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n the movie Blood Diamond, Leonardo DiCaprio plays a South African diamond smuggler named Danny Archer who illegally transports diamonds our of Sierra Leone during that country’s 1999 civil war. While in prison he learns of a Sierra Leone fisherman who, while conscripted into forced labor by rebel forces, found a large, pink diamond of priceless value that he hid next to the riverbed just before government forces raided the rebel compound. The fisherman, named Solomon, played by Djimon Hounsou (who you will remember for his powerful role in the movie Amistad), tells Archer that the rebel forces also captured his young son, and are training him as a child soldier. Together they strike a bargain. Archer, who fought in the South African armed forces, will help Solomon reunite his family and rescue his son, if Solomon leads Archer to the diamond.

       You suspect through out the movie that Archer, whose personal ethics are not exactly noteworthy, will somehow get the diamond, but that Solomon and his son will never quite make it out alive. Yet in the final scene of the movie, just after they rescue Solomon’s son and find the diamond, Archer is shot and wounded by the advancing government forces, who are also in search of Solomon’s diamond. Just as they are about to reach the rendevous point where a pilot who will fly them to safety, Archer decides he cannot go further without putting all three of them in danger. Even though Solomon could easily take the diamond and leave Archer behind, Solomon offers to carry him the rest of the way up the hill to where the plane is waiting. “No,” Archer tells him. “Take your boy and go home.” As Solomon and his son make their way to the plane, Archer fends off the advancing forces, and then uses his cell phone to call an American reporter he has met, and tells her where to meet Solomon’s plane. “This is the story you have been waiting to write,” he tells her. Indeed, her article about Solomon and his diamond leads in part to new international standards that make trading in blood diamonds illegal.

       Archer’s redemption, though perhaps more dramatic than our own, is nevertheless the same redemption that the risen Christ offers to us on Easter morning. By his actions, Archer doesn’t suddenly become innocent. Archer is not asked to do this by Solomon because suddenly he trusts in Archer’s essential goodness. Indeed, it is the same Danny Archer who recklessly exploited the bloody conflict in Sierra Leone for his own profit who now takes the critical step to bring the blood diamond trade to an end. It is the same Danny Archer who, just a few scenes before, explained to the American reporter that yes, this is a bloody game, but that’s just how the world works, there is nothing we can do to stop it, so you might as well make a few bucks in the process. The redemption of Danny Archer takes place in that subtle moment when Solomon– who owes Archer nothing, who indeed would have been entirely justified in leaving Archer to die on the hillside– stoops over the wounded Archer and offers to carry him to safety, even though it would endanger his son and he might well lose his own life in the process. Somehow that moment of grace from Solomon to Archer enabled him to act with a compassion that not even Archer knew he possessed. There is a sense in which in that act Archer not only saved Solomon’s life, by ensuring the he and his son made it safely out of the country, not only saved the lives of the many thousands caught up in the illegal diamond trade, but saved his own life as well, even though he died in the bargain. When he calls the American reporter, played by Jennifer Connelly, she begs him to tell her where he is so she can send help. “No,” he tells her, “I am exactly where I am supposed to be.”

R owan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, points out something about Easter that we have always known but perhaps never considered before. The very first Easter preaching, Williams notes, takes place in Jerusalem, the very same city that put Jesus to death. The Good News of Easter, the resurrection of the crucified, is first proclaimed to the very people who did the crucifying. Williams is careful to note that Luke is not making the simplistic accusation that the Jews killed Jesus. Indeed, in the next chapter, Luke makes clear that not just the religious leaders in Israel, but Herod, Pilate, the “kings of the earth,” Jews and gentiles alike are culpable for Jesus’ death. No, the point is that the gospel is preached here. We might expect the gospel to be preached first to the victims. That is a sort of reversal we might expect. The one who was condemned now returns to turn the tables, to vindicate his compatriots and judge his persecutors. Only that’s not what happens. Jesus comes to Jerusalem, to the people who killed him, not as a threat, but as their hope and promise. The one who was their victim now comes as their savior.

       Of course, as it turns out, his compatriots were not innocent either. Peter denied him. The disciples deserted him. Jesus didn’t return on Easter day to find the one true disciple who stood by him till the end in order to call him into service. There would have been no one left to find. Instead, he came to the very people who betrayed him, the very ones who denied him, the very city that crucified him, and said, let’s start again. No wonder they were so astonished. Like Solomon crouching over Danny Archer, the one who owed them nothing was offering them a chance at life anew. This is what the gospel means when it speaks of being reconciled in Christ.

       Yet the forgiveness Jesus offers is not in order that we can feel good about ourselves, but so that we can tell the truth about our own lives. It’s not to forget the past, as if it never happened, but so we can remember. The redemption that is ours in Christ is not so that we have something comforting to say at funerals, but so that we might live our lives in a new way. Therefore, it always involves telling the truth. So Peter insists, “this Jesus whom you crucified has been raised.” Or as the voice of Christ says to Saul on the road to Damascus, “Why are you persecuting me?” Or as Jesus puts it in the parable of the Last Judgement, when those on his left and say, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not take care of you?” And the king will answer, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.”

