurrection and he blesses them. He breathes his Spirit upon them. He says to them, "peace be with you." Isn't that what we all want? We want a modicum of peace. He gifts them the divine gift of peace.

He tells them 'my Spirit I give to you.' That is an awesome blessing. Then he says to them, 'You have the power to forgive sins. Whoever's sins you forgive will be forgiven, whoever sins you retain, will be retained.

What a power and responsibility. If you have been to any of the great Cathedrals in Europe, you have seen the priest in the corner, hearing confession and making signs of absolution over them.

Perhaps you have seen some of the paintings from the late middle ages and the early Renaissance that depict the Pope giving communion to the Kings after absolving them of some sin they have committed. That period of history, when the Church was perhaps at the height of it's secular influence over political power, the Archbishops and the Pope exercised that power symbolically in their absolution or their expulsion of the Kings and Princes of Europe.

When I first read this passage I think what an awesome new power that has been given. Man, I need to exercise more of that spiritual control over people. How the mighty have fallen. I asked a Priest what he heard in the confessional these days, now that so few people actually go to confession. He thought about it for a minute and said, 'what stands out is how monotonous, petty, and evasive most people are.' It is rare that you hear anything profound anymore.

Over the years, I've read this text in a slightly different way, almost with a note of irony. Jesus gives them two powers- to retain and to forgive sins. Of course, we don't need any divine help to retain sins. We already do that really well. What we need divine help with is forgiveness.

I think of some acquaintances that were settling the estate after their last parent died. The generation was rolling over, they were dividing up the assets, and the three very grown children were having a dispute over who should get what. This slowly degenerated until one of them retained legal counsel and threatened to take the whole business to court. Whereupon, one of the other siblings tried to come up with a compromise plan. He called up his sister on the phone, laid out his proposal of what should go to the kids, the grandchildren, etc..

As he went down the list, his sister was making sarcastic remarks. It made his voice get louder. She got more sarcastic. Next thing you know they are practically yelling at each other. Out of the blue she says, 'you never could take care of precious things. You broke Grandad's watch ….' That stopped him. He is 62 years old having this discussion with his sister who is 59. He remembers that he indeed carelessly broke a watch his grandfather gave him as a boy, a memory he hadn't thought about for ages. He says to her, 'Sissy, that was almost 50 years ago. Let… it….go.' Families are great at retaining sins, sometimes nearly forever. He got something she didn't get. She felt like he didn't appreciate it. Now she is settling a score… been waiting 50 years to do it and in that 50 years lots of other stuff got heaped on the revenge pile as well and we got stuff.

No, what we need is the divine power to forgive and move forward. Southerner's know about holding a grudge. You talk to some of my wife's relatives and you would think that the Civil War ended just last week.

If families are good at holding grudges, clans are even better. Last week, President Bush announced with Ariel Sharon that he would forgo giving the Palestinian's the Right of Return to their homeland. These are homes and farms in Israel that the Palestinian's fled in 1948 when they, along with 9 Arab nations, declared war on Israel. The Arabs lost the war forthwith. Ever since, the Israeli's refused to let the Palestinians return to their homes and farms. Indeed, they gave them to Jewish settlers. Ever since, the Palestinians want to be able to get their land back in Israel.

Now as a matter of practical politics, this has always been a consternation to anyone reflecting on the problem from a distance. How can you expect the Israeli's to grant citizenship to people that have already declared war on them and been defeated? It is not practical. One is just hard pressed to think of any analogy in history where victors have voluntarily given back land to their sworn enemies after a defeat, let alone land inside their borders? Realistically, how would they actually live together?

But you saw the Palestinian reaction to the President's vanquishing one of the central platforms for any future settlement. They were outraged. Angry, resentful. Trust me, they will not forget. And their outrage will only grow, realism aside.

I was in Northern Ireland one July. July is marching season in Northern Ireland. The English have marches to remember their victories in battle over the Irish and they all turn out in their Orange colors to march. The Irish remember other battles fought in brave resistance, also in July and they all turn out in Green to march. Almost invariably, there is drinking. Almost invariably, there are fights, clashes with police. Like it was almost yesterday, the Irish still want their land back, even generations later after they've intermarried with the English and it is very hard to tell who is where anymore. They want their land back 400 years later.

