[The Lord God said,] “Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” --Genesis 3:11
The two children stood in the living room, guilt written all over their faces. The potted plant, no longer potted, lay in a heap of soil and broken ceramic on the shag carpet. A Nerf Frisbee lay a few feet away. Their mother, hands on her hips, stared down at them, anger written on her face. “Who did this?” She demanded. The brother pointed at the sister. “She did it!” The sister pointed at the brother. “HE did it!” Then, both in chorus, “It was the DOG!!!”
Sound familiar?
Most of us probably remember not owning up to a mistake, or worse, trying to cast the blame on someone else at some point in our childhood. This propensity for shirking responsibility appears to be written into the very fabric of our human nature. At least that’s what Genesis suggests. Adam blames Eve. Eve blames the snake. But, God sees through it all and holds everyone responsible and everyone pays a price.
Unfortunately, our all too human tendency to cast blame and avoid responsibility has a bad habit of following us into adulthood. A corollary to this tendency is our insatiable need to find cause (and any cause but ourselves) when things don’t go well in our lives. We need to understand why things happen, find reasons, and find someone to blame in the midst of suffering, or tragedy or crisis or just plain bad luck. (Of course, this tendency to search for the “why” of things has also led us to great scientific discoveries, advances in technology and medicine and a greater understanding of history and human society.)
In this week’s Gospel Lesson, everyone seems to be trying to figure out why Jesus can do the things he is doing. His family blames madness. The scribes blame Satan. The curious crowds credit Jesus’ unique authority and are so fascinated by it they won’t even let Jesus eat! Even the disciples seem baffled by Jesus at times.
But we know. Don’t we? Or do we?
As people of faith, we say we trust Jesus is the One who heals with the power of God’s Spirit. We trust that Jesus is the One who embodies God’s love, and grace and forgiveness in flesh and blood for us and for the sake of the world. We trust that Jesus is the One who was willing to take the blame, all the blame, and nail it to a cross. But do we really LIVE like we trust these affirmations?
In Jesus, we find freedom from the guilt and shame we carry from all the broken pots we’ve left on the shag carpets in our lives. But this is not a freedom FROM, it is a freedom FOR. It gives us the ability to take the responsibility God has given us, look our shortcomings and mistakes and failures squarely in the eye and learn from them, and to live our lives, not by blaming others for the state of the world, but by partnering with others through the Holy Spirit to continue Jesus’ work of the healing of the world.
Peace,
Bishop Mike
I pray that we all learn to bring all our differences to the table and learn how to use them for the sake of the world! Thanks, as always, for reading. If you found this helpful, thought provoking, or mildly interesting, please feel free to pass it along.
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