Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Deuteronomy 30:15-20

"There Is A Way to be Good Again."

This is what Ramim Khan tells Amir in the movie “The Kite Runner”. Khan is an old friend of the family from their Kabul days, and he is on the phone in Pakistan, now an Afghan refugee,reaching Amir in California where Amir and his father, themselves refugees of the Soviet invasion, have long since found a new life. Khan is asking Amir to come back –to Pakistan to see him, and subsequently to Kabul, Afghanistan, in the heart of the Taliban reign of terror. A thing needs to be done. A way to be good again. To rectify anold betrayal going back to Amir's childhood. It is a film about goodness in the face of intractable evil. The power of mercy to create life.

Some of us suffer a protestant prejudice against trying to be good. We've heard the stories, and can personally bear witness to that brand of religion whose practitioners would buy God's favor like cashing in so many Kroger bonus points. Often at somebody else's expense. That is the bane of miscarried religion: the infinite loop of self-justification. There can never be enough candles, purges, or donations. But it is clear in Deuteronomy and the Psalm reading that goodness – the law - is an invitation to participate in God's own life. It is what we were born for. Goodness is not ours to give, but that we have been given it. For Calvin goodness, on our part, is in the province of gratitude. God's life is our life. Its source. Its goal. Even when we delude ourselvesinto thinking otherwise. 

Amir returns to California and his wife, Soraya, with Sohrab, the child he has rescued. It was a costly salvation. Amir carries the wounds of goodness. Everybody in the script carries the wounds of goodness. Is this not ever so?

And the healing, so profound in its reach.

copyright(2011)