Your Mistake Is Not the Last Word on You

Before I preached this narrative sermon to my classmates, I read aloud from John 21:1-19 (NRSV), projected the image below, and lit one candle to bring into the chapel the faint but unmistakable scent of fire.

Your name is Peter.  You remember that night—the night that Jesus was arrested.  It was the night that you did that thing you said you would never do, became what you said you would never be.  How could you forget that?  You never will.

Over and over again the people asked, “Are you not Jesus’ disciple?” and over and over again you said, “I am not.”  Three times.  Three times, just like he said it would be.  And you didn’t just deny Jesus or that you knew who he was.  You denied who he said you were and what he called you to do.

Are you not Jesus’ disciple?

No. No, I am not.

When it happened, you were warming yourself by a charcoal fire.  The air is still thick with the smell of it, even when you aren’t by a fire, because you will never forget that scent.  It’s always been unmistakable, but now it’s the smell of the most humiliating moment of your life.  Every time you warm your hands you relive that shame a little bit more.

And where do you find yourself now but right here at another charcoal fire?  It’s the first time Jesus is sitting with you by a fire since the night you wrapped yourself in the protection of lies.

But that’s not what Jesus talks about.  “Come and have breakfast,” he says, and as he cooks the fish you breathe in the smell of sustenance and wonder if things between you will ever be what they once were, what they should have been.

Here you are sitting down to a feast like nothing has even changed between you.  You became what you swore you would never be and you two have never even talked about it and this silence is actually starting to weigh on you as much as the shame ever has and God—Are you ever going to talk about it?

Jesus breaks bread and gives it to you, and as you reach out to take it, you can still see the wounds in his wrists where they nailed him to the wood.  But the fish are hot and the bread is fresh and you are hungry.  So you let the whole meal go by in friendly conversation, and you don’t ask Jesus about the awful thing burned into your memory to this day.

But he knows, doesn’t he?

And after you’ve eaten together, he speaks.

Your name is Peter.  At least, it is to Jesus.  Isn’t it?

“Simon, Son of John,” he says.  It’s a little like when your mother used to scold you for teasing Andrew when you were kids.  Except there’s a look on Jesus’ face now, and even though all you can think about is the burning coals and the heat of shame, there’s this look on his face and you can’t describe it, but whatever it is means you’re not in trouble.

“Simon, Son of John,” he says, “do you love me more than these?”

You do.  You cherish him.  He tells you to feed his lambs.

Maybe some time passes. You can’t be sure how much, because all that matters is that Jesus turns to you again.

“Do you love me?” he says.

You do.  You cherish him.  He tells you to tend his sheep.

The next time he says it like he knows what hearing a question three times will mean to you.  He says, “Do you love me?”

Someday the story of this conversation is going to be written down in Greek, and many well-meaning preachers are going to focus on the use of different words for love—agape love, phileo love—and what they think those words mean.  Some will preach how this goes to show that, even now, you can’t get where Jesus is or where he wants you to be.

Poor Simon Peter, they’ll say, because they too will never forget the night you denied Jesus and everything you were supposed to be for him.  It will be easy for them to interpret the words to reflect what they already know about you: That you fall short and Jesus needs to meet you in your weakness.  They will shame you even in your redemption.

Maybe they wouldn’t preach it like that if they could hear what you hear.

You and Jesus don’t speak Greek.  You speak Aramaic, and what you hear is the very same question spoken three times.  What you hear is three opportunities to affirm your love and three instructions to cherish Jesus’ people the way you cherish him.  What you hear is Jesus calling you to be the disciple you were always meant to be.  What you hear is the emotion in his voice when his third question both breaks you open and restores you.  What you hear is the voice drowning out the crackle of fire.  What you hear is love.

Jesus calls you Simon, but you both know that you are and forever will be Peter.  You are the rock on which your beloved Jesus will build his church.  You are the one who will shepherd his flock.  You are the one who will speak to the Jews and the Gentiles.  You are the one who will die for them all—for Jesus, for his people.  You are the one who cherishes your friend no matter how ashamed you feel of your failure.

Peter, someday a Christian named C.S. Lewis will write about this kind of love between people who know each other the way you and Jesus do—that between friends, the question Do you love me? means, Do you see the same truth?  Do you care about the same truth?  Lewis won’t mention you or this conversation with your Lord, but if you could know what he would write, you might say, “Yes!  That’s what Jesus is asking of me.  Do we see the same truth?  Am I ready to care for his people as much as I care for him?  Am I ready to lay down my life?  Am I able to bear the name Disciple, to be the person Jesus made me and do what he called me to do?”

