April 18, 2010 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Beyond Guilt

Victoria G. Curtiss
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 30
Acts 9:1–6
John 21:15–19

Lord, let me
Grieve my losses
Ponder my sorrows
Engage my limits
Acknowledge my betrayals
That I may
Celebrate my gains
Weather into wisdom
Value my freedom
Receive forgiveness.

Robert Raines

Currently on television, as you may know, is a series of commercials in which a young man faces a test as to which he loves more: the woman he is dating or his beer. In one of the commercials, an attractive young woman sitting at a small table in a bar with her boyfriend has just told him she loves him. He attempts to respond. “I l-l-l-luh . . . I l-l-l-l-uh . . . I l-l-l-luh . . . ,” but he just can’t get the word out. Then a waiter comes by and asks if he’d like another Bud Light, and he says, “I’d love one!”

The risen Christ seems to be putting Peter to a similar test. Jesus asks him, “Do you love me more than these?” The choice is not versus beer but versus all that surrounded Jesus and Peter on the shore: boats, nets, friends, food.

Jesus had a good reason for asking. Just days earlier, on the night Jesus had been arrested and taken away, Peter lied, saying he did not know Jesus. No doubt Peter had been afraid—who knew what would happen to Jesus or to the rest of them who were his followers? To admit he was a disciple of Jesus might have cost Peter his own life. Instinctively he was protecting himself. He loved life and the things of this life. He didn’t want to die a premature death. Who can blame him?

Peter can. He is humiliated, full of remorse. He had declared to Jesus at the Last Supper, “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death!” He said so in the hearing of the other disciples. It was then that Jesus told Peter, “By the time the cock crows you will have denied three times that you know me.” At the time, Peter probably didn’t believe it. But Peter discovered his own weakness. At Jesus’ worst hours of torture and death, Peter betrayed him. Now he is weighed down with guilt and shame. It’s hard to fail so publicly. It’s even harder to fail to live up to your own self-image and expectations. Bitter disappointment persists when you not only can’t take back what you did, but think you can never make amends. Once Jesus died, Peter no doubt felt he could never make it up to him. There may be nothing more paralyzing than relentless guilt or not seeing yourself as precious in God’s eyes.

Robert Coles, professor of psychiatry at Harvard, remembers a seminar conducted by Anna Freud. The case study was a woman who had a lifelong habit of making everyone around her miserable. She had driven her husband and son crazy, spent her own unhappy life going from therapist to therapist, and kept her own family in a constant state of turmoil and conflict.

Dr. Freud asked at the end of the presentation, “What would we want for this old woman? I don’t mean psychoanalysis. This poor old lady doesn’t need us at all. She’s had her fill of us. She’s been visiting one or another of us for years, for decades. . . . What she needs is forgiveness. She needs to make peace with her own soul. There must be a god somewhere to help her, to hear her, to heal her. We certainly aren’t the ones who will be of assistance to her.”

Robert Coles reflects, “When will some of us learn that . . . on our knees, in prayer, we might at last find God’s forgiving smile?” (quoted in “Love’s Extravagant Demand,” a sermon by John Buchanan, Fourth Presbyterian Church, 16 September, 1990).

Forgiveness. Redemption. Freedom. That’s what the risen Christ is offering Peter in this encounter. Jesus asks Peter three times, “Do you love me?” Each time Peter answers, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Three times Peter had betrayed Jesus. Now Jesus allows this to be undone. Three times Peter is given an opportunity to declare his devotion and conviction.

But voicing his love aloud to Jesus may not have been enough for Peter to forgive himself. It probably felt inadequate as a way for Peter to show Jesus he did truly love him. Jesus gives Peter something to do to move beyond the burden of his betrayal. It’s not a punishment. In fact, it’s amazing that Jesus spends no time at all exploring with Peter what had happened, asking him to apologize, demanding he promise not to do it again, making him sit in the corner, in effect. Instead, Jesus prescribes for Peter a fruitful way to live his life. Christ says, “If you love me, here’s what you do. Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep. Follow me.” Christ forgives Peter, affirms him, and recommissions him. Peter went on to become one of the strongest leaders in the early church, eventually sacrificing his own life for Christ.

All of us have something that is hard for us to face up to about ourselves. Yet Christ comes to us, forgives us, breaks the bars of whatever has imprisoned us, and sends us forth us to be who God created us to be. We, too, are told what to do with our lives. Christ says, “If you love me, love your neighbor. If you are grateful for my grace, serve your brothers and sisters. If you are indebted to me for my unconditional love, reach out to others.” As Reformer John Calvin wrote, “God says, ‘Pay to your neighbor what you owe to me.’”

