This post originally ran as a column at MWR this month.
Recently I finally saw Invictus, the award-winning 2009 film based on events
that took place in South Africa in the year leading up to the 1995 Rugby
World Cup.
Nelson Mandela (played by Morgan
Freeman) has just been elected president after 27 years in prison. Seeking to
heal his country, Mandela approaches François Pienaar (Matt Damon), the captain
of South Africa’s Springboks rugby team, and the two unite in a vision to use
rugby to foster reconciliation among South Africans scarred by apartheid,
poverty and violent crime.
Mandela embraced reconciliation and
forgiveness in spite of the suffering he’d endured. This is most poignantly
clarified in the film by Pienaar who, after visiting the prison cell where
Mandela spent almost three decades, wondered “how you spend 30 years in a tiny
cell and come out ready to forgive the people who put you there.”
The film challenged me to examine
myself and reconsider the power and healing force of forgiveness. “Forgiveness
liberates the soul,” Mandela said at one point. “It removes fear. That is why
it is such a powerful weapon.” Invictus left
me desiring to embrace forgiveness, too.
Stories like Invictus give witness to the life of a person who,
in spite of their flaws, inspires us to follow their example. Leigh Anne
Tuhoy’s fierce love in The Blindside, Eric
Liddell’s joy and faith in Chariots of Fire,
Dith Pran’s strength and forgiveness in The Killing Fields —
these stories stir and motivate me to be a better person, to love more deeply,
to seek God more fervently, to forgive more readily, to work harder to heal
the world.
Two thousand years ago, people bore
witness to another life — a man who, as Jeff Cook put it in Everything New, “went around acting like the Creator,
reordering what was unstable, bringing health to dark lives and dysfunctional
bodies.” This man “had a unique ability to set right not only the physical
world but also systematic injustice and the dark pursuits of the human heart.”
He forgave extravagantly, healed lavishly, opposed injustice with sharp words
and the end of a whip. He touched, fed, fixed and loved. And when all that got
him executed, death lost to life, and his mission to renew and redeem the world
bolted toward its inevitable incarnation. “This man,” said Cook,
“astonished everyone who heard and saw him.” He embodied all those things that
inspire us, and so much more.
And people followed him.
My husband’s father is one of those
who followed. Jim died last month after a battle with bone cancer. As people
gathered, they shared his story. Some told us he was their only encounter with
a good father. Others talked about his endless passion for Jesus, here and
abroad. But most of all, people remembered what it was like being loved by him.
He forgave, touched, fixed and set right. And as we bore witness to Jim’s life,
his story inspired us to be extravagant with our love and walk with God
like him.
Stories like Invictus challenge us to rethink the way we live.
But Jesus’ story is different. Jesus doesn’t simply invite us to live like him; he invites us to live
in him. We humans have great capacity to love, but Jesus gives us even greater
power. He frees us to be a people in his image. And when we live like that, our
stories, like Jim’s, will inspire others to follow — not us, but the One who
makes that life possible.