And Jesus thinks you are.  At Passover, you told him you wanted to follow him wherever he was going, but back then you weren’t ready.  Now, Jesus says, “Follow me.”  And you will.  The last word on you in this story is not your mistake.

And you don’t know this yet, Peter, but someday millions of Jesus’ people will put the ashes of burnt palms on their foreheads. Those sooty dark smudges will remind them that they are mortal and that they have fallen short of what Jesus has called them to be.  But there but for the grace of God, those ashes will mean so much more.  Through the ashes, anointed on each forehead in the form of a cross, Jesus will speak to their hearts: “My friend, do you love me?”

And if they can hear those words above the crackle of fire, and each and every reminder of fall and failure, then like you, Peter, the people you nourish and lead and all of their spiritual descendants—they too will know who they are and what they are meant to do . . .

If only they will hear love over the persistent whisper of shame.

PostSecret and the Art of Confession

from an Anonymous Contributor

Today is Sunday, which for me means two things: church (although I sometimes attend Saturday evening vigil mass) and PostSecret.

PostSecret has been my Sunday morning companion for something like nine years now. For those who don’t know, it’s a community art project where anonymous strangers send postcards confessing their secrets; select postcards are scanned and posted online, others are used in travelling exhibits, still others are shuffled away in a box somewhere—or for all I know, destroyed—never to be seen again. The website is updated promptly every Sunday.

I get a voyeuristic pleasure from reading these secrets. It’s human nature. Some of them I identify with, others I empathize with, many I judge with a sneer. Like I said. Human nature. When other people lay their souls bare, it’s hard not to compare yourself to what you see before you. Judgment. It’s easy.

PostSecret also provides a service to the writers of the secrets. We get pleasure from reading others’ secrets, yes, but for some, this website is the only way to unburden themselves of something that has hung over their heads, suppressing their natures. How many postcards have I read thanking PostSecret for being the only one who will listen? Or talking about the weight of a secret having been lifted off of someone because they sent in their postcard?

These postcards are confessions, plain and simple. From our very youngest age of cognizance, we learn to recognize basic right from wrong. We feel badly when we’ve done wrong, and the best way to undo that wrong is to confess it, to go back and try to right it. So Frank Warren, the creator of PostSecret, has provided an outlet into which we might anonymously pour our guiltiest feelings—our deepest and darkest.

It’s a commendable service. Often the secrets sent in are those of unrequited love, clandestine shame, or are addressed to those who have passed out of the secret holders’ lives. The things that are hardest to verbalize, but weigh heaviest on the minds of those they concern. Confession.

I myself have only sent one postcard into PostSecret. I remember sending it in and thinking that maybe I would feel this sense of burden lifted from me. But as I closed the big blue mailbox, I felt nothing significant change. I smiled because I was participating in an art project that I had enjoyed for a few years, but it wasn’t anything earth-shattering.

And I have to ask myself, why?

PostSecret, for all the support it provides to those with secrets—a community of those who may not otherwise have a community—is Confession.

There’s something very human to that word. Confession is an act we commit in response to something we’ve done. Using our own words, we unburden ourselves of the guilt we’ve felt. We can confess to our friends and family, we can confess to our priests and pastors, we can even confess anonymously to Frank Warren and the PostSecret community.

It is a great regret, as a Catholic, that so many of my fellow Catholics call that certain sacrament simply, “Confession.”

Because while, yes, confession is involved in the process of this sacrament, it is simply not the sacrament of Confession.

Keep in mind, Confession terrified me as a child. I went once a year, when my mother hard-handedly forced me because of the upcoming Easter season. I would leave it to the last week I could, I would pray while waiting in line that time would run out before I had to take my turn, and I remember trembling physically before, during and after. It was awful.

And now this is one of my very favorite sacraments.

After years of struggling with this requirement of my faith; several New Year Resolutions; a couple of college-level religion classes; chats with priests, friends, and family; I’ve finally figured out why.

It offers something Frank Warren and the PostSecret community can never offer. It gives us Reconciliation—the proper name for this sacrament.

In stark contrast to Confession’s human restrictions, Reconciliation abounds with God’s unlimited abilities. Humans taint confession with human judgment. That voyeuristic quality PostSecret lends to the process. The sacrament of Reconciliation, however, is the vehicle of delivering the perfect forgiveness that Christ died on the cross to offer us. We break the old covenant with God, and God fixes it.

I undoubtedly hear heavy influences from an argument which seized my interest early in my college career and has doggedly stuck with me ever since—the debate over justification through acts versus justification through faith. I feel that no matter what theological topic I try to discuss, it always comes back to this, and I inevitably side with justification through faith.