One of the most memorable movie scenes I have ever watched is in the film called The Mission. The setting is the eighteenth century in South America. The protagonist, Rodrigo Mendoza, makes his living kidnapping the indigenous people and selling them to the nearby plantations as slaves. He is shown to have a human side, caring deeply both for his brother and fiancée. However, when he discovers that his fiancée has fallen in love with his brother, he becomes so enraged that he kills his brother in a duel. Mendoza is acquitted since the duel was legal, but he sinks into extreme guilt and depression and withdraws from society. Father Gabriel, a Jesuit priest who has temporarily returned from his missionary work, learns about Mendoza. The priest visits Mendoza and challenges him to have the courage to undertake a suitable penance. Mendoza begs the priest not to make his penance too light.

Father Gabriel takes all of Mendoza’s armor and weapons, ties them in a large net, and attaches the net to Mendoza’s waist, so that wherever Mendoza walks he must drag that weight behind him. Mendoza then accompanies the Jesuits on their journey back to their mission, dragging the large heavy bundle all the way through the forest and mud. As the party starts to scale steep waterfalls, Mendoza struggles but refuses help and proceeds to climb until he collapses. At that point, one of the priests cuts away the bundle, releasing Mendoza of his penance. But Mendoza goes back down, gets the bundle, reties it to his waist, and resumes the grueling journey.

The people who live at the top of the waterfalls are those he had recently hunted to sell into slavery. The tribe is alarmed that Mendoza is accompanying the priests. A member of the tribe approaches him with a knife, appearing prepared to slit Mendoza’s throat. Instead, he cuts the ropes to which Mendoza’s burden is tied and pushes the armor and weapons over a cliff. Symbolically relieved of his violent past and forgiven by the tribe, Mendoza breaks down into weeping and eventual laughter.

I showed this film clip at a retreat. Afterwards a woman quietly slipped out, telling me she needed time alone. The film really got to her. It wasn’t that she had killed someone or sold people into slavery. But she recognized that she had been carrying around a huge weight for a long time. God was saying, “Let it go. I forgive you. Give me your life.”

The director of The Mission, Roland Joffe, said,

Even people who have done things they regret deeply, . . . who have actually confronted themselves, are glorious if through that they can come to love. At the end of the film, [Mendoza’s] a man who has totally become himself. He [ended up giving] his life [as a missionary and dying] for other people. Of course, it’s a metaphor; there are all kinds of ways of giving your life, but he is able to do that. At that point he’s successful. Some American said to me, “This film will never go over in America, because these [missionaries] aren’t successful.” And I said, “Ahh, but they are probably some of the most successful people you can think of because Rambo is going to be tied to that machine gun for the rest of his life. These guys are free.” (interview by Thomas Bird, BOMB 18, Winter1987)

God’s grace frees us to become whole. I have had my own experience of freedom. When I was in my twenties, I carried guilt living a life in which I had all the benefits of higher education, a nice home in a safe community, access to health care with benefits, and a steady income that more than met my needs—while the vast majority of the world’s population did not have that. I dealt with that guilt by living in a low-income inner-city neighborhood, earning a low salary, and not buying much for myself. But I wasn’t exuding much joy. Self-deprivation was not my path to freedom.

Then I went on a weeklong mission trip to Haiti. I was volunteering half-days in Port-au-Prince at the Home for the Destitute and Dying operated by the Sisters of Charity. There wasn’t much we could do for the women who were lying on cots, some too sick or weak to feed themselves. But we could help them drink from a cup and put lotion on their skin. I noticed a very frail older woman who was lying on her stomach on a narrow mattress. I went over to her and started to rub some lotion on her back, very lightly because I could feel each of her vertebrae, she was so thin. She said something to me in Creole, similar to French, but I didn’t understand the language so just kept on. Her voice got louder. I prayed “Help” since I didn’t know what to do. Finally she took her two bony arms and went like this with her fists in the air. I began to rub her back harder, like she was a big, strong football player. And she said, in French, “Oui, oui, oui.”

Something broke open in me at that moment that I couldn’t even describe. I came home with a new joy to engage in life—my life and the life of others. Later, when I told a friend what had happened, she said, “Through her, you experienced God forgiving you for everything you cannot do.”

Oui, oui, oui. God says yes to us, forgiving us with our weaknesses and limitations.

God says yes to us, receiving the gifts we offer, however small.

God says yes to us, setting forth direction for our lives, sending us out, relying on us to show love to others, empowering us to respond in ways we didn’t think possible.

Jesus asks you, “Do you love me?” Don’t stutter. Get to work.