THERE ARE ALWAYS CONSEQUENCES
As
Christmas disappears into our rear-view mirror, we are invited to begin the new
year by listening to the letter to the Hebrews which is a meditation on what
Jesus did. ‘He has purged sins away’ (1:3). I find myself asking how did he do
it. From our earliest years we learn that Jesus ‘died for our sins.’ But what
does that mean? How did that help us?
Well, one
answer must surely be that he took responsibility for sin despite the fact that
he was sinless. I remember as a small boy we were all herded into a classroom
and the teacher announced no one was leaving the room until the one who had
committed some crime owned up to being the culprit. He didn’t and we were kept
in that room a long time. But I have since fantasised, ‘what if I had owned up,
even though I was not guilty’? I would
have enabled the others to go free though I might have brought some punishment
on myself.
They would
have gone free but that might not have solved whatever the issue was. There are
always consequences. Many innocent people bore the cost of the liberation of
Zimbabwe. We attained freedom through their sacrifice. But that does not mean
the root causes for the conflict were wiped away in a day. The consequences
remain.
We have to
work through the consequences. Even though we might say we were not responsible
for ‘the system’ that existed in Southern Rhodesia, we have to engage in a new
struggle to remove the ‘sin that clings’ to quote Hebrews again (12:1). What
Jesus has done is clear the ground so that it is much easier for us than it was
for our ancestors to build a just society which reflects the ‘hidden purpose of
God’.
We can do
this, first, by accepting our responsibility and becoming engaged in this
building. Second, by enduring the consequences of failure when we have done all
that we can – even if it means the cross. Edmund Campion tried to engage with
Eizabeth I of England in 1581, in the days of persecution with these words:
If these my offers be refused, and my
endeavours can take no place, and I, having run thousands of miles to do you
good, shall be rewarded with rigour, I have no more to say but to commend your
case and mine to almighty God, the searcher of hearts, who sends us his grace,
and sets us at accord before the day of payment, to the end that we may be at
last friends in heaven, when all injuries shall be forgotten.
19 January
2025 Sunday 2 C Is 62:1-5 1 Cor
12:4-11 Jn 2:1-11