One day, I saw one of the giant boards churches like to put up to try to entice you to come to services. Normally I find them trite or bordering on offensive, but this one struck me:

“God gives and forgives. We get and forget.”

Humans can never earn the forgiveness God gives us time and time again. While we, in the act of confession, admit our wrongdoings and acknowledge that in which we have participated to separate us from our God, it is God’s forgiveness which reconciles the covenant between deity and human. There is no anonymity.

Whether a screen is between you and your confessor, as it often is in the Catholic church, or if you’re praying alone in a room where no one can hear you but God, the act of Reconciliation is admitting your sins face to face with your creator. And unlike the human act of confession, where PostSecret-esque anonymity is favored because of judgments which might be passed or opinions swayed, the divine act of reconciliation is as candid and perfect as its creator.

So when I sent in that single postcard to PostSecret, I was confessing, but I didn’t get the sense of relief so many receive from it. My actions cannot relieve me of my secrets; it is my God and my God alone who can do that. It is Reconciliation I have come to expect from unburdening myself of my secrets, and it was confession only which PostSecret was able to provide.

I had chosen Acts over Faith, asked the divine of the mundane, and had received from it all it could offer—a feeling which rang hollow and empty, as so many human attributes do when held in comparison with their heavenly counterparts.

A Prayer of Reconciliation

This is the prayer on my lips and fingertips this evening. Sometimes I like writing my prayers before or as I say them because something happens in my hands that quiets the "monkey mind" I can experience when praying the traditional, non-tactile way.

Persistent, redeeming God,
remind me that I am never broken
beyond Your repair;
and that those I love
and those I fail to love
are also within Your healing reach.
Thank You for reconciling us to You
and to one another.
Keep inviting us to participate,
for we ache and yearn
not only to be healed
but to heal.

Amen.

Hell Is the Suffering of Being Unable to Love

God, forgive me. And forgive me, brothers and sisters, for I have sinned against you.

In the midst of it, I believe I have glimpsed hell.

I find it necessary to interject that in all of my encounters with dark nights of the soul or perceiving distance from God, I'm not sure I have ever had the sense that any one was a literally hellish experience.

They were pretty invariably disconcerting, painful, sad, confusing, and all-around not ideal. They hurt. When they did not just plain hurt, they left me feeling sort of hollow. ("Is nothingness light or heavy?") And yet there was always something suspiciously good lurking in the background.

Each time, I discovered - whether I came to the conclusion during the experience or only long afterward - that there was something extraordinarily good not only in the God who got me through the dark nights, but even in those seemingly grotesque dark nights themselves. Those "nights" reminded me of my humanity and the Divine's divinity. They helped me to relate genuinely to other hurting humans. They made me realize that my clearest experiences of grace and love were no less real to me just because my mood had changed. Apparently one need not "feel" God constantly in order to honor one's past (and future) encounters. That was news to me.

Yes, in God's mercy, even my most harrowing spiritual droughts ultimately bore fruit.

But there is one moment - at least one that stands out from any other - when I experienced what I can only describe as hell on earth.

I've long thought that the phrase "hell on earth" best described the dangerous, poor living conditions inflicted on the oppressed persons of the world, and perhaps that is still the case. I have been fortunate enough in this life not to believe that I can gauge the hellishness of true social and systemic injustices. That may be an analytical exploration for another time.

But that isn't the sort of hellishness I'm talking about now. I'm referring, rather, to Fyodor Dostoevsky's hell:

"Fathers and teachers, I ponder, 'What is hell?'
I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love."

-Father Zosima, The Brothers Karamazov

On a few occasions, I worshipped in a certain church in which I felt generally uncomfortable - theologically (different interpretations, teachings, and priorities than my home-churches'), liturgically (different style, content, and vocabulary), and spatially (different physical and social atmosphere). Considering how ecumenical I am in my approach to many church matters, this extraordinary discomfiture alone made a significant impact on me. It scared me and fascinated me.

During one particular service, the sermon wrenched my heart. To the gathered community, it may not have been remarkable; it may have been legitimately inspiring and galvanizing. To me, it was nearly unrecognizable as a Christian teaching, and I felt spiritually distanced from some of my fellow Christ-followers.

After the message came perhaps my favorite practice: Communion. But there was one problem. I was still so angry.

"But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be
liable to judgement; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable
to the council; and if you say, 'You fool,' you will be liable to the hell of fire.
So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother
or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go;
first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift."

-Matthew 5:22-24 NRSV

My first anger-induced inclination might have been to refuse Communion - something I had never done before - because of those who blessed it that day.

