If your family is anything like mine, it has stories to tell about the family lore and the various foibles on which they stumbled throughout the years. Often parents and grandparents remember episodes of their children’s and grandchildren’s youth. They can come to tell them with such frequency and color that the children, while having no specific memory of the event, can come to believe that they do. You can’t hold that against your parents. After all, that’s when they spent the most time with you. Their memories of you are most vivid from that time.
But that storytelling can be both a blessing (as it enhances memory) and a curse (insofar as it keeps alive events that might be better forgotten). It depends on the stories they tell, how they are told, and who the audience is at any given moment. Your oral history can crush you or it can help you learn who you are and what you are meant to be (not unlike the oral history of God and his people as it comes to be written in the Holy Scriptures).
My grandmother had many stories she told about me right up until the day she died. Always looking for the teachable moment, always looking for the possibility of continuing conversion, always looking to strengthen the role of God’s Word in our lives, she like to tell stories where we quoted the Bible or bits of Sunday School lessons at both opportune and inopportune times. In one such story she remembers she had me and my younger brothers in her care one afternoon. Maybe I was 4, she said, followed by my brothers at 3 and 2.
She remembered that I enjoyed scrapping with them. Scrapping is what she called it. Really we fought. We wrestled. We threw toys, tripped one another and did all those things that a house full of boys are likely to do, testing the patience of their elders. At some point the commotion got to be too much. That afternoon, she would say when telling the story, you needed to be separated from your brothers. You had crossed the line, taking your youngest brother’s security blanket and tossing it over the outdoor balcony onto the ground. She went and found two of those spring-loaded door gates and walled off the kitchen as a place for timeout. I was asked to apologize and fetch the blanket — once — and refused. She asked a second time. Similar results. No third ask. This time she just picked me and plopped me down in the makeshift prison. Things got very quiet. And then as she turned to go back to the living room, she said, I looked up at her with tears in my eyes and pleaded, “But … all we like sheep have gone astray.”
It didn’t get me out of timeout any sooner but perhaps God had begun, even then (so my grandmother believed) to convict my heart of its propensity to disobey and of its need for reform.
“All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned everyone to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the inquiry of us all. These verses from the Book of Isaiah go right to the heart of the story God tells about us and our need for his love — our need for healing, for redemption, and for saving. You might hear this passage, or a portion of it, read on some Palm/Passion Sundays. You might hear the passage or a portion of it read on Good Fridays. But without fail when one prays the Stations of the Cross from the Book of Occasional Services of the Episcopal Church, when you walk in the way of Blessed Francis those last steps walked by Jesus through the Via Delarosa and on to Calvary, you rehearse this passage (or a portion of it) at the sixth and seventh stations.
At the sixth station, where a woman, traditionally known as Veronica, wipes the face of Jesus clean and clear, the narrator and devotional guide reminds us in the words of Isaiah that the Messiah would be “wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole.” At the next station we watch as Jesus falls a second time on his way to execution. Here the narrator makes certain we haven’t missed the point: “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned ever one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
Jesus, Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world. Have mercy on us. Jesus, Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world. Have mercy on us. The Agnus Dei. You know this. We sing it occasionally as the fraction anthem (after the breaking of the bread). It tells us the same part of the story. Or … Christ our Passover, that is, Christ our Passover Lamb, is sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast! Same part of the story. And the Lord has laid on him — that is, Jesus, the Lamb of God — the iniquity or the sin of us all. He who was without sin, without spot, without blemish, became sin for us. Or Paul writes, “First of all, I taught you what I had received. It was this: Christ died for our sins as the Holy Writings said he would” (1Cor 15:3).
Someone will say: this is the problem with the Christian story, as you call it. I look around me and I see that people are mostly good. People have good intentions. They mean well. Americans give more to charity and in greater numbers than any other people on earth. Crime in many places is going down. We’re seeing a time approach when the world will be able to produce food enough to feed itself several times over—we just need to put the distribution network in place. If things go wrong somewhere it’s just because we haven’t opened ourselves up to the good. Let’s not talk about sin, the need for forgiveness, or whatever you call it — redemption. It seems so negative.
