David was the most successful king of Israel. He ruled from “Dan to Bersheba” meaning the promised land in its entirety. He had power and wealth, lands and wives. Yet all this was not enough. His head was turned by the sight of the wife of Uriah the Hittite and he used his power to get her. We know what happened next. Nathan the prophet gave him a tongue lashing. But in the midst of castigating the king he said, “I have given you so much and I would do as much again for you.” In God the urge to forgive is so strong – it is crazy.
When Jesus is dining in the house of Simon the Pharisee, Simon is shocked by his guest’s allowing a woman “with a bad name” to approach him and weep at his feet. “If he was a real prophet” he thought, “he would know what to do with this woman and send her away” – to join the countless rejected outcasts in 1st Century Galilee. But Jesus didn’t. He rejoiced in the new life this woman had discovered through the change in her thinking. He shared her joy at discovering life again. Simon, good man that he was, couldn’t understand it at all.
Forgiveness is, indeed, crazy. So is compassion. So, ultimately, is love. But Jesus came to tell us that these are the brand names of God. Yesterday we had a day’s seminar on John Bradburne, a ‘crazy’ (he was far from such) Englishman who came out to this country and spent the 1970s living with and serving people with leprosy at Mutemwa. John was an eccentric, holy loner until he met these people who suffered so much. On his first visit he was filled with horror to see a man eat his food under a sack so that the dogs would not get it. Compassion overflowed in him and he set himself to wash their wounds and care for them. He lived there – misunderstood and rejected by many – for 10 years before he was taken out and shot a week before the Lancaster House talks in 1979.
God works among us, and he will do as much again when we welcome him.
Post published in: Opinions & Analysis