Today’s Scripture Reading (September
26, 2017): Mark 2
Sean Spicer’s
cameo at the Emmy Awards has raised the ire of many with interest in American politics. The former Whitehouse Press
Secretary made fun about the size of the Emmy crowd, bringing back the memory
of his comments about the size of the Donald
Trump’s inauguration crowd which he claimed was the largest ever, even in the
face of evidence that the statement was false. Sean Spicer is in the middle of
what his critics are calling his “redemption tour” as he tries to rebuild his
reputation following his time of employment with the White House. And one of
the stops on the tour was his appearance at
the Emmy’s along with an apology that he issued to reporters for berating them over crowd sizes.
I feel sorry
for Spicer. As much as people want to criticize his “redemption tour,” two
facts seem overwhelmingly important to me. First, Spicer served a president
that has hung up with everything being the biggest and the best, or the absolute
worst, ever, according to which serves his purposes the best. Spicer’s comments
about inauguration crowd sizes and a number of other topics were entirely in
keeping with the opinion of his boss. And the job of the White House Press
Secretary is not to give voice to his own opinions;
rather it is to reflect the views
and attitudes of the President. Had Spicer said anything else, he would not have
been reflecting the opinion of Donald
Trump. His critics argue that, under those circumstances, he should have quit.
Maybe he should have. But he tried to do
his best, fulfilling the role that he was hired to play, for as long as he held
the office.
Second, he
is apologizing now. He is admitting that he was wrong. In the apology, there is an implicit request for
forgiveness – forgiveness that is not being offered by his critics. And the
problem is that the lack of forgiveness assumes that we, or Spicer’s critics, have
never done anything wrong and that we never
stand in need of forgiveness. That is a false self-righteousness that we need
to get over. Because unless we admit our own
shortcomings, we will never find forgiveness.
It is this
message of forgiveness that Jesus is trying to communicate to his critics, the
Pharisees. He had come to bring healing to the sick; sinners. The truth underlying Jesus’s
statement is that “sinners” included everyone. But there was a section
of the population, some of whom were critics of Jesus, who were refusing to
offer forgiveness to those who needed it. One group of people freely admitted
that they had committed wrong acts; the other group refused to accept that there was anything for which they
required forgiveness. The sad reality was that everyone needed forgiveness, but
it was only those on their own personal “redemption tours” that would receive
it. Those who believed they were righteous would never find the forgiveness
that they so badly needed.
Sean Spicer’s
apology and “redemption tour” places him
back with the rest of us – sinners in need of grace and forgiveness. Hopefully,
in finding forgiveness, he will learn
what mistakes he should avoid in the future. It is the learning process that we
all go through as we admit our personal responsibility
and our need for grace.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: John 5
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