You say we are inclined to the good? You say we mean to remember our neighbor? Help me understand what’s going on in the Middle East right now Pick a country: Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Gaza Strip, Yemen. Help me understand the arms race that lingers on the Korean peninsula. Help me understand domestic abuse. Help me understand the divorce rate in this country. Help me understand the number of loveless marriages which persist in spite of the resignation of both partners. Help me understand our consistent disrespect of the environment. Help me understand why it is that the very thing I know I should not do is what I end up doing. We’re inclined to the good? I am sorry. I do not see it. And left to my own devices I would despair. Do you see this with me?
As the hair thins and grows grayer, various kinds of doctor visits have become more frequent for me, including a visit to the eye doctor. For the most I’ve managed my “presbyopia” with the purchase of dime-store reading glasses. But every now and then a good look into my pupils is something I subject myself to. Last time, as the technician was getting ready to hand me over to the doctor, she said, “Well done. Everything looks as it should. No sign of deterioration. No glaucoma. Cataracts are starting to grow from the edges just like we anticipate and reading glass strength is perfect.”
Wait a minute, I thought and then said. Wait a minute! Cataracts are starting to grow as they should! Is that what you said? Well, apparently. This was a learning for me. I felt nothing. I noticed nothing. Distance sight and color brilliance seemed great. But yes, the cataracts, as they will for the many, had begun to grow at the edges and I was not likely to notice them for another 10 to 15 years. I had no idea.
Sometimes I think that the world has grown (or is growing) cataracts, very slowly. And that with no other frame of reference it has no knowledge that the light has grown dim, the picture fuzzy, and the days shorter. Someone has to work actively to convince the world of its need for surgery, of its need to have those cataracts removed, of its need have its sight restored. The world don’t know what it’s missing.
That’s part of the story we have to tell: the world has no idea what it is missing (what it can’t see) until the Lord Jesus takes up residence in its heart, in your heart, and begins to transform you, to heal you from the inside out. There are new eyes waiting for you. Ask someone whose had cataract surgery. There’s nothing quite like being able to see the definition of a single leaf. One day it is a sea of green on top of a tree trunk. The next day you see hundreds of leaves.
So it is when you come to Jesus and embrace his sacrifice for your life. One day you despair of hope, tired of watching your good intentions crumble in failure (in the face of a world that refuses reform). The next day you wake up forgiven, eager to forgive, and to announce the coming healing of the New Jerusalem.
The priest of Israel carefully prepared animals for sacrifice, working to see that his sins and the sins of the people would be forgiven by God. It was a primitive practice. The life blood of one was exchanged for another. Not until Jesus is nailed to the cross do we see the sacrifice to end all sacrifices. The veil in the holy of holies is ripped from top to bottom when Jesus dies. No more will the priest walk in there on the Day of Atonement. No more sacrifice must be offered. From this day forward Jesus becomes our Great High Priest. He has passed through the clouds and there at the right hand of God continually intercedes on our behalf.
Day in and day out Jesus our Great High Priest lifts up the world, lifts up you and me, this parish, this community, our children, our hopes, our desires, our enemies, and our deepest longing. Jesus lifts these up to God for a blessing. Jesus who walked with us through the valley of the shadow of death; Jesus who walks with you in and out of the abortion clinic; Jesus who cried with you when your mother died; Jesus who screamed with you as your daughter or son was lost to the street; Jesus who put both his arms around you when your husband did not come back; Jesus who was tested in every way are we are, he takes gently and lay us in his Father’s hands asking a blessing, asking a healing, asking for restoration. Our Great High Priest.
Jesus stepped in and prevented the execution of the woman caught in adultery. He interceded on her behalf and saved her life. He can save yours. Jesus called to Zacchaeus, little man in the tree, the man who would have sold his mother’s soul if the price was right. Jesus moved him to change before it was too late, and change he did. Jesus can change you. Jesus healed the outcast leper and sent him home to his priest and family. Jesus can heal you and restore you to your family.
Release yourself to him. Call on his name. Acknowledge your sin and your need for forgiveness. Place your whole trust in his love. Ask him to give you the heart of a servant. And then come, come before the throne of grace—come before this throne of grace with boldness that you may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
The Very Rev. Timothy E. Kimbrough is dean of Christ Church Cathedral in Nashville.
The Rev. Timothy E. Kimbrough is a Guest Writer. He is the Director of the Anglican Episcopal House of Studies and the Jack and Barbara Bovender Professor of the Practice of Anglican Studies at Duke Divinity School. Previous appointments include Dean of Christ Church Cathedral, Nashville, TN. He is a seven-time deputy to General Convention.
