Divine Mercy & the Nature of Things

      Why, I’ve often thought to myself, is the reaction of so many to the Gospel one of shock, scandal, and anger?  What is there to get so upset about at hearing the “Good News”? 

      These reactions occurred at the very inception of the Christian mission, given by Christ to His Apostles before He ascended into heaven:  to many of the Jews of the time, it was all a mere “stumbling block,” and to the Greeks – that people who had once loved wisdom – mere “foolishness.”  But “to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:23).  There, as ever, is the key to the answer:  Christ Himself; it is He Himself who is the stumbling block, the folly to so many… and yet also, the very power and wisdom of God.  As usual, it is Christ who is stirring up all the controversy.

      The world just cannot be a peace with Him, in the sense that He can be simply dismissed as a fable or religious crank.  His teaching is just too profound and recognizably good for such tactics, His character too obviously historical.  He was among us, that much we know, and His teaching is still present among us, enlightening or irritating us, but there are few, very few, who would label what He proclaimed as evil or senseless. 

      Another strategy is to obscure Him with “praise”:  a “great teacher,” the “founder of a profound religious reform,” the “supreme ethicist,” etc. – all of it true after a fashion.  But the eager chanting of much praise can be the means of avoiding what He really said, most notably about Himself and His central mission.  After all, Jesus of Nazareth was adulated during His “triumphal” entry into Jerusalem, just a few days before the same crowds would be shouting “crucify Him.” 

      This, then, is the issue: His purpose in coming is not very flattering, that fallen human technique of falsifying reality.  For Christ came as Savior and Redeemer and did not hesitate to point this out in ways that were sure to make enemies.  Instead of appearing in the temple precincts to condone its reduction to worldly concerns, He wielded a leather whip to cleanse that court for the worship of the one true God, who must be worshipped in spirit and truth.  Christ did that most dangerous thing:  He revealed to people their heart of hearts, uncovered in the light of truth the hypocrisy, the self-righteousness, the sin of the shallowness of all religion that no longer has God as its object, but rather uses God to sanction its own ends.

      This is truly, unforgivably ill-mannered and at odds with the human program.  And that leads to the question of all questions:  “By what authority do you do these things?” His would-be opponents demanded.  His response could only be more irritating, since He claimed no authority in and for Himself, but always referred to the Father, the God of all.  “If I have only told you the truth, why are you trying to kill me?” He would ask in response.  “Why will you not see for yourself,” He would further, so “insensitively” inquire, “what is the truth?” – with which He called into question the whole motive of most of human “religion” and pretense of seeking and doing what is true, good and just. 

      Christ, by the very nature of His mission, reveals to man his sin, his need of a deliverer, his desperate need of a redemption that would restore the broken communion between God and man.  For indeed, if all the appalling things that happened to our Savior – the false accusations, the sovietesque trial, the torture and scourging, the mockery and crucifixion – if all of this was undergone by Him for us, then we must be bad off indeed.  And there’s the rub, the scandal of the Gospel, what is, in and of itself, the best news possible, but in the light of which we no longer can pretend not to need it. 

      A friend of mine, a one-time “agnostic” (a Greek word for “ignorant”), confided to me that he had for a long time wanted to believe that all those things of Holy Week really just did not happen, but that that had become impossible, and that now he had to face the facts for what they are, facts.  “I wish Christ had not undergone all this for us,” he finally said in our conversation.  “Why not?” I asked.  “Because,” he admitted, “in the light of it, I am a sinner and so terribly, terribly obliged to Him.”  Perhaps, I tried to explain, Holy Week, especially Good Friday, is better seen as a revelation of how God has chosen out of love to be so obliged to us poor sinners in need of His grace; and that, anyway, we are all deeply and everlastingly obliged to God long before we even meet Christ, since it is the very nature of things, all that is, to be and exist only by the constant gift of God:  creation itself seen as both gift of divine love and God’s decision to be obligated to us, an “obligation” met and fulfilled in our redemption through the gift of Christ and His death and resurrection.

      The Christian believes all this to be true… and beautiful.  But as in every experience of beauty in this world, there is with it an aspect of the painful, the heart-wrenching even.  Beauty radiates out from what we behold or hear and speaks to us of things beyond this world, something we long for, and our yearning signals to us that we just do not have it yet.  So it is with kneeling down in the quietness of a church and meditating on that image of Christ crucified and knowing so sharply that the beauty of His self-sacrifice has so much to do with my need of Him, that what He went through so many centuries ago has much to do with that thoughtless or even terrible sin I committed yesterday….  And there we have it:  why the Gospel is “Good News,” and why it is so aggravating.  Better, though, infinitely better, to be so aggravatingly exposed in one’s need of redemption, in the recognition of one’s sins, than to dismiss the means of salvation because one has not, will not, come to that painful place of realizing one’s desperate need of it.  Then, and only then, does it all become the Good News it really is.