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Daily Scripture

In You, O Lord, Justice and Mercy Meet

Today’s gospel reading triggered off in my memory the number of times I have jumped the gun by passing judgment on someone before knowing all the facts — the soft data as well as the hard data. It’s clear to me now that prejudice and bias covered up by pride have a great deal to do with this jump; our comrades can do no wrong; our foes can do no right! Of course, it’s easy to meet out mercy to those we like and easier to meet out justice to those we don’t like.

The words of Isaiah introduce the theme of mercy and pave the way for the encounter of Jesus with the adulterous woman recorded in the gospel of John. The people of Israel had prostituted themselves if not in truth, at least metaphorically. God had espoused himself to them, for better or worse for richer or poorer forever. It was an irrevocable covenant that remains to this day. The people of Israel to whom Isaiah addressed these words abandoned their God and aligned themselves with foreign powers for political and economic gain. In effect, they entered an adulterous alliance and were literally carried away to a foreign land by their greed and lust for power.

In the name of their God, a disciple of Isaiah writing in his name and style reminds them of the great exodus when God led the people out of Egypt through the Red Sea into the Land of Canaan, the land they called home for centuries. In words similar to these, the prophet declares, “You think that was great? Forget about it; you ain’t seen noth’in yet! I’m about to do something even more spectacular. I’ll pave a way through the wilderness and bring you home again. I will forgive your unfaithfulness and forget your affair. Your misery will meet mercy and you will be saved.”

It has been said that pride is the worst of all sins because it distorts the truth of who we are. In fact, pride is a lie. But more than this it is a distortion of who God is. Recall that the sin of Adam and Eve was not that they wanted to be like God but that they did not recognize that they were already like God — made in God’s image and likeness.

There was another encounter taking place in John’s story beyond that of the meeting between Jesus and the woman. It was between Jesus and the woman’s accusers. In was in this encounter that justice was enjoined to the ‘trial’. “Let the one who is without sin be the first to cast the stone!” Their pride blinded them to their own sins. Jesus exposed their hypocrisy as his mercy engulfed the sinful woman.

Was he being soft on sin? Hardly. “Go now”, he said to the woman “and avoid this sin.” Might we not rightly assume that this initiative of mercy effected a dramatic change in her life? God’s saving grace was fully manifested in Jesus. Oddly enough, the same mercy resulted in the hardening of her accusers. They drifted away one by one from the eldest to the youngest but they sought another opportunity to trick him into mercy mending.

John’s story about the woman caught in the act of adultery revealed the depth to which Jesus extended himself to the sinner. “In you, O Lord, justice and mercy meet! [Psalm 85] or in the words of St. Augustine, “Misery meets mercy” in the person of Jesus.

Lent is about opening ourselves up to the saving grace of God but repentance is not something we do. It is allowing the forgiving power of God to touch our life, indeed, to engulf us and point us in a new direction. It’s about God empowering us to goodness and about our initiating a new pattern of life.

Lent is also about dropping stones and the acceptance of the humanity of others, despite their sins and failures. It is about entrusting others and ourselves to the tender mercy of God. More than that, it is about allowing ourselves to become conduits of God’s mercy and saving grace—helping others to find their way out of the wilderness of failure, sin and rejection.

“To err is human; to forgive is divine.”

At the same time, to forgive is not so much an act of the will as a disposition of the heart and in many situations, the conclusion of a very long process. We dare not be presumptuous or simplistic about it.

Forgiveness does not absolve the sinner from taking responsibility for the sin or from its consequences. Thus the mantra, “There is no forgiveness without justice, no justice without truth, no truth without full accountability.”

Here is the story that a rabbi colleague shared with me many years ago. A man went into the temple for the observance of Yom Kippur, which is the Jewish observance of atonement. As he entered the Temple, he noticed all his sins were listed on the board at the entrance. He tried to erase them but he was unable to do so. Then he went inside to participate in the penitential service. As he left the temple, he attempted once more to erase his sins but again was unable to do so. He departed and set about making amends for his sins and then returned to the temple. Lo and behold, his sins had disappeared.

This story is akin to the teaching of Jesus, “When you are bringing your gift to the altar and recall that your brother or sister has something against you, go first to be reconciled and then return with your gift.”

The Scriptures set the tone not only for our Lenten journey but also for our life long journey. Our destiny is not Jerusalem the earthly city but Jerusalem the heavenly city. Mercy is our mission but we must first pass through the gateway of justice and truth. In you O Lord, justice and mercy meet and when they do, reconciliation is complete.

Feast of Christmas 2008

Thursday December 25, 2008

It’s enough to knock your socks off!

Every year in preparation for the Christmas, homilists, preachers, and people of faith throughout the world join in a search for new meaning in this ancient feast commemorating the birth of Jesus called the Christ.

“What think ye of Christ?” is the title in part of the eighth chapter in a book entitled, “Why Christianity Must Change or Die” authored by John Shelby Spong, retired bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark. You might want to read it some time but I warn you, it might knock your socks off! As with many his writings, this is not a book for the spiritually weak or theologically timid but for adventuresome believers.

