The Innocent

It doesn’t happen very often, but it is a terrible tragedy when it does happen. Every once in a while, we discover that a convicted criminal is really innocent. Someone on death row is not guilty. Someone serving a life-time sentence is innocent. Wrongly accused and wrongly convicted. There’s new information. Better forensic evidence is found. A witness finally comes forward.

 

My heart breaks for the one who was wrongly accused. The justice system failed him. Bottom line, we took a piece of his life away from him, and he was innocent. I imagine all those years he spent in prison. I wonder if he thought about his plight every day, every hour. Or did he simply give up?


It’s tragic. But aren’t we responsible for this same injustice when we wrongly accuse another person? When we misjudge someone? When we assume the worst?


It starts in elementary or middle school. A student is sentenced by his peers. Unworthy by their standards. He wears the label “loser” just as the wrongly accused wears the label “guilty.” And we put him in a kind of cell where he has no companionship. No friends. He doesn’t get to have a voice or to mingle with the free ones.


We do it in our families. There’s even a name for it. Black sheep of the family. And we steal from that little sheep something that is almost as precious as life itself. Our love. Our understanding. Our acceptance. This rejection is worse than physical pain, because it is a rejection by the people in his inner circle. The ones who share his DNA. Those closest. It is the worst betrayal of all.


We can all find our place – our face – in the crucifixion scene. Some of us are among the crowd of peers who wrongly accused the Lord. Some of us are family members who refused to stand with Mary and chose to distance ourselves from the family’s black sheep. God’s holy Lamb.

Some of us are the accuser. The executer. The judge. The jury. The peers. The family members.


And some of us are Jesus. The one who suffers at the hands of others.


This may be the one redemptive part in the whole scenario. It’s all so tragic. It’s all so terrible. But if we kneel, and if we raise our eyes to Christ crucified, we can bear even those things that should crush the spirit. We can find strength to endure the unendurable. Hope in the hopeless moment. Grace to go on even in the midst of the pain that tells us to just give up.


The truth is, we rarely are any one character on Mount Calvary. We are all the betrayers. We are each one of us the victim.


In a fallen world, we experience all of it. But the accuser finds forgiveness, if he seeks it. The accused finds hope, if he seeks it. The accuser and the accused are reconciled, if they seek it.


Yes, there is a script. Mount Calvary plays out in our lives every day. But the story doesn’t end there. The final act of this play is one of redemption and grace, forgiveness and reconciliation, new beginnings and second chances.


Look around. You’ve made someone into a black sheep of the family. You’ve labeled someone a loser. You’ve got some work to do to make things right.


And, your first stop is probably the Cross of Christ or the confessional. Jesus is waiting for you there, with hope and forgiveness.

The Innocent