Christ Church Rockville Lenten Devotion

Tuesday in Holy Week ~ March 22, 2016

By today’s episode in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus’ story is filled with a stunning array of miracles and teachings that had infuriated the Temple leaders. They want him dead. As the story opens, they are searching for justification to arrest him and set in motion his execution. So they question the source of his authority. Any answer he gives, they surmise, will discredit him. But Jesus says he will only answer their question if they will answer his. He then asks a question to which any response they give would expose their own bankrupt authority. So is Jesus playing a game of one-upmanship here, intent on beating his opponents at their own game? Or is something else going on?

A recent group guided meditation has shaped my reflections on this question. It invited us to see in our mind’s eye a person known to have become ensnared in a lifestyle of sinful influences and choices; to see how corrosive these have become to the person’s own goodness; and how they have resulted in others being hurt. Right away I began thinking about Tashfeen Malik, the young Pakistani mother and radical jihadist shooter in the San Bernardino massacre. She was killed in the shootout with police later that day. The meditation guide invited us to imagine the effects of God’s infinite mercy on this person; to watch understanding and forgiveness flow into her awareness; to watch her fundamental goodness reawaken.

I catch sight of God’s gaze meeting Tashfeen’s as she departed this world. God’s gaze was filled with a kind of burning clarity concerning her sin. It was shared with her until she almost collapsed in horror and grief at her own culpability. She became fully aware of the anguish, devastation, and loss she had caused, including that to her now orphaned sixmonth old baby. Her guilt and remorse are almost unbearable. But God’s searing clarity is also filled with such merciful understanding that instead of collapsing into a hell of despair, she falls into God’s loving arms. The meditation guide continued, asking us to review this meditation and draw some understanding from it. Right away I hear Jesus on the cross crying out, “Forgive them for they know not what they do.” I can feel its poignancy more deeply than ever. That, of course, is part of the Good Friday story, and today is only Tuesday in Holy Week. But I think what we have in today’s Gospel story may be a foretaste of what is coming.

Yes, Jesus does use the same clever question strategy in responding to his opponents, but not in a game of one-upmanship. They had used the strategy against him, whereas he uses it for them. They used it to trap him into something that would mean his death. He uses it to free them that they might have life. He is offering awareness of their sin, just as God did with Tashfeen, that they might see—and mourn—the truth, painful as it is, and discover that it makes them free. For the truth of their corruptibility is met with the larger truth of life-giving mercy. On Friday we will hear Jesus cry out, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” On Tuesday I believe he was hoping they might gain the knowledge of what they were doing and not deepen their need for mercy. They refused.

It’s Tuesday again. What about us?

— The Rev. Karen Johnson