JESUS RAISED THE MIDDLE FINGER OF DEFIANCE AT EVIL AS EVIL RAISED JESUS ON THE CROSS
Forgiveness is the middle finger of defiance that the God who loves us gave to his enemies.
As evil raised Jesus on a Cross, Jesus raised the middle finger of defiance at evil. Forgiveness is the middle finger of defiance that the God who loves us gave to his enemies in answer to the evil that we did to him (Jeremiah 31:31-34) (Luke 23:34 ) (Acts 10:43) (Matthew 6:12) (Matthew 18:21-35) (Luke 7:47).
It was an audacious gesture especially in an age of the Church were our clerics are audacity-lite. Forgiveness is Jesus's invitation to us to repent (Matthew 22:10). Repentance is our passport into heaven. Jesus took the first step of forgiveness in the hope that we would take the second step of repentance. Our God did not wait for our conversion to forgive us but forgave us to bring about our conversion (Matthew 22:10)(John 15:13)(John 12:24). The audacity of Jesus is that he initiated a cycle of love by loving us first (1 John 4:19) while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8). Through the floodgates (Malachi 3:10) of his bloody wounds, Jesus poured the sweet syrup of love in the form of forgiveness into the hostile desert of godlessness to dilute its toxicity in the same way that sugar cubes dilute the bitterness of a cup of bad coffee. Dilution is God's solution to the problem of evil.
“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:13). John 15:13 is an inaccurate understatement. What it says does not reflect what Jesus did. Jesus showed us greater love. He lay down his life for his enemies. "Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also" (Matthew 5:38-40). His enemies tried, but failed, to reduce Jesus from the level of our loving God to the level of the most miserable and hideous of loveless beast. Jesus refused the ignominious demotion. He kept his most Sacred Heart filled to the brim with love for us despite the evil that we did to him. We discovered from his answer to the evil that we did to him that the dial that controls his love for us is in his hands not ours. Moreover, it is set to the highest degree and locked in place. Not even our evil can budge it. The gentleness of his answer to the evil that we did to him - evil both brutal and lethal - was most extraordinary. His gentle answer resurrected the knowledge of God from the dead. It gave us a glimpse of God. It is the Good News of Great Joy about God. It illuminated the darkness of our understanding of God in a glorious burst of epiphany. “The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up” (Matthew 4:16) (2 Peter 1:19).
Jesus led by example. Jesus hung from his Cross to teach us how to hang from our Crosses. He did not merely shout advice and recommendations at us from the safety of the sidelines as a priest does from the safety of an ambo. He took flesh and blood and entered the scrum at the line of scrimmage in the war against evil, cheek to jowl with us, toe to hoof with evil. He became one of us - an equal to us in our humanity - a partner with us in our suffering. Jesus donned the jet pack and flew to show us that we, too, can fly. What a crazy daredevil this Jesus was!
Jesus's example reminds the children of God that we, too, have the innate capacity to raise the middle finger of defiance at evil. We, too, can refuse to be slaves to evil. We, too, can rebel against the tyranny of evil. We can reject bondage. We, too, can keep the three-headed monster of revenge, retribution and retaliation locked up in chains in the dungeons of our hearts. Evil ordinarily begets evil. Yet, like Jesus, we, too, can escape the seemingly ineluctable chain reaction of evil. We, too, can serve as firewalls against the wildfire of evil. We, too, can neutralize evil with love.
Evil tries to poke holes in our hearts to drain them dry of love. It tries to empty our hearts of love. Evil tries to knock us off the level of our loving God and demote us to the level of the most miserable and hideous of loveless beast. Evil fails when we resist the demotion - when we keep our hearts filled to the brim with love.
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