The Weight Cut Loose

In the 1986 film The Mission, Robert De Niro plays Rodrigo Mendoza, a mercenary and slave trader in 18th-century South America. After killing his own brother in a jealous rage, Rodrigo is consumed by guilt so crushing he can barely function. Father Gabriel, a Jesuit priest, offers him a path through penance: climb the treacherous waterfalls above a Guaraní village — the very people Rodrigo had kidnapped and sold into slavery — while dragging a heavy net stuffed with his weapons and armor as a symbol of his sin.

The climb is brutal. Rodrigo slips, falls, and hauls himself back up again — hundreds of feet of jungle and rock, his past dragging behind him. When he finally reaches the top, exhausted and mud-soaked, a Guaraní warrior approaches him with a knife. Every instinct says this is the moment of reckoning. Instead, the warrior slices the rope. The bundle tumbles off the cliff into the river below. And then the Guaraní people laugh, embrace Rodrigo, and welcome him home.

That is grace. Not leniency — Rodrigo knew his guilt was real. Not forgetfulness — these people remembered exactly what he had done to them. Grace is when the ones you've wronged choose to cut the rope anyway.

The Most High does not minimize our sin. He sees it fully — the weight of it, the shame of it. And then He reaches down, takes the knife to the rope, and calls us home.