"Who are you, Jesus? Identify yourself! Friend or foe?" Jesus answered our question on the road from the Crucifixion to the Resurrection. Our God is the God who forgave us for the evil that we did to him. Wow! The brutality of the Crucifixion makes the intransigence of his love for us extraordinary.
Forgiveness is the pearl that Jesus cast to the swine - the holy that Jesus threw to the dogs .
He gave the dogs and swine forgiveness not because they deserved it but to raise them up from the basement of the Kingdom of God to the penthouse - from the level of the most miseable and hideous of loveless beast to the level of their loving God .
The God who fashioned us out of the dust with his hands put himself into the hands of the dust to leaven the dust with the yeast of divinity. Foregiveness is the yeast of divinity
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Forgiveness fell from the sky into the Valley of Tears as manna fell from heaven .
Out of the good treasure of his heart - a heart filled to the brim with love - Jesus brought forth that which is good
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We deposited torture, suffering, killing, and death into the boiling pot of his baptism. Jesus deposited forgiveness . His contribution to the pot diluted its bitterness in the same way that sugar cubes dilute the bitterness of a cup of bad coffee. Evil met forgiveness on the road from the Crucifixion to the Resurrection.
We tortured and killed him. He suffered and died. Yet, our Creator forgave us. He did not answer the evil that we did to him in kind. He did not require "an eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot" . He did not give us a taste of our own medicine. His answer and our question were radically asymmetric.
On the road from the Crucifixion to the Resurrection, God revealed himself to us in the most apocalyptic conversation that has ever taken place between us and our God since Moses and God conversed at the burning bush on Mount Horeb (Exodus 3). It was a conversation without words between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection - between the evil that we did to him and the forgiveness he gave to us us. We interrogated him with lash, thorns, nails and spear. Who are you Jesus? Identify yourself! Friend or foe? He gently answered our brutal interrogation with forgiveness .
Forgiveness is the vehicle by which Jesus revealed God to us. What does forgiveness tell us about God? Forgiveness is the revelation that God loves us. Foregiveness is the blessed fruit of love . And love begets love.
Forgiveness is the invitation to friendship with God that Jesus delivered to us when he rose from the dead in the Resurrection. God wants to re-establish here on earth in the Valley of Tears the friendship between God and humanity as it existed in the garden of Eden. Jesus was the seed that God planted in the Valley of Tears from which the gardens of the new Eden grow.
On the road from the Crucifixion to the Resurrection, a violent collision took place between Jesus and the evil that we did to him. Evil met forgiveness on the road from the Crucifixion to the Resurrection. Evil was no match for forgiveness. The violent encounter gave us a high fidelity representation of the reality of God. It illuminated the darkness of our understanding of God in a glorious burst of epiphany. The wise anchor their understanding of God to the bombshell of revelation that exploded on the road from the Crucifixion to the Resurrection. Our God is the God who forgave us for the evil that we did to him. Wow! The brutality of the Crucifixion makes the intransigence of his love for us extraordinary.