Telling Paco

Telling Paco--September 22, 2016

"...In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us." [2 Corinthians 5:19]

Maybe everybody is named Paco.

Ernest Hemingway wrote a short story called “The Capital of the World,” whose first paragraph goes like this:

"Madrid is full of boys named Paco, which is the diminutive of the name Francisco, and there is a Madrid joke about a father who came to Madrid and inserted an advertisement in the personal columns of El Liberal which said: 'PACO MEET ME AT HOTEL MONTANA NOON TUESDAY ALL IS FORGIVEN PAPA' and how a squadron of Guardia Civil had to be called out to disperse the eight hundred young men who answered the advertisement."

Maybe everybody is named Paco, really.

When you get down to it, the whole Christian message boils down to announcing “Papa’s” words to the whole world:  “All is forgiven.”  Saint Paul himself seems to think so.  He says the whole world was reconciled to God in Christ, and that God has put away the sins of the whole world once and for all.  Peace has been made.  All has been forgiven. God has already started over with us--from God's side. Our job, our calling, is to be the living newspaper announcement: “Meet me at the Hotel Montana at noon.  All is forgiven.  Papa.”  And we announce it to the whole world.  Who will show up at the hotel looking for Papa?  Paul seems to think the whole world is aching for it, at least.

The details are a bit different for us, but the gist of the message is the same.  We announce to the world the Father’s invitation, “Beloved child, meet me on Sunday morning at the table.  All is forgiven.”  Paul says that’s our job.  Getting that message out.  Telling anybody and everybody that all is forgiven… that God has made peace with us through Jesus.  God has reconciled the world to himself, Paul says. That means the Christian Good news is NOT, “Do the following things, and then God will forgive you,” and neither is it, “Prayer this prayer and apply for forgiven-status.”  It’s done. Accomplished.  God has made peace from God’s side, so our work is not so much to get people to do this or that religious action in order to “make” God forgive, but rather to bring the news that God already has forgiven.

The really good part of that good news is that there will be no “wrong Paco.”  The joke in Hemingway's story, of course, turns on the whole idea that at 799 young men named Paco are all in for a disappointment, because it wasn't their Papa announcing the forgiveness. But not so with the amazing claim of the Gospel. For us there is a divine comedy in the opposite truth: that there is no disappointment waiting for all but one of the Pacos waiting at the Hotel Montana. The news from what we call Second Corinthians is that God has already reconciled things with "the world"--that is, the whole world, all of us, every last one, without waiting for us to make our apology speeches first. All of us are estranged children of God, and all of us are recipients of the news that God has restored the relationship through Christ from God’s side of that equation. We may or may not be on speaking terms with our biological mothers or fathers, but the living God speaks the assurance that reconcilation is already accomplished and all is forgiven already between us and our "Papa." And to each of us who shows up to the Hotel Montana—er, the Table and Meal of Jesus week by week—we find Jesus giving us the signs that forgiveness is an already-accomplished fact. Showing up "in church" isn't what makes us forgiven--it's just that there  is the place the ad in the paper told us to meet Papa, where we can embrace over the reality that "all is forgiven."  In fact, if Paul's claim is right that God has "reconciled the world" already, then part of the Christian claim is that even the people who didn’t show up at the Hotel Montana on Tuesday are forgiven, too.

That’s the thing about this anecdote in Hemingway's story: the forgiveness comes first.  Then comes the response of the forgiven child, aching to live in the peace that “Papa” has announced.  Sometimes Christians get this confused.  We make ourselves sound—or worse, we make God sound—like the message is, “Come to the Hotel Montana, and if you do, then forgiveness will be available based on your good-faith effort of at least coming to accept my offer.”  We turn forgiveness into a deal to be arrived at, something negotiated or bartered. 

But that’s not how Saint Paul saw things.  He says that the ad is already in the paper:  the forgiveness has already happened.  The question is whether we will recognize what was already true and come to bank our lives on it. And once we do recognize it, our calling is to tell everybody else around us: "Papa says all is forgiven."  That’s ultimately what it is to be a peacemaker: to announce that God has brought peace already to people who need to hear it.  The rest is just living like it is true.

Maybe all of us are named Paco… and more than that, maybe all of us are children of one and the same Papa who has already made peace with us.  The starting over has already begun--that is what grace does. Now... who will you tell that to? 

Lord Jesus, let us be your good-news-bringers as we tell the world that you have made peace with us.