As the Father sent me, so I send you

Just as many Christians understand that Jesus instituted the sacraments of Eucharist and Ordination at the Last Supper, many also understand that he instituted the Sacrament of Reconciliation as he gathered with his disciples on Easter night. We might call this gathering the “first supper” of the new age. At it, he made clear that the main purpose of God’s kingdom was mercy.

This comes through in each of the readings. In the first reading, divine mercy appears as a healing power. Peter’s power in the Spirit is so strong that even his shadow promised divine deliverance (Acts 5:15). In this, Luke recalls the early ministry of Jesus, whose presence was healing even when people touched the tassel of his cloak (Mk 6:56). Mercy consists in something more than miracles, however. The biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan emphasizes just how strange it was for high-status people in Jesus’ age to “mix” with the sick. People in every age (including our own) fear disease, and work hard to separate themselves from the sick. The way that Jesus and his disciples walked freely among the sick and even took time to pray over them was itself a powerful act of mercy. It was a sign that God was up to something very different than what the human mind could imagine.

This week’s second reading expressed God’s mercy in cosmic terms. Jesus has seen the affliction of his people and is now about to act to free them. In this, Jesus reflects God’s own speech to Moses centuries before: “I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt and have heard their cry against their taskmasters, so I know well what they are suffering.

Therefore I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and lead them up from that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exod 3:7-8). The message that God is alive, aware of human suffering and working in unseen ways to alleviate it lies at the root of all biblical revelation. 

The most astonishing lesson of divine mercy, however, appears in this Sunday’s Gospel reading. Jesus forgives the disciples who abandoned him. His forgiveness is so complete that he feels free to entrust them with his own mission. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (Jn 20:21). Within this mission is a deeper act of divine mercy, for Jesus’ statement to his disciples hearkens back to Jn 3:16-17: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” Jesus sent the apostles into the world to forgive even his killers. 

This is not human literature. In Shakespeare’s play, when Hamlet’s father returns from the dead it is to demand vengeance. When Gandalf returns in Tolkien’s The Two Towers, it is to lead an army against the “forces of evil.” God recognizes the futility of alienation and vengeance, and knows well that good and evil lie mixed together in every human heart. Mercy typifies the new age of the Resurrection at every level. In Christ, God is alive, at work among his people, forgiving and teaching to forgive, and striving in the Spirit to make every human heart an apostle of divine mercy.