This Lent and Easter season I’ve been particularly struck by how Jesus’ friends abandoning him at the moment of his most profound agony is such a concrete symbol of how personal our sin is. And how personal Jesus’ forgiveness is.
I’m struck by how, at the last supper, Jesus is spending such intimate time with them, emphasizing that these are some of the people closest to him. And he says, “Peace I bequeath to you. My OWN PEACE I give you.” Then everything happens, they hurt him deeply. And the very first thing he says to them after it all is, “Peace be with you.” There’s no pain as deep as that which came from those closest to you, and Jesus has just experienced the fullness of all the most personal pain, and his words remain. “My own peace I give you.”
You can tell when someone hasn’t really forgiven you, even if they really want to and are trying with all they’ve got to avail themselves to it. You can tell when they’re still struggling with you. There is not the slightest echo of that here. As I’ve spent time in these scriptures over this season, I’ve gotten a sense of such strength of presence in Jesus to his friends, and a peace that is emanating from him in a way that you can tell it’s coming from all of him, from the deepest, deepest wells. He comes to his uncertain, guilty, ashamed friends like this. You can’t not feed on a presence of peace like that. “My own peace I give you.”
He forgives us like that, and he offers to us to forgive like that, to be a gift like that.
