No problem. It’s easy to say when somebody bumps you in the hall and says, “Sorry.” No problem. I’m OK. Even if my books did spill all over the floor. But what about when it’s worse? Your friend may swear she won’t say a word and then an hour later everybody knows, and you burn with embarrassment. Even if she apologizes, you’re still hurting from what she did.

Sometimes in a break up hard words get said. The person you thought you loved yesterday now stabs at you like your worst enemy. You trusted him and welcomed him into your heart. He waltzed in and threw daggers of criticism right at your most tender places. How do you say “No problem” to that??

It can cut even deeper than that. Dad may have walked out on your Mom, even for another woman. And everything that seemed normal and stable in your world fell apart. Years later, you’re still hurt and still mad. No amount of rationalizing can ever excuse this.

Forgiveness for little stuff is relatively easy. If it doesn’t cost us too much, we can pay the price to let someone else go free. No problem. But what about when the hurt is too deep to let it go? What about when the person you have to forgive is yourself and you can’t do it? Somehow, all that hurt has to be sucked up and taken away.

Long before the Crocodile Hunter, Bill Haast was a man in Miami who used to handle cobras, rattlers, and coral snakes in front of people. Sometimes he got bit. In fact, three times he fell victim to the fangs of the king cobra. But each time, after getting really sick, he recovered. People noticed that he got better faster from the third bite than the first one. Haast’s blood was developing an anti-venom. It could survive, then neutralize, the poisoned bite. His blood cleansed itself so that he was quickly restored to health. Haast then began to donate blood. If someone received a potentially deadly bite, his blood would be flown to them for a transfusion. Haast’s blood would mingle with the victim’s blood, and the anti-venom would go to work. The poison was absorbed and health returned.

That’s a lot like what Jesus does for us when we need to forgive. We get hurt and we feel poisoned by the pain and anger that results. The venom threatens to ruin us. We need a transfusion. Jesus’ blood, his life, contains the anti-venom. Somehow, when sinful people touched Jesus, he was not contaminated. When wicked people spat in his face and rammed a crown of thorns on his head, he took it all silently. When they nailed him to the cross and his back, raw from the lash of the whip, met the rough, splintered wood, he prayed, “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.” He took the rage and sin of the world onto himself; he sucked the poison of the snake bite of sin in the whole human race right into his own being. It killed him. But only for three days. On Easter, he rose, a new man, restored and whole. Now his risen life is the anti-venom to all the hurt done to us in the world.

We need the blood of Jesus in us when we are wounded. We need his life that can suck up even the worst violence and turn it into forgiveness. How do we get this spiritual anti-venom?

Only in mystical union with Christ. We go to him in faith and ask for his life to be in ours. We ask him to take our hurts and put them on his cross. We ask him to take our sins and the guilt we feel as well. Then we pray that he would return to us his forgiveness, his healing, his powerful life. Somehow, some way, the Holy Spirit causes the transfusion to happen. Jesus takes our hurt and makes it his own so we do not have to bear it alone. He takes our guilt and gives us his forgiveness. The venom gets sucked into Jesus, and the strong, rich lifeblood of the risen Christ gets poured into us. That’s wild. It just happens to be true.

Of course it may take some time for the lifeblood of Jesus to begin replacing our poisoned blood. But he will do it. Bring your hurts, bring your bitterness, bring your guilt to him day by day and see what he does!

Next Day Stretch

Identify a place where you have been hurt by someone. Visualize how the poison of that hurt courses through you. Now imagine that hurtful action, those hateful words, being done to Jesus. See him take those blows on the cross. They are enough to kill him. But watch as he rises on the third day. His risen life is now anti-venom. Visualize him handing you the cup in communion. He says to you, “This is my blood poured out for you.” Drink from the cup and invite his cleansing, poision sapping life to come within.