Reflection for the 2nd Sunday of Easter
No Future Without Forgiveness is Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s memoir of chairing South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The commission was established to help the new democracy move forward by exposing the atrocities committed during the horrific years of apartheid and in order to begin some kind of reconciliation.
Archbishop Tutu recounts the story of a woman from Soweto who was tortured while in detention. She was beaten and raped repeatedly by police. She said that she was only able to survive her ordeal by taking her spirit out of her body and putting it in the corner of her cell as she was being raped. She could then look on as they did all those awful things to her body. By “disembodying” her spirit from her suffering, she could then imagine that she was not herself but a stranger suffering this degradation.
With tears in her eyes, she told the commission that she had yet to go back to that room to fetch her soul. It was still sitting in the comer where she had left it.
We can become so consumed by our hurt, by our anger, by our inability to forgive and be forgiven, that we lose our souls; our spirits become dead to hurt, to sin. We become mired in the hate that we rail against; we become imprisoned by the walls of anger we have built. In John’s Easter night Gospel, the Risen Jesus “breathes” his Spirit of peace and forgiveness upon his disciples, restoring the life and love of God to their disconnected souls. As God “breathed” life into Adam’s body to give him life (in the Genesis account), Christ breathes anew the life of God into our souls in order that we might embrace and be embraced by the Father’s love.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus appears to his disciples and shows them his hands and his side; later he invites the doubting Thomas to touch the marks made by the nails and the gash from the soldier’s lance. Easter does not deny the effects of Good Friday nor erases the wounds of crucifixion – Easter is God’s compassion moving us beyond the scars of crucifixion to healing and wholeness. We all have “nail marks” from our own Good Fridays that remain despite our experiences of resurrection. We learn from our scars. Our “nail marks” remind us that all pain and grief, all ridicule and suffering, are transformed into healing and peace in the love of God we experience from others and that we extend to them. Compassion, forgiveness, justice – no matter how painful and dear the cost – can heal and mend, can transform and restore. In the light of unwavering hope, with the assurance of God’s unlimited grace, even the simplest act of kindness and understanding is the realization of Easter in our midst.
The “peace” that the Risen Christ breathes into us at Easter shows us a way out of those tombs in which we bury ourselves; the forgiveness he extends enables us to get beyond the facades we create and the rationalizations we devise to justify them. Led by the Easter Christ, may we rise from our tombs of self-absorption and fear to the life of peace and compassion of God.