This quickly dissolved into a more realistic, less self-righteous realization: I could not accept Communion in that moment because of the anger within me. As though to deny me the indulgence of letting my non-participation slip by unnoticed, by the time it reached my seat, the plate bearing Christ's Body was empty.

As the usher disappeared in pursuit of a filled plate, I wondered what I should do when he returned. Surely he would remember that the fed had ended with the one before me, and instead of the plate being passed along my row for me to decline quietly, he would extend it directly to me. Would I still refuse?

For a moment, I feared that he would take it personally. I got over that quickly enough and passed the refreshed plate.

But the weeping and gnashing of teeth, deep in my being, refused to cease.

Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
If I ascend into heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in hell,* behold, You are there.
If I take the wings of the morning,
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there Your hand shall lead me,
And Your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, "Surely the darkness shall fall on me,"
Even the night shall be light about me;
Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You,
But the night shines as the day;
The darkness and the light are both alike to You.

-Psalm 139:7-8 NKJV

* Here other translations read: "the depths" or "Sheol." A discussion for another day.


In my rebellion and inadequacy, I may have been tempted to believe that I had - if only inadvertently - escaped God's love. But I had not.

The love of God sought me out in my hell. It was the love of God which far surpassed my own frail attempts to love, and nevertheless met me where I had entrenched myself. For even when I could summon no love in myself for this Otherness, the Holy Spirit - in that unrelenting, no-nonsense sort of love - convicted my heart.

If God had not come with me to my hell, I fear I would not have known how to climb out of it nor remember that there was even an alternative to it. The weeping and gnashing of teeth in my core meant that I craved the love I still knew could be. Only that unconditional love, willing to reveal itself to me in the unlikely place, my undeserving state, could show me what pained me and what I must do.

And I realized then, as I passed the Communion elements along without partaking, that God was calling me to do what I honestly dreaded: love those - yes, even those - whom I find so difficult to love.

Familiar words? Of course they were. I was a Christian, after all... wasn't I? But oh, what that call meant to me in that moment! Never had I been so angry - so hopelessly, helplessly, irreparably angry; so willing to refuse to take part in a community; so determined to disagree, to declare that they said they followed Christ yet surely they were doing it wrong!

Never before had I found myself so incapable of granting grace, and in such desperate need of receiving it.

Why Don't You Want to Pray?

Wisdom from the film Then She Found Me (2007)


Source

This is not an extraordinarily memorable film, but I do appreciate the following scene in particular. Beautiful exploration of one's relationship to - and distance from - God, especially in times of fear, anger, and frustration.

At the hospital, April (Helen Hunt) is preparing for in vitro fertilization. Her mother Bernice (Bette Midler) accompanies her. It has been established that April is a practicing Jew and Bernice is essentially agnostic.

Bernice [to April]: "Do you want to pray?" [to the medical staff, smiling] "She does that. She prays." [to April] "Want to say a little prayer or something?"

April [curtly]: "No."

Bernice [to the staff]: "I'm so sorry to interrupt..."

April: "What is the matter with you?"

Bernice [to the staff]: "Could you, uh, give us a minute?"

April: "Bernice! Listen to me. Right now."

Bernice: "I know, I'm sorry. Just a minute."

Doctor: "Just find us when you're ready. We'll be around." [Staff exit.]

April [to Bernice, annoyed]: "What?"

Bernice: "Why don't you want to pray?"

April: "What do you care?"

Bernice: "I don't. I don't give a s---. But you do. You told me that. You pray before you eat a bowl of spaghetti! And now, right before you do the most important thing you'll do in your life, suddenly you're not interested?"

April: "This is none of your business." [She walks across the room, but Bernice blocks her.] "Get out of my way."

Bernice: "Say a prayer with me and I will."

April: "I don't want to pray."

Bernice [gently]: "One stupid little prayer."

April: "No." [Bernice blocks her again.] "Move!"

Bernice: "Maybe you just don't want it enough."

April: "You have no idea how badly I want this."

Bernice: "Then why won't you pray? Why?"

April: "Because I'm not going to hand this wish over to some..." [pause] "...whatever it is - who's supposed to be loving. Who..." [silence, then whispers weakly] "I had faith in. I thought... God was... good."

Bernice [gently]: "Maybe God is..."

April: "What?"

Bernice: "Difficult. Awful. Complicated."

April: "Like me?" [pauses in full realization of a past error] "I took the one man on earth who's right for me and I dropped him on his head."

Bernice: "Right. You did."

Just before the procedure, April sings the Shema, a beautiful prayer in Hebrew, thus beginning a journey of reconciliation - with God, with others, and with herself.