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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.

Palm Sunday 'B'

Saturday April 4, 2009

The Great Week

In his famous novel, Les Miserables, Victor Hugo with great skill portrayed the struggle between good and evil in the soul of one man and society’s struggle toward liberation. It’s a wonderful story not just about one man but about humanity and the possibility of redemption. Although completed in 1861 it was not until Boublil and Schonberg’s now legendary musical version that we have been able to enter the story not only as if we were there but also as if ‘there’ were here.

The combination of lyrics and music create a mood and a mindset opening doors to human mysteries. The mix helps us to grapple with the struggles in our own lives. We are caught by the combination of story and song and captured by the acceleration of the improbable events as they move toward melodramatic resolution. We discover that we are there not just to be entertained but also to enter the experience and risk the possibility of reform and transformation.

This introductory digression, I think, provides a bit of insight into the sacred story that unfolds again this week.

In recent years and at times such as this, the temptation is strong to visit the ‘holy places’ or at least to re-enact the biblical events of Holy Week in such a way that we discover or uncover the historical Jesus. Of course it matters that Jesus existed and was truly human, not some mythic figure larger than life. But the biblical accounts, including the Passion narratives are more than history. Indeed, the search for the historical Jesus can be an escape, and lead to excessive piety blinding us to the reality of the Christ who lives in and among us today. Just as we ought not confine Jesus to the manger at Christmas so we ought not forget at Passiontide that Jesus is risen and lives mystically in every creature, indeed in all creation.

With the Church, we enter the mystery of the crucified, buried and risen Christ. We do not commemorate Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem as if we do not know the conclusion of the narrative. The liturgical events this weekend and those to be celebrated during this holiest of weeks have as their purpose the ‘holy remembrance’ in the sense of the ancient anemnesis, i.e., sacred remembering.. Just as our Jewish elders bring the effects of the Exodus event to impact on their lives by way of the holocaust into the present, so through these sensuous liturgical rites and the telling of the story we make present today the salvific implications of Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection to our own personal and communal struggles. Even during the solemn commemoration of Jesus’ death, the liturgy pulsates with the rhythm of Jesus’ entire life. Jesus is the new paradigm and, in the words of Karl Rahner, the perfect exemplar of what we can become in our time and place. Jesus is victorious over sin and death. This vision ought not sanitize the passion and death of Jesus, but energize the believer toward greater determination and faithfulness.

Palm Sunday is the doorway to the ‘great week’ as it was called in the ancient Christian writings. We are here in loving discipleship with palm branches but also aware of our dread fear and strong desire to run away from the crosses—personal and communal — that face us daily. Yet, we do not wave our palm branches as if we do not know the rest of the story. Jesus is addressed as the Son of David. This triumphant procession hints of the day when all people of every color and culture will process with Christ into the new Jerusalem. Sin remains a reality in our lives but we know that even as we sin, God is already forgiving us because God cannot do otherwise.

It is true; the passion narrative is our version of the ancient Jewish ‘Haggadah,’ [the story of the exodus] and the dramatic telling of the most significant event in our Christian tradition. It requires that we become fully engaged to the extent that the story becomes our story. “In doing so, we allow the story to impact our lives and become the leaven for transformation in the fullness of Jesus Christ’s paschal mystery.” We are there and ‘there’ is now! “Take up your stress and follow me;” pick up your pen and write your gospel! Scripture scholar and commentator, Donald Senior, reminds us: “the Passion story is a proving ground for fidelity. Jesus was faithful unto death with the same integrity and obedience that marked his life.” Recall that Jesus’ death was not the decision of a sadistic God or the result of some masochistic urge in Jesus. It was the result of radical fidelity to a love he could not resist. Jesus could not do otherwise. He was obedient in the sense of listening to the heartbeat of the Father. Truly the passionate Christ and the Christ of the passion lives among us.

In his book entitled: The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, contemporary poet-theologian, Matthew Fox, draws our attention to the suffering Christ in “mother earth” whose precious resources continue to be exploited for profit by the richer nations to the detriment of the poor. Brutality behind American prison walls is Gethsemane and Calvary by another name. And ethnic cleansing is one more version of the slaughter of the innocence by ruthless ‘kings’— wolves in sheep’s clothing. The quagmire or war is the strongest evidence to date that human might will never make right and the abuse of power and authority by Church leaders under the guise of the defense of orthodoxy give evidence that Christ’s mission is far from complete.

But the ‘Mystic Christ’ also reveals himself in the defining moments of healing and liberation in our lives as we become aware that we are swimming in the sea of God’s mercy. There can be no more death except death to sin, personal and communal. We are destined to be saved and we are empowered to be conduits of saving grace for others.

If we live in Christ, then we can no longer separate ourselves from the horrors of war, the hungers of humanity and the deprivations that result from exploitive socio-economic or unjust political systems. An inevitably expanding global economy cannot ride roughshod over poorer nations and our Church must lead the way in divesting itself of privilege giving title not just to those who wear the cross but who carry the cross.

The time was never more ripe for personal renewal and global reform than now!