       That’s one of the reasons why I have never been too fond of the sort of prayers of confession we often read in Presbyterian worship. Either they are too bland and general, and so of no particular use, or they are too specific, and we end up confessing someone else’s sins and not our own. The Christ who confronts us on Easter morning always brings us face to face with our own sin, our own lives, our own past, the very particular ways in which we have victimized others, diminishing both them and ourselves in the process. The purpose of such confession is to tell the truth about ourselves and so discover how to heal the past. As Williams puts it, there is no authentic hope without memory. Easter hope cannot be separated from Good Friday memory.

       So it is instructive that the renewal of South African society after Apartheid began with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Somehow, the leaders of that country, led by church leaders such as Bishop Tutu, understood that they would never get beyond the past if they could not first tell the truth about it. One of the legacies of every oppressive government is the repression of the truth. So in the same way I am persuaded that we will never work our way out of the quagmire in Iraq until we can tell the truth about our actions and our motives. We are so busy defending our innocence that we have lost track of the human cost of war. Perhaps it is true what they say, that the first casualty of war is the truth. If that is so, then the first step toward peace is truth telling.

T he gift of God’s forgiveness in the risen Christ is not only so that we can tell the truth about our lives without fear or shame, but so that we can live forgiven lives in the future. It does not merely point us backwards, but toward the future. Freed from the sins of the past, we discover our vocation as a forgiven people. This is the hope of Easter. We are forgiven, in other words, not simply to be absolved of past sins, but so that we might live a new life for the sake of the world which God so loves. So it would not have been enough for Solomon to simply have forgiven Danny Archer. In the freedom of that forgiveness, Archer was enabled to act in a new way. In that moment of grace, Archer let go of the lie that he was simply a victim of circumstances beyond his control, and discovered as if for the first time that the system he helped create was also a system that he could help undo.

       The same is true for us. So when we tell the truth about our relationships, not only the long catalogue of hurts we have experienced at the hands of others that we have so carefully nurtured over the years, but the hurt we ourselves have caused, intentionally or not, to others and ourselves, we discover that we also have the capacity to start again and make things right. When we tell the truth about our own complicity in oppressive and violent systems, we also learn how we can participate in actions that make the world more peaceful and just. It is also the case that only when the church can learn to tell the truth about the ways in which it too has excluded and diminished others, can we discover how to truly be a community that welcomes all people in Jesus’ name.

       Rowan Williams writes:

       Human beings long to be reassured that they are innocent. But this is one of the cardinal points of misdirected desire, a desire to possess or to manipulate a power capable of obliterating part of ourselves and our past. The gospel will not ever tell us we are innocent, but it will tell us we are loved; and in asking us to receive and consent to that love, it asks us to identify with, and make our own, love’s comprehensive vision of all we are and have been.

       The place in worship where we most clearly encounter that comprehensive vision is at the table. At the table, Jesus comes to us once again as the one we have wounded. The risen Christ still bears the marks on his hands and side. At the table, we remember again the night he was betrayed, and acknowledge that we are forever among the company of his betrayers. Yet at this same table we encounter not just the crucified, but the risen Christ. At this same table Jesus welcomes us, Jesus accepts us, Jesus loves us, Jesus feeds us, Jesus calls us. So whenever we suffer, Jesus stands with us. Whenever we cause others to suffer, however unintentional, Jesus stands against us. Either way, the risen Christ stands for us. As Williams writes, “salvation is never for me alone, but for me and those who have been my victims and those who have been my oppressors.” At the table we are given a glimpse of the new humanity to which Jesus calls us, where all are welcome, where the dividing walls between us have been torn down, where bread is freely shared, where violence is set aside, where are own lives are “healed, renewed, restored, and re-centered in God.” To this table we are invited despite the past that is set aside but not forgotten. So the Apostle Paul can proclaim, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Cor. 5:17).

       So at this table we find our vocation and commission as a forgiven people. The church is to be that forgiven community that holds out to the world what we have come to know in the risen Christ: the possibility of forgiveness, the call to reconciliation, the reality of redemption, and the grace of the one who comes to us in truth and love. Or, as Peter put it to that first congregation in Jerusalem: Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls.”

       Those of you who have been journeying with us through Lent know that each week during Lent we have sung the Kyrie. The ancient words, kyrie eleison, mean simply, “Lord, have mercy on me.” Ordinarily, following confession, we proclaim Words of Assurance. However, during Lent, which is an entire season of penitence, it is common to hold the Assurance until Easter day. In that way, Easter is the response to the entire season of Lent. So let us speak them now:

       Hear the good news of the gospel.

       In Jesus Christ, you have been forgiven.

       The past, though not forgotten,

              is behind you.

       Therefore, the future is open,

              and the present moment

              is filled with possibility.

       In Christ you are a new creation.

       Let us therefore live as children of God. 

     ✞

© 2007 Jeffrey K. Krehbiel