Conforming (phase 2), Jesus Heals: To be Free to be Able to Choose - AtaDc (step18), session 2a

A final thought from one of the sessions in this step - before moving on to step 19 - which struck me when I was reviewing sessions so that I could back-link to a previous one. It seemed to me that I should spend some time thinking about an additional implication of the reading for the second session. It isn't anything new or especially profound, but may be critically important, and it turns out to touch on my reactions to a couple pieces of entertainment from the weekend.

And he stretched out his hand, and touched him . . .  - Lk 5: 13a

With some down time on Saturday while I was frequently blowing my nose, I caught up on some back episodes of Elementary. This series deals pretty significantly with Holmes' drug use, which most movies and series have ignored. I'm not familiar enough with the books to know how Doyle treated this, but in this series a now straight-and-sober Sherlock has to regularly face the aftermath of his addiction. Watson comes into her (!) relationship with Holmes as a surgeon who has left that practice due to a tragedy that a patient experienced under her care, who turned to a second career as a sober companion for addicts and takes on Holmes as a client. The series' first few seasons have followed the arc of his recovery, as Holmes must overcome his arrogance to come to grips with the idea that attending meetings and having a sponsor, and eventually becoming a sponsor, are beneficial for him rather than beneath him. In an episode I viewed on Saturday, he had to face a newly-discovered murder that been committed during a time that he had blacked out; he was a suspect because the victim was found with a hand-written note indicating that he wanted to meet with her. This made him the police's main suspect, and he had to deal with the possibility that, as an addict controlled by his drug use, he might have actually killed her.  What caught my attention was something he was explaining to Watson as he engaged in comparatively less self-destructive and more potentially beneficial actions than relapse would have been: he explained to her that she knew the deep regret of making a terrible mistake, but that didn't compare with the shamefulness that he had experienced in his addiction, as under the drugs he had become a person who he could imagine committing such a crime. (The plot hole was that in such a state even such a brilliant mind as his probably couldn't have hidden the body so well.)

And below my breath, I had to offer an amen: the difference between deep regret and deep shame is inexpressible.

The other program we watched together this weekend was Blue Bloods, on which a young woman whose family had been murdered when she was a young child dealt with the request of their killer to meet with her. I was not so dismayed by the harsh words that the surviving member of the family expressed to the murderer who had killed her family at least fifteen years earlier, for one reason: if he had true remorse for what he'd done to her and her family, he would have understood that he should never contact her except to provide her with the opportunity to express her feelings. I was pretty disappointed in the jaded attitudes of so many cast members, whose Catholicism doesn't seem to include the concept of mercy. There's a difference between wanting violent criminals serve their time as they deserve and placing them beyond the reach of God's transforming power.

So this entertainment-based tangent returns at last to the point: Jesus touches the untouchable. He did it while he walked the earth, as we see over and over again his central belief that he came for the downtrodden, the outcast, the sinner. We see it for the physically untouchable: lepers and blind men whose infirmities are believed to be caused by sin. We observe it in his response to those whose sin is undeniable, the woman caught in adultery, the woman at the well, the tax collectors Matthew and Zacchaeus. We don't encounter anyone whose sin we'd consider unforgivable today: there are no encounters with murderers or molesters, and we don't meet a thief with Jesus until Calvary. Maybe this is why we so often fail to grasp the concept of mercy; most of us are able to hold ourselves above the "really bad people" who have done truly horrific things.

Oh, God help me if his mercy is not for all of us. (contradiction not intended, but not corrected)

But the thing is, I think we will be surprised when we fully understand the nature of sin, and of our sinful selves. I think we will be blown away by God's grace and love in a way that allows us to see how fully we have needed it for ourselves and that leaves us wanting every lost brother and sister to receive it for themselves, too, no matter how terrible or close-to-home their offenses.