Reconciliation

A Friend’s Beautiful Repentance

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James Tissot, The Pharisee and the Publican

 

This past week I witnessed a beautiful act of repentance. A new friend shared with several of us that he had done something he clearly regretted. I began to see the shame and grief he was carrying within himself, despite his initial display of upbeat friendliness. I suspect that he had not joined us consciously intending to share details about what he had earlier done. But, after a bit, his sense of accountability to us, as well as his desire to reconnect with us, overcame his reluctance to be candid. His face became dark, and we could see anguish in his facial expression while – embarrassed – he described what had happened. His principal regret, he said, was that he had let himself and his family down, and he was sad that he had let us down, as well.

It was an uncomfortable few minutes, both for him, and for us. But I was struck not only by the pathos of the moment, and of his admission. I was moved by the beauty of his expression of repentance, and especially by his at-first discrete and then winsome smile as he received and responded to our assurances. We told him that he was beginning to make things well by sincerely sharing his recent experience with us.

The moment passed by all too quickly, especially given how profound it had been for several of us.

We had personally witnessed a touching illustration of what I believe Jesus was getting at in his parable found in Luke 18:9-14, often called The Pharisee and the Publican (or Tax Collector). This parable and other related Gospel sayings or stories are often described as providing us with illustrations of God’s love for us, and of what God’s love for us seeks to nurture in and elicit from us. To me, an often missing word in such characterizations of Jesus’ vision and teaching is ‘beautiful.’

I doubt I will ever forget an observation made by a young aspirant to ordained ministry, about her loss of her father following his lengthy terminal illness: “it is a beautiful thing to have someone for whom you mourn.” There is a similarly strange beauty – and ‘strange’ because it is unexpected – to be found in offering, or in being invited to receive from a friend, grief-filled repentance. Otherwise, we are rarely ever so self-disclosing, so without guile and, hence, so vulnerable. Perhaps the beauty we find here in such moments is the reflected beauty of the divine nature, in whose image and likeness we have been created.

But the loving light of that same divine nature also illumines how our created likeness with God is now marred, and often obscured. This is what can keep us holding our hurts within, while foolishly thinking we are somehow different from others.

And then, on an occasion that can be a surprise even to the one who offers a painful admission, the reflected beauty of the divine nature is briefly revealed, shared, and there before us to behold.

When we find ourselves moved to share our pain and grief by our acts of repentance, we may experience a paradox. We may find that, in the embrace and assurances we receive from those with whom we have been candid, we have received something of even dearer value to us. We may find that we have received a beautiful gift, the gift of experiencing having been found by the One who has come to find us.

James Tissot, The Good Shepherd

 

Additional note: Jesus’ teaching, “blessed are those who mourn,” might best be understood in relation to the grief we can experience accompanying our acts of repentance. Charles Wesley may have had this idea in mind when composing verse 2 of his text for the hymn/poem, “Lo! he comes with clouds descending.”  For we are close to the Father’s heart when our grief is born of sincere repentance.

Every eye shall now behold him, robed in dreadful majesty;
those who set at nought and sold him, pierced, and hailed him to the tree,
deeply wailing, deeply wailing, deeply wailing, shall the true Messiah see.

(Charles Wesley, in the words of Hymn 57 in The Hymnal 1982)

The Epiphany: Human Power Encounters Divine Authority

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James Tissot, The Magi Journeying (detail)

 

Instinctively, there is something we all seem to seek. We want to find purpose and meaning, and organizing principles for our lives. This desire is anchored in a larger one: we seek to discern what is real, and true.

But where does our common impulse come from? In what does this impulse consist? I think the best answer to these questions is found at the heart of the Feast of the Epiphany. On Epiphany, we celebrate how God has revealed to the world the real and true meaning and purpose for our lives. Epiphany is all about God revealing to us the divine center of everything. Epiphany highlights God’s self-revealing in the natural world, and preeminently in God’s Incarnation, which the Magi came to discover and then worship.

We are able to recognize that it is in the nature of a Creator to order reality, imbue it with purpose and meaning, and hence to bring order, purpose, and meaning to our lives. A perhaps-unexpected word that captures this broad idea is authority, in that God possesses the authorizing power to create things, and guide them. Specifically, we discern this authorizing power in God’s creation of the universe and in the divine agency shaping ongoing history. For God is the author of all that is real and true.

