God's Unexpected Easter Embrace

Many years ago, my wife and I were having a marital "moral discourse," and I was becoming increasingly agitated. In my fury, I yelled at her and aimed my fist at a section of the dining room wall. Unfortunately, the Holy Spirit failed to guide my hand between the studs, as he usually had done, and instead I hit a stud right on. I broke a knuckle.
A deathly silence settled in the room. While I came from a family in which nothing got done until someone yelled, Barb came from a family in which yelling brought things to a standstill. She was not going to speak to me for weeks. As I writhed in physical pain, I also writhed in emotional pain. I was a moral failure of a husband. …
As I tried awkwardly, with one hand, to sweep up the bits of sheetrock strewn on the floor, I felt a hand on my arm. I turned around, and it was Barb. She said something apologetic. I said something apologetic. And then she embraced me for a long time.
She had every right to pronounce a grand moral imperative, condemn my behaviour, and distance herself from me. That surely would have taught me a lesson. Instead, she embraced the angry sinner, and rather than teaching me a lesson, she helped heal me.
[On Good Friday] we Christians celebrate a similar event, albeit one of cosmic proportions. In his life, Jesus so identified with the immoral, spent so much time with them, that the good people of his day mistook him for a sinner. On Good Friday Jesus continued the story. He did not distance himself from sin as much as embrace it in himself. And by this embrace, he made redemption possible.

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