The title of the article in the September 3rd Chicago Tribune read, “He beat up and robbed a man who was doing pizza deliveries. Then they became friends.” Journalist, Adriana Perez, continues,
“On a snowy night in 2013, 22-year-old Ed Daniels Jr. jumped out of a red Ford Taurus on Chicago’s West Side with four men in tow. They beat up 56-year-old Guillermo Diaz—who was delivering pizza—and took all his money. Daniels was arrested that same night. It was once Daniels sat within the confines of a jail cell, chipping paint on cement walls and rusty green bars separating him from the rest of the world, that he had time to think.
“’I just sat there thinking all night long,’ Daniels said. ‘Is he all right? Like, did we kill somebody? Is he breathing? Is he in the hospital?’
“Daniels didn’t know it on that December night, but Diaz would decline to press charges against him. And Diaz didn’t tell his family about the attack, because he didn’t want them to worry. Instead, the pizza restaurant owner did something else that would change Daniels’ life forever: He offered him a second chance.
“’The lessons that I learned and the grace that he gave me, makes me who I am today,’” Daniels told the Tribune.
As I read the article, I was struck by how deeply this one story got to the heart of what it is like to be human and hurt, and how the Bible shows us the way to a different way of thinking about life.
First, the Bible says we have to take sin seriously. In English, sin is one of those words that makes us squirm, but really sin describes the state of a relationship between us and God, and between us and each other. As Ed Daniels Jr. is beating up Guillermo Diaz, that human relationship is as broken and beat up as Guillermo. As Ed steals from Guillermo, he inflicts not just physical pain, but heart-pain as well, showing Guillermo he is just a thing, a source for cash, to be left discarded like trash in the snow. In the Hebrew Testament, the reason animal sacrifice was required is so that people would know that breaking trust and relationship with God and people was serious. You had to give up some of your flock your livelihood, and that creature was going to die because of what you had done. When we are hurt, that hurt matters, and we carry that pain with us into the rest of our lives. But the Bible also recognizes that the one who has done the hurting—they are also wounded by the wrong-doing, their heart scored and scratched by the violence they have done. There’s no sugar coating it: if you have hurt someone that’s a real problem for them and for you.
Second, the Bible also talks about a way to restore that relationship. The fancy word for that is atonement. When I look at the word, the three syllables say it all—"at,” “one,” “ment”—because atonement takes a broken relationship, a heart wounded by wrong-doing, and makes it whole again. For the Israelites—and later, the Jews—animal sacrifice made atonement, literally covered over the sin. It was said that because of an atoning sacrifice, God overlooked the covered-over sin. For Guillermo and Ed, the details were different, but the healing was the same. “Guillermo didn’t press charges against Ed, but instead, the Lawndale Christian Legal Center (representing Ed) asked if Guillermo wanted to be part of a ‘peace circle.’ He and Ed would get a chance to meet, to talk ‘about the harm done and ways to move forward and heal.’” After meeting, Guillermo and Ed agreed that Ed could make atonement for his crime by volunteering at the pizza shop for a month. Perez notes that Ed worked there for three. “’At the end,’ Ed said, ‘[Guillermo’s] response to everything was: He forgave me a long time ago…His response was: Am I OK? He didn’t want to see me in prison. He chose grace, especially for me. Because I was labeled as the leader of it all.’”
Underneath the powerful ideas of sin and atonement is a powerful undercurrent of compassion. Guillermo was an immigrant. He had come in with nothing and worked his way through, managed his family, bought a pizza restaurant and made something. And he saw the brokenness in Ed. Turns out Ed had been an amazing football player—played through high school and got a scholarship to play for Lake Forest College. Perez writes, “’While on a break during his sophomore year, [Ed] was running through the last 20 minutes of NFL combine drills with two trainers when he jumped to catch the ball and his right leg entwined with the resistance parachute he was wearing. He fell and broke his tibia and fibula, dislocating his ankle and fracturing his kneecap. Ed said, ‘There was no more whistles, there was no more cheering, there was no more scouts…Nobody…The accident ‘killed parts’ of him, he said…His sadness and depression turned to anger, rage and bullying. And then came the fateful night when he encountered [Guillermo]…’” Ed said later, “’Meeting Guillermo made me believe that I was worth more than just a football player.’” Yeah…grace has a way of doing that.
In our politics and in our community, seeing the humanity in those who are different from us is part of what we need most. When we label people—those heartless Republicans, those ‘woke’ Democrats, those monsters, those idiots—we dehumanize them, and that makes it easier to hurt them. But what we need is to see past the opposition, past the hurts that have been done to us and the fear they bring, to see we are all in this country and this world together. We need the guidance of God’s Word here—all of us need to own when we hurt someone. When we take something that’s not ours, when we put amassing power over caring for people, when we label and dehumanize those made in God’s image and treat them as things or statistics, when we would rather complain about a problem than work towards a solution, then we are indeed breaking relationships, trust and community. Sin is serious, and it’s breaking our relationships and our country right now. If we can’t or won’t require change in our own lives, how will we require it of those in power? If we want something different in our leaders, we will have to look for and require something different from our leaders. The only way out will be one in which we all recognize the hurt we have done and are doing, to share our brokenness with each other, and ask God to show us a way to be different together.
Whether it’s Guillermo seeing the humanity in Ed, or it’s Jesus seeing the humanity in us, grace always looks the same. We all need to brush our teeth. We all want to be loved and to have someone to love. We all want our kids to have a better life than we did. And we all make mistakes. We all have our broken places, and we all have done things that have broken relationships and harmed others. We all stand in need of grace. Paul writes, “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” But how do we make it right? How do we straighten out what is crooked? Someone has to pay the price. Big-hearted Guillermo helped a young man back on the road to humanity by setting aside revenge and punishment for relationship. In a sense, Guillermo paid the price for Ed, then Ed had the chance to say thank you. How amazing is that? Not as amazing as what Jesus did. Where the Jewish animal sacrifices had to be repeated over and over again, Jesus took on our humanity, and became the perfect sacrifice. Dying for our brokenness, forgiving all of us from the Cross, and rising again, Jesus demonstrates that when we give up power for love, when we forgive instead of retaliate, then the world shifts and hope can begin. We have the chance to heal, and to say “Thank you,” by becoming a source of healing. Yeah…grace is crazy like that. That’s what makes grace amazing!