You denied the Holy and Righteous One
and asked that a murderer be released to you.
It was not just the crowd preferring Barabbas where a murderer was preferred to the source of life. In the story of the human family apart from God it took only a single generation to become, in Cain, the story of murder. And ever since, violence has been a part of that story. Even though we ourselves probably do not commit murder, this same violence is nevertheless within us. Our anger with others spills over into thoughts and words which we entertain about them. We wish we could deflate their smugness or inflict contrition on them for the wrongs we believe they have done.
You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire (see Matthew 5:21-22).
This unpleasant truth is the same thing about which James wrote, asking "What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?" (see James 4:1). Jesus came to offer an alternative to this violence. He offered a way to put an end to the cycles of abuse and recrimination from which we could not seem to escape on our own. Yet in the heat of the moment, Barabbas was preferred. In the heat of our own passions, we often reject the solution offered by Jesus, and flea from the suggestion of forgiveness.
The murderer we prefer is our unredeemed humanity. We prefer it because we are used to it, comfortable with it, and our passions insist on it. The author of life came to offer us life but in order to receive him we insist that the murderer go free. If we insist on our so-called freedom, if we insist on releasing Barabbas, we will continue to reject the author of life and to prevent his forgiveness from availing for us.
The author of life you put to death,
Jesus bore our rejection but was no ordinary scapegoat. Though he was willing to bear the consequences of our story of violence, he did so as one whose own heart was free from murder and violence. More to it, he was the author of life, God himself. Yet he was willing to let his own life be offered in order to expose and to halt the violence inherent in our sinful condition. He knew that humanity was acting out of a fundamental ignorance, and inability to come to terms with the consequences of our motives and actions. By exposing those things, he invited us to recognize them, to own them, so that the truth could set us free (see John 8:32).
Now I know, brothers,
that you acted out of ignorance, just as your leaders did;
but God has thus brought to fulfillment
God allowed us to act in ignorance so that through our misdeeds the roots of sin would be exposed and repentance, conversion, and forgiveness would become genuine possibilities, if only we would receive them.
When we truly recognize the author of life as such we recognize also the one alone who is qualified to order and direct those lives which he has authored.
The way we may be sure that we know him is to keep
his commandments.
Those who say, “I know him,” but do not keep his commandments
are liars, and the truth is not in them.
Jesus knows that no one save the Blessed Virgin can walk in complete holiness in this life. But he does suggest that when we fall into sin it stems from a life in which we have not yet allowed our knowledge of his identity as the author of life to transform every part of us. It is fundamentally a failure to live the faith we have been given, or, more precisely, a failure to receive the potential transformation, the power of which is already inchoately contained in our faith. It is obvious, brothers and sisters, that this can only be the case when we act in ignorance, and so we can have confidence that God will not hold this against us as long as we are willing to turn back to him.
Now I know, brothers,
that you acted out of ignorance, just as your leaders did;
It was this same mercy that Peter offered the people for which Jesus had first prayed when he asked, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" (see Luke 23:34). We were included in those for whom he prayed. And so we can be confident, that even if we do sin, we "have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous one." None who will receive his sacrifice of expiation are beyond forgiveness or the the possibility of redemption. We too can become agents of mercy to others.
While they were still speaking about this,
he stood in their midst and said to them,
“Peace be with you.”
If the scapegoat had died and not been risen we would still have cause to fear. It would seem then that the cycle of violence had not been fundamentally interrupted and broken. But, by the contradiction of the cross, it was broken. Yet there was still so much fear in the world, fear of the Jewish authorities, of the Romans, and of the disciples' own flawed human nature. Jesus rose to show them that they no longer lived in that world, that they no longer needed to fear.
Then he said to them, “Why are you troubled?
And why do questions arise in your hearts?
Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself.
'Look,' we can imagine him saying, 'at the marks of the violence I bore for you, and receive, not my revenge, but my mercy. Receive my mercy and have peace. Recognize in me the author of life, the one whom violence could not destroy, and whom death could not hold. And in seeing your own failures met only with love, let yourselves be transformed.' He followed this revelation of his resurrection with a meal to show just how solid their confidence could now be, and to reestablish communion by table fellowship.
If we sometimes have trouble preferring the author of life to the murderer lurking in our old selves let us ask Jesus for the same gift he gave to these first disciples.
Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.
Allowing the author to reveal his meaning to us rather than trying to substitute our own is precisely the lever that will make change possible. We too will begin to be witnesses.
And he said to them,
“Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer
and rise from the dead on the third day
and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins,
would be preached in his name
to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
You are witnesses of these things.”
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