In human life, authority and power are not always neatly aligned, and we experience trouble when the two are at odds with one another. We see this dialectic between the two at work in the events of Holy Week, in the confrontation between divine authority (in the vocation of Jesus), and worldly power (as exemplified by Pontius Pilate). Less obvious is the way this dialectic is manifest in the events that are commemorated in our celebration of Christmas and the Epiphany of our Lord, especially in connection with the visit of the Magi from the East.

James Tissot, The Magi in the House of Herod

The Magi, also called ‘wise men,’ or ‘kings’ from the East, arrive in Israel having been guided by an authoritative power greater than themselves. Because of their witness to this higher authority and its implied power, the visitors pose a threat to Herod and his courtiers, who exercise earthly authority and its attendant power. This emerges in the interaction between people who are witnesses to divine authority and its power, and others who are possessors of worldly authority and power. The emerging conflict, later seen in the events of Holy Week, arises amidst the challenges surrounding the beauty revealed in what we call the Epiphany, the revealing of divine light to the whole world rather than to just a particular nation or the people of a particular religious tradition.

The Magi from the East, by explaining their quest, prompt Herod to act. He acts viciously and violently through orders given to soldiers under his command. The result is the series of murders we acknowledge every year on December 28, in the ‘red letter day’ we call the Massacre of the Innocents.

James Tissot, the Adoration of the Magi

What are we to make of the Epiphany of God in human form, and the tragic circumstances to which it led? At the heart of Christian belief is the conviction that God became present to us through a human birth. He revealed himself in a human person who embodied two natures, one fully divine, and one fully human, whose natures are distinguishable yet inseparable. Such a person, regardless of appearances, was and is the transcending center or heart of all that is, manifest in human form. He is, therefore, the One who truly possesses divine authority and divine power. Einstein – who was not in any sense a traditional believer – said this: “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.” The divine center of reality, manifest and revealed in a human being, is the most mysterious beautiful thing that we can experience.

Here is the wonder of it: in God’s mysterious Providence, the birth of the Messiah would bring death to many (in the Massacre of the Innocents). And – years later – the death of the Messiah would bring the possibility of new birth to all, through the redemption of human being from the power of sin and death.

Yet, it would be some decades later before those who proclaimed Jesus as Messiah, and the embodiment of God, could understand the connection between his birth along with those soon-resulting deaths of the Innocents, and his later death, along with its soon-resulting new births for those who came to believe in him.

Our proper response to all this — indeed our only response to all this can and should be to praise the Holy One of Israel, the one whose death brought new life to all who receive him. He has come to us. Come let us adore him. And let us receive him with renewed hope and joyful hospitality, in all his light-filled glory.

A blessed Epiphanytide to you and your loved ones.

 

An Advent Magnificat

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Jim Janknegt, Joyful Mystery 1

 

Neither the Bible nor history tell us the precise details about the Annunciation to Mary, such as on what day the Angel appeared, or when Jesus was later born. The Angel’s wondrous appearance could have happened on a drab winter’s day. Yet, by virtue of the Angel’s message, it was also like spring. Our Church calendar and holy tradition reckon that the Annunciation was in March. If it was in the spring, the average high temperature in northern Israel would have been in the 60’s. So it could easily have been a season colored by the appearance of emerging flowers and foliage.

Faithful to the pattern of Scripture, Jim Janknegt seeks to portray something beyond literal circumstances. He has more than flowering plants, trees, and shrubs in mind. The decorated edge of the painting is a border of roses, which evoke the mysteries named in the Rosary, of which this scene is only the first. Inside that border are more flowers, and these also play a symbolic role. For we find lilies on Mary’s dress, suggestive of a later-to-be-revealed Easter, and calla lilies in a vase on the table, traditionally associated with the Annunciation to Mary.

Even more dramatically, flowers cover a large part of the angel, which suggest something transcendent and other-worldly. The Angel has come to speak the Word: the Word of Life, which is also a Word of blessing (look at the Angel’s hand-gesture!). Central in the painting, but depicted in a very subtle background way, is a great tree. Surely, it is the Tree of Life, from Genesis and Revelation, the first and last books of the Bible. Surely, the tree also prefigures that toward which everything in this moment is heading ~ the dead wood of the Cross, which paradoxically became a life-giving tree. Yes, it is springtime! But, this is springtime in salvation history.

