A Room with a View

The imagination is an amazing vehicle. I call mine a flying carpet, and it takes me all over the world to different times and places. Today, we go to Jesus Christ, an hour before his last meal with his friends just outside the Old City of Jerusalem in what is called the "Upper Room."

What was he thinking? Feeling? Imagining? I don't know about you, but if I was going to undergo an excruciating execution tomorrow, I wouldn't feel much like having a meal with friends tonight -- especially if I knew that one of those "close" friends of mine was going to betray me, and the rest would pretend they didn't know me once I got captured. And if I did share a meal with my so-called pals the night before my death, you can bet they'd get an earful! You wouldn't see me washing their feet, or offering myself up for their benefit.

This depth of forgiveness goes far beyond where my imagination has ever taken me. Even now. Sometimes I think it is easier to forgive one's foes than one's friends....Foes can steal many things from us, but they can't steal our trust -- because we never trusted them in the first place.

It seems that Jesus had no illusions. He trusted his friends to be human; but he didn't count on them to save him or look to them for approval. In that, forgiveness became his pre-emptive strike of complete acceptance and love. Christ forgave his friends in advance of what he knew they were going to do. And in his unconditional decision to forgive, Christ showed his utter freedom and transformed the last meager meal of a "dead man walking" into the eternal banquet of the Lord's Supper.

Amazing grace. I can't forgive that way, to that absolute extent. But I can, at least, imagine myself as one of the disciples in that Upper Room -- maybe Peter, who protests when Christ goes to wash his feet....Maybe I can be Peter, and just let Christ wash my feet. And in this experience of being forgiven, perhaps I will discover that I too can forgive with a pure and reckless heart.