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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.

Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time 'B'

Sunday June 21, 2009

God is in the storm

On December 26, 2004, a gigantic tsunami overwhelmed twelve countries in Asia and Africa virtually and indiscriminately wiping out entire populations within minutes.

Two years later in late summer we witnessed in never-ending kaleidoscopic frames of destruction a city reduced to ruins as wind and rain bore down on levies that succumbed to the ravages of nature’s savage attack. Relatively few were spared but the helpless poor were its greatest victims.

In between these catastrophic events were floods in Pakistan and earthquakes in Indonesia, and since those traumatic events, ships have sunk, planes have crashed and fire storms have ravaged millions of acres of forest destroying anything and everything in their path.

And though the memory has given way to more current crises that unfold day after day, the aftermath and long-range effects of all of these disasters remain vivid in minds and hearts and stored in the collective memory of everyone affected by them. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for survivors to listen to these texts and even more difficult to hear preachers and homilists call them to faith in a caring God.

But you and I also have a personal log of our own storms, some of them life threatening. We all assume that our disasters are the worst but no one gets out of this life alive. Sooner or later, the personal storm of all storms will strike and we will have no alternative but to cry out for help—“Lord do you not care that I am perishing?” I’m not sure we will be pleased with the response, “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?”

I have heard evangelists and other preachers tell of miraculous healings hoping to inspire faith in the afflicted. Indeed, I have witnessed many ‘miraculous’ healings but I’m always cautious about applying the norm or standard of faith as a sure cure. What about all those people whose faith did not spare them? Does it mean that their faith was to weak to save them? Life and death situations are a bit more complex than this. We need to avoid a simplistic reading of these texts.

I consider it wiser to search for meaning rather than for explanations.

Jesus was not a magician. At this point in his gospel account, Mark was still in the process of identifying Jesus as the Messiah, Son of God. This story is the sixth in a series of miracle stories interspersed with parables and teachings. The evangelist connects Jesus with God’s power over the wind andthe sea. “The Lord addressed Job out of the storm and said: ‘Who shut within the doors of the sea, when it burst forth from the womb; … Thus far you come but no father and here shall your proud waves be stilled!”

God was in the sea and God is in the storm. The apostles reacted to Jesus, “Who then is this whom even the wind and sea obey?”

Mark was a very creative storyteller and catechist. He knew that his listeners would look beyond the story to the deeper truth, indeed the hidden reality far beneath the surface of the sea to the God who is also hidden in the midst of our own storms. God doesn’t bale us out of our difficult moments but upholds us in the midst of them.

As a young boy when I complained of how hard life was at times, especially in school, my dad would say, “Sometimes we just have to ride out the difficult times.” He didn’t brush me off with a cute or simplistic comment. In many ways, he was speaking words of wisdom to the simple. He was absolutely correct. Sometimes we just need to ‘ride out the storms of life.’

No, not every catastrophe or personal disaster ends in death but some do and some day, one will do us in and it won’t be due to our lack of faith.

In his second letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul was struggling with the chaos of death, not only in connection with is own mortality but with the death of Jesus who was not spared by the Father. “Indeed, he died for all, so that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.”

However, we must take care not to read into Paul’s words what he is not stating, namely, that Jesus’ death was not his goal. Rather he came to live for us and for all humanity and it was in this commitment to life, that he was forced to surrender his life. He was ‘faithful’ until the end despite the consequences imposed by those who rejected him.

I think that faith gives us a lens through which we are able to view life with all its ambiguities, uncertainties, adversities and even its defeats.

May he give us
all the courage we need
to go the way he shepherds us.

That when he calls
we may go unfrightened.

If he bids us come to him
across the waters,
that unfrightened we may go.

And if he bids us climb a hill,
may we not notice that it is a hill,
mindful only of
the happiness of his company.

He made us for himself,
that we should travel with him
and see him at the last
in his unveiled beauty
in the abiding city where
he is light
and happiness
+and endless home_. [Bede Jarrett, 1881-1934]
[ The Complete Book of Christian Prayer, The Continuum Publishing Company, 1995, New York, NY

“So whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old order has passed away; behold new things have come.”