So this is what we begin to see in Jim Jangknegt’s painting: his portrayal of the Angel’s Annunciation to Mary is not so much about springtime in the world. Instead, it is about springtime for the world.

 

Jim Janknegt’s painting, featured here, is used by permission of the artist. The text of this post is based on my homily for Sunday, Advent IV, of this year, which may be accessed by clicking here.

Reconciliation is Always Possible

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A recent LA Times article was titled, “Hello Simon, my old friend…” Those of us who can remember the late 1960’s surely have clear memories of hearing tunes from Simon and Garfunkel’s milestone album, Bookends, and especially of the way their music was featured in the December, 1967, release of the movie, The Graduate. Even those born years later may have in their minds an inescapable link between the names of the two artists, whose cooperative work remains so memorable. Despite their ‘Oh, so beautiful’ recordings, the two broke up their musical partnership in January of 1970, shortly before the release of their best-selling and perhaps providentially titled album, Bridge Over Troubled Water.

Simon and Garfunkel performing in the earlier days of their musical partnership

Many of us who remember hearing their music when it was first released, or who have come to love and appreciate it since those years, don’t realize the extent of their difficult creative relationship as artists. All too soon, they drifted apart, speaking only occasionally with one another, though in subsequent years they did perform together on a few occasions, including at Jazz Fest in New Orleans in the spring of 2010. To his later regret, Art Garfunkel made some unwise and unguarded comments during an interview in 2016, that were hurtful to Paul Simon.

At Jazz Fest, New Orleans, 2010, with Garfunkel singing with a damaged voice adding to the strain in their relationship

Art Garfunkel has now spoken to the press about his regret concerning those prior comments, and shared what he had said to Paul Simon at a recent lunch together: “First time we’d been together in many years. I looked at Paul and said, ‘What happened? Why haven’t we seen each other?’” Garfunkel then shared this: “I cried when he told me how much I had hurt him.” “Looking back,” with obvious regret, he reflected that he had perhaps “wanted to shake up that nice guy image of Simon & Garfunkel.”

An early photo of the duo which may suggest some of the tensions in their partnership

Their reconciliation came at that long overdue lunch, which Garfunkel said, “…was about wanting to make amends before it’s too late.” Having acted upon his desire to reconnect with Simon, Garfunkel offered that “it felt like we were back in a wonderful place. As I think about it now, tears are rolling down my cheeks. I can still feel his hug.”

This recent reconciliation between Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel is heartwarming and a beautiful thing. It can be a source of hope for all of us regardless of who we are, or our place in this often confused and fast-paced world.

Simon and Garfunkel at a reunion concert in Central Park, NYC, in 1981

Reconciliation, especially following upon things we have done to hurt and impair a relationship with another person, is perhaps one of the most difficult things for us to contemplate doing, and then to try and enact. Surely, we can all acknowledge this based on personal experience. Especially when we are aware that this reality has the potential to be a shadow presence at some Thanksgiving gatherings this week, whether among family members or groups of friends.

Achieving reconciliation with another person in this life is never assured, no matter how much we may desire it. And what such a desired result may require is an openness to that hoped-for resolve happening between us, even if the circumstances surrounding that possibility seem remote and uncertain. Yet, though this kind of openness is necessary, it is not in itself sufficient for the desired result. Forgiveness by one or both parties plays a key role in the process. And forgiveness usually requires an acknowledgement rather than a dismissal of what may have happened to cause the breach in the relationship.

This is how and why memories, even of hurts, injury, and injustice, have the potential to be holy, and why forgetting (especially willful forgetting) may limit the extent to which we experience reconciliation. To forgive is an act of will, whether or not feelings of forgiveness arise within us or abide. And once forgiveness is willed, and then expressed, the reconciliation that follows upon openness might -and even may – in time happen.

There are grounds for hope, at least with regard to Simon and Garfunkel. They appear to be planning a series of reunion concerts in 2025. We can look forward to enjoying once again the fruit of this most creative musical collaboration.