But this is not the time or the place to test the validity of his thesis, namely, the necessary reform of the Church in faith and practice, but it IS the time and place to ask the question: “Who is Jesus for me and for you?”

The sometimes ‘irreverent’ bishop asks further: “Does that first-century life still have some relevance for those of us living today? In what sense, if any, can we call him savior? Is he an example that we might choose to emulate? Is [he] anything more than that? Are all the stories about Jesus extraordinary attempts by his followers composed just to fulfill biblical expectations? Or was there something in his life that was so real, so timeless, so revelatory and so transcendent that these images became not just appropriate but inescapable?”

Those who worshiped the ‘holy God’ insisted that they had met God in this man called Jesus.

Each of the four evangelists, three of whom write from a common source, present unique portraits of Jesus, portraits that were nevertheless consistent with the personality that was to become the Christ.

John announces Jesus as the light that shone in the darkness and calls him “love” personified. God is love and those who abide in love, see the light, walk in the light and abide in God. Jesus raised human love to a new level, reaching beyond human limits and crossing boundaries of all kinds. In effect, there are no limits to the unconditional love of God. In the face of all the stereotypical prejudices that separated Jews from Samaritans and gentiles, Jesus’ love is exclusively inclusive. He expanded the meaning of love to include everyone. It’s enough to knock your socks off!

Mark portrayed Jesus as a man for all seasons, a man for every heart and heritage. He reached out to the Syro-Phoenician woman, healing her daughter; he cured the servant of the Roman centurion and Mark concluded his crucifixion narrative with a gentile soldier standing before the cross who became the first to understand the meaning of Jesus’ death. “Truly this man was the Son of God!”

In Matthew’s gospel, the magi come from the east, drawn by the star to the light of this messianic figure and after Jesus death, his disciples are commissioned to go out to all the world — beyond the boundaries not only of territory but of bias and prejudice to bring the good news of God’s love to everyone.

According to Luke, Jesus was named as a descendant of Adam like every other human being. Therefore, he belonged to everyone, gentiles included. Luke climaxes his gospel with the story of Pentecost in which the Holy Spirit came upon representatives of all the nations of the world — “We are Parthians, Medes, Elomites, from Mesopotamia, even visitors from Rome — all hearing these disciples speaking in our own native tongue!” The community of God empowered by the Holy Spirit was to be exclusively inclusive.

Jesus entered a world of many cultural barriers — women and children were unworthy of recognition. “Let the children come to me and do not stop them,” he said. Mary Magdalene was the first to announce his resurrection to Peter and the other apostles. (It’s interesting that women are not allowed to do what Mary Magdalene did! It’s enough to knock the bishops’ socks off!) There were cultic barriers too, but Jesus told the Samaritan woman that the day would come when true worshipers would worship God not in the temple or on the mountain but in spirit and in truth, in other words, from the heart in whatever circumstances we find ourselves. And when you stop and think about that, it’s enough to knock your socks off!

Those who knew Jesus saw in him the human face of God, a new revelation — a new definition, as it were — the ground of our being, the source of life, and the source of love, the light that shone in the darkness, the light that still shines in the darkness.

The point of his life is not that God is utterly transcendent and unknowable but that God is the very core of our being. God is present as a mother and father are to their children. God is our capacity to live a more fully human life and to love despite our limitations and even our sinfulness.

Therefore, there can no longer be Jew or Greek; Arab or African; Catholic or Hindu. No longer can might make right, or can profit be the driving force for the economy, or can vengeance be the motivation for criminal justice, or can racial targeting be the modus operandi of highway patrol or any patrol, nor can the starvation of innocent men, women and children be used to topple savage rulers, or the hurling of epithets against others because of their sexual orientation be acceptable on any standard, or can the exploitation of women or sexual harassment of any kind be tolerated in public or in private. This is what our Church must stand for because this is what Jesus stood for. It’s enough to knock your socks off!

The bishop concludes his chapter with this testimony:

“Jesus is for me the way into the heart of God, the Ground of Being. Jesus is for me the truth by which my life can be lived with theological and human integrity. Jesus is for me the life who has made known to us all what the meaning of life is. So I call him ‘Lord,’ I call him ‘Christ,’ and I assert that this is where God is met for me.”

It’s enough to knock your socks off but it gives me hope as a preacher and teacher as we look forward to a greener world, re-patterning our thinking after this man who changed the course of human history.

This little meditation arrived among my Christmas letters from a dear friend who ministers at Hope House to those afflicted with AIDS:

“The Christmas story awaits rebirth through us.
We are called to…
provide “bread not bombs,”
shelter the homeless,
live lives with a heart for the “common good,”
be the peacemaker in our family and workplace,
live simply so that others might simply live,
find quality time and space to nourish our inner spirit,
stop and smell the flowers, see the tree, be in awe of a sunset or a moonrise,
be the reflection of God in our world, as Jesus was incarnate in ours.”

So who is Jesus for you and “what think ye of the Christ?”