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| Alan MacWeeney for The New York Times |
When I think of
the resurrection of Jesus, I think of Leslie Jamison’s tattoo. You may have read about it in The New York Times last weekend.[1] She wanted a tattoo to mark a major
transition in her life or at least her desire to be in a new place: a place of forgiveness after breaking off a
relationship with the man around whom she had built her life for four
years. She didn’t want just any old
tattoo. She wanted inscribed on her left
arm, in Latin, the words of the Roman playwright, Terence, “I am human: nothing
human is alien to me.” It was to be a
sign of her acceptance of her humanity and that of her former lover, in all its
brokenness, marking the start of a new life.
This desire would be embodied in her very flesh for all to see. Everybody should be down with that, right?
Wrong. Right from the start, her tattoo provoked
unexpected reactions. The whole idea
perplexed the tattoo artist. Wouldn’t
she prefer an image, something a little less provocative, maybe a nice
dragon? She went right from the tattoo
parlor to the drugstore to purchase the necessary aftercare supplies. The woman at the counter, of course, asked
her what the tattoo said. When Leslie
told her, she just stared at her for a long while. Then she said quietly, “I think there is so
much evil in the world and so much good.”
Her father wrote
to her from the Rwanda Genocide Memorial:
“Do you really believe what the tattoo says, even about perpetrators of
genocide?” First dates turned into
heated philosophical conversations that turned into last dates. The tattoo was supposed to represent a new
freedom but it began to feel like a shackle, a reminder of how hard it was to
heal the hurt of the relationship that had ended, much less forgive the hurt
caused by radical evil in the world. The tattoo turned her body into a
conversation starter, as if she were pregnant.
But just what is being born here?
I don’t know how
Leslie would answer that question, but it strikes me as a beautiful, ordinary
experience of resurrection. What is
being born are a set of relationships with friends and strangers and even
enemies (or, at least, exes) shaped by forgiveness and the desire for
reconciliation. She is being transformed
by a love radical enough to embrace and overcome radical evil, a love that
tugged at the edges of her awareness and grasped her through the words of the
Roman poet, embodied now in her very flesh.
It isn’t just a nice idea. She has
to live it.
This experience
of resurrection, of new life, is unexpected and fearful and joyful. Leslie
is like the women at the empty tomb who are suddenly met by Jesus: “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to
go to Galilee; there they will see me.” It
isn’t exactly what Leslie anticipated, but she has been grasped by a Love that
keeps pulling her forward in its wake. When we encounter it, the force of this
Love is surprising and powerful, setting us off in new directions we hadn’t
planned on going. It changes us in ways
we can’t easily explain, brands us like a tattoo that the whole world can see,
and sometimes evokes reactions that we’d rather avoid.
Jesus is the
embodiment of God’s radical love, God’s desire to reconcile the whole world to
himself. In Christ Jesus, nothing human
is alien to God; all is forgiven. This love
resurrects: gives new life without preconditions if we are willing to accept it
– if we risk being changed by it. This
love is embodied in Jesus; in the bread which is his body taken into our
bodies; in we, who together are the Body of Christ, the social reality of
relationships marked by forgiveness and the desire for reconciliation. This resurrection life centers in Jesus and radiates
out in an ever-expanding circle to include everyone and everyplace.
Even so, the
reactions provoked by Leslie’s tattoo can’t be taken lightly. Can everything and everyone be forgiven? Should they be? Is love more powerful than evil, more
powerful than death? That is what the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead would have us believe. It is, finally, a matter of trust, a decision
to orient ourselves, our very bodies, toward the world in a particular
way. It is not a truth to be argued so
much as to be lived. We embody our
belief – we get the tattoo, so to speak – and then we see what happens.
Pumla
Gobodo-Madikizela expresses this beautifully in her essay, “Forgiveness and the Maternal Body.”[2] Pumla is a South African psychologist invited
by Archbishop Desmond Tutu to help develop South Africa’s Truth and
Reconciliation Commission. She is
primarily responsible for the creation of this forum in which South Africans
were able to confront their traumatic past with honesty, creating the
possibility for forgiveness and a new future.
Pumla explores how actual encounters between perpetrators of violence
and their victims were driven by a desire for reconciliation rather than
vengeance, and a sense of responsibility for the well being of the whole
community.
She tells the
story of a black former police informant who infiltrated a group of seven young
black activists from one of Cape Town’s townships during the apartheid regime. The informant pretended to be a member of the
then banned African National Congress, sent by his commander to train young
activists. He gave the unsuspecting
activists a crash course in the use of firearms, and then lured them into a
police trap to be killed. It was a common practice during the apartheid
regime, designed to instill fear in the black population.
Under the
auspices of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the police informant came
forward to confess his crime and ask forgiveness from the families of these
young men. During a hearing, he met with
the families. He was visibly shaking as
he explained why he had asked to see them.
Only the mothers responded. They
were visibly angry, calling him a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” who had sold out
his own people.
At one point,
the man looked at the mothers and addressed them as “my parents” and asked
their forgiveness “from the bottom of my heart.” There was a long silence. Finally, one of the mothers spoke. She had not planned to, but was surprised to
find herself overcome by inimba, the
feeling a mother has when her child is in pain, emanating from the area of the
womb. She said to him, “You are the same
age as my son Christopher. I want to
tell you, my son, that I forgive you. I
am at peace. Go well, my son.” The families then embraced him.
Reflecting on
this encounter, Pumla writes, “There is something uncanny, even perverse, about
victims gaining a sense of repair and restoration by connecting with, rather
than separating from, a perpetrator. Yet
these encounters open up the possibility for the beginning of a new phase of relationships,
effectively changing the story of past trauma – not so much by burying it but
rather by transforming its meaning from a story of violation and human
destruction to a story of transcendence and human connection.” It is done face to face, embodied in tears,
shaking hands, and tender embraces. It
requires extraordinary courage.
Through inimba, a compassion that transformed
the “other” into a “son,” this mother gave birth to a new reality. I like to imagine the resurrected body of
Jesus as such a maternal body, a body animated by inimba. This inimba is
powerful enough to transform no-bodies into some-bodies and enemies into friends;
even death into life. The force of this inimba visibly changes us, marks us,
like a tattoo.
Leslie getting a
tattoo to remind her that she is human, and so must forgive other humans; a South
African mother, moved by inimba,
giving new life to her son’s murderer: that is what the resurrection of Jesus is
like. It makes a new creation where all
is forgiven so that we can begin again. It’s all about radical love. The only question
is: how much of it can we stand?
St. Paul wrote
to the Galatians, “From now on let no one make trouble for me; for I carry the
marks of Jesus branded on my body.”[3] Now that
is some tattoo! And it isn’t removable.
Like Leslie, we are just going to have to get used to it and learn how
to live – and love – again. We are reborn
in the womb of forgiveness. Amen.
Note: My use of Jamison’s tattoo and Gobodo-Madikizela’s
beautiful expression of inimba were
inspired by the Rt. Rev. Marc Andrus’ Chrism Mass homily at Grace Cathedral,
San Francisco, Tuesday in Holy Week, 2014.
I’m grateful to Bishop Andrus for bringing these essays to my attention.
1 comment:
Hi i was wondering you could help me understand the purpose of the Leslie Jamison’s Essay mark my words maybe, and explain how the title relates tkcher main points
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