Robert Kaplan opens his book Balkan Ghost's, on the problems in Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia with a story from the early 80's I believe. He is out on an open plain, a good way from anywhere. Thousands of Serb nationalists are gathered to hear a young politician who is announcing his run for the presidency of the country. In the speech he recalls a battle that was fought on this plain, how the Serbs were brave in their resistance, how they were eventually overrun by the Turks and Muslims. He builds the story to a crescendo and then he concludes, "Never again, Never again, Never again." The people rise in thunderous applause and start an almost frenzied chanting, their anger finding group vent. The battle the young politician was talking about took place in the 15th century- get that 650 years ago. The speaker was Slobodan Milosivic. The movement he started was powerful, vengeful.

If families are good at retaining sins, clans concentrate it, compound it, and remember it long after those directly affected are all dead and gone. We don't need any help retaining sins. We need help learning the divine art of forgiveness so that we can move on. Where it takes divine initiative is in the realm of reconciliation, of mending what is broken, of salving egos that are skinned and bruised. On Hill Street Blues, just before Captain Phil, would send his policemen out to work, every day, he would stop them as they were getting up. He'd get their attention and say, "Hey, hey, hey, One more thing, le't be careful out there". I think Jesus comes back and says, "Hey, hey, hey… don't forget about the power of forgiveness."

Perhaps you saw Walter Russell Mead's editorial in the Times this week, 'Why They Really Hate Us'.[1] He just finished a lecture tour in the Middle East. The principal complaint about the U.S. that he heard was not that we support Israel, not even the invasion in Iraq, much as they are critical of us on both fronts. Over and over, what he heard was that we have neglected our role as reconcilers on the Palestinian question. They feel that we do not really hear the Palestinian's pain or that we really care about helping them develop a future. This perception is unacceptable in our role as the leading international power. He suggests two things that we could do. First, we could establish a court for Palestinians to press their claims and make their case on their lost homes and farms. As I'm sure you know, some of these farms were lost in war, but others were outright expropriated by the Israeli's after the fact, and there needs to be some place that people can plead their case in the hopes of restitution. Secondly, we could establish some fund for compensation as a first step towards fulfilling the United Nations resolutions that have said the Palestinians are due compensation for the loss of their land. This is a simple matter of justice and compassion and realism if we have any prospect for a sustained cessation of overt violence in the region.

But I am more and more convinced that remedial justice will not be enough. There is going to have to be a spiritual transformation in the region, a spiritual transformation of reconciling forgiveness. What we need is for someone to arise in Jerusalem of the stature of Mahatma Gandhi that embodies the Spirit of forgiveness that Jesus taught us about. This person may actually be a Christian, as there is a small but important Christian community in the area since we have had churches there for about 2000 years. We need someone who can positively model a way to break the cycle of violence, revenge, anger, humiliation, wanton violence, anger, crack down, targeted assassination, humiliation, anger and wanton violence.

We need someone who will model for everyone involved a humane compassion where Israeli can see Palestinian as human and Palestinian can see Israeli as human. At the moment, they are hardly more than objective enemies to each other- nameless, faceless, without a story that moves the other.

We need someone who will move people on both sides beyond the stifling spiritual victimhood that characterizes too many radicals on both sides of the dispute. We need someone who can model spirituality as positive force, rather than a cause for division and isolation from 'the other'.

I am not the least bit naïve about how unlikely this is to happen or how difficult it is to develop in the present situation. But there will come a time when people on both sides of the conflict become spiritually exhausted by the violence itself. There will come a time when even normal people begin to realize that the collective force of violent retribution has made even seemingly normal people actually abnormal. The sickness of the extreme fringes has metastasized and distorted even those who do not participate in it directly. There will come a time when a word can be spoken and heard that this present cycle is spiritually killing all of us and it must stop.

And wouldn't it be wonderful if one of us Christians could actually live out of the faith that we have been given? In this case Christianity is a difficult calling, not because it is too vague, but because it is so concrete. Spiritually speaking, we know what needs to be done. We need to transform the situation by introducing the humanizing divine power of forgiving reconciliation. The hard part is actually doing it.

Jesus' parting reminder to us, after all his profound teaching, his final words… One other thing, you are going to need forgiveness. You are going to have to practice forgiveness. Difficult, but important… especially if you are going to live in a broken, violent world of inflated and bruised egos. "Hey, hey, hey… Don't forget about the power of forgiveness."

Amen.

[1] Walter Russell Mead, "Why They Really Hate Us", The New York Times, Wednesday, April 21, 2004, p. A23.