On mercy

Mercy and truth are met together: righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Truth shall flourish out of the earth: and righteousness hath looked down from heaven.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Mercy is, perhaps, something that the church has begun to think about more clearly and with more focus in the past few years. That is in no small part, of course, due to the Year of Mercy proclaimed by Pope Francis a year or so ago, in which the Roman Catholic Church began to take more seriously the idea that God, in his infinite goodness, and indeed in his infinite wonder and glory, truly does offer total, merciful loving-kindness to His people here on earth. For through the eyes of mercy, we see the nature of God.

What, then, is mercy? This must be one of the key questions facing those of us who call ourselves Christian, yet it does seem to be one we willingly ignore in order to focus on other things. Whether we are liberals, determined to say God loves everything and everyone, or conservatives, determined to say God permits this and forbids that, based on a nineteenth century reading of Holy Scripture, we do seem to ignore one of the key ways, both in scripture, in tradition and in holy lives well lived, that God reveals His true nature – that of His forgiveness.

It is often said, principally, dare I say, by those who are at best ignorant of Holy Scripture and the basic tenets of exegesis, that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament cannot be one and the same – they are, ultimately, Mr Bad Guy and Mr Good Guy, eternally opposed and impossible to reconcile. This is, of course, rubbish – but it’s rubbish for a key reason, and understanding that reason might help us to overcome the liberal-conservative divide over, amongst other things, what God does or does not like, what God does or does not permit, and indeed over the nature of how, and if, we might do God’s will and be the people He wants us to be.

Every Christmas, we gather, in this Chapel and elsewhere, to talk about Incarnation – about the coming down to earth of Jesus Christ, who is both God and man – his living amongst us, and ultimately his death. No mainstream Christian denomination would take much issue with that as being one of the core tenets that separates Christianity from, for example, the other Abrahamic religions – ‘and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us’, as St John puts it, is the key to our faith. Yet how often we leave incarnation at Christmas, and then see Jesus as a rather different God to the God we meet in Genesis, or Exodus, or any of the Old Testament. Yet that Old Testament God, the one who destroys the lands of the Canaanites or pronounces death through his prophets, is the same Old Testament God who, in tonight’s reading from Isaiah, said, of the wicked:

Let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

It is easy to characterise the God of the Old Testament as a God of violence and division, but this is the same God, spoken about here as a God of abundant pardon, in the Old Testament. And the extraordinary thing in Christianity is that this God, this God of continuous revelation, becomes a God of incarnation in Jesus Christ – because the words of the Bible itself show a journey of understanding, of wisdom and faith, which lead the people of Israel, at first, and then the whole world, to a better and wonderful knowledge of what, and just as importantly, who, God is.

This, of course, is not a popular view amongst those who take the Bible literally, but then neither must be the clearly contradictory accounts of creation, or indeed the contradictory accounts of moments in the life of Jesus. But the Bible itself teaches us to read it as a continuous revelation, and it is through that God-given lens that we truly begin to understand about the eternal, changeless and glorious vision of God Himself. Of course, there are hints as to what God is as we walk through the Old Testament, amongst them the much-maligned Law, but that is what they are – portents of the divine.

Jesus himself directly refers to this, when he says in St Matthew’s Gospel, just after the beatitudes, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil the law”. Pope Benedict XVI, in his wonderful trilogy ‘Jesus of Nazareth’, beautifully builds on this theme, telling us that Jesus Himself is the law – that in him, and in his behaviours, and actions, and loves, and passions, and joy, He is what the law foreshadows. Jesus Christ is more than another revelation of the law, he is the law Himself – and it is through Him, the way, the truth and the life, that we can truly see, and understand, the Father in heaven.

So where does that leave the Mosaic Law, and its various pronouncements? Well, clearly, we don’t follow all of its statutes and ordinances to the letter, or we would be stoning an awful lot of people, and would barely have time for Evensong. But how do we understand its relevance to us today, and how do we avoid the usual accusation of ‘pick and choose’ that is so often thrown at anybody who dares to say parts of the Bible need to be reinterpreted in the context of today’s world.

Well, of course, there is some room, and indeed Biblical sanction, for reinterpretation – the Bible is not a complete or dead document, it is living, and as the Gospel is proclaimed afresh in each generation, God does new and marvellous things. To be scared of modern science, or modern psychology, or indeed even of modern literature, is itself anti-Biblical – we are shown in the pages of the Bible itself that all of creation sings to the tune of God, was created by Him and he marvels and wonders in its beauty – much as we must too. But the key way to understand the Old Testament Law is to see it through the lens of the Law itself – that is, through the life, works, continued presence of and prayers of and to Jesus Christ, and indeed through the intercessions of the saints and martyrs of God’s church.

Yet when it comes to mercy and forgiveness, we seem determined to ignore this, and indeed many professed Christians still think of ‘an eye for an eye’ as being a Christian virtue. It explicitly isn’t – indeed, it comes from the Old Testament idea of proportionate retribution, whereby it should really be read as ‘only an eye for an eye’. But more importantly, Jesus, the fulfilment of the Law Himself, embodies mercy, forgiveness and life, not retribution, punishment and death. In the beatitudes, he says “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy”, and then in the agony of the cross, he Himself says “Father, forgive”, and indeed welcomes the thief into paradise.

Even in our hymn this evening (To God be the Glory) which has a glorious tune but some really dreadful words, there is the terrible line ‘O perfect redemption, the purchase of blood’ – an appalling concept that imagines the Old Testament God demanding blood for punishment – that Jesus, the Son, needs to be brutally murdered in order for God’s bloodthirsty demands to be satisfied. This is not, of course, the reason that Jesus dies on the cross – but it permeates so much of our church’s theology, and ends up blinding us to the mercy that is otherwise seen in the life of Jesus. Jesus dies on the cross because he is perfection, he is mercy, he is willing to take all the abuse, the hate, the evil, the violence of the world on his shoulders, and die as a lamb for the slaughter – and yet still love, still forgive, still embrace us with everlasting mercy and invite us home – his was not a sacrifice for punishment, but a sacrifice of love that was true atonement. And in the most wonderful, final, creative act, God the Father raises Him from the dead – the resurrection being the total and perfect fulfillment of incarnation – death has no more dominion over these works of darkness, and God’s true nature is revealed on the tree and in the empty tomb.

God’s forgiveness is entire – it is complete – and the mystery of Jesus’ passion, cross and resurrection open our eyes to the utter and devastating, radical inclusion of God himself. God doesn’t demand death for our sins – he demands life, and he offers us the new covenant in which to live today. God, in his infinite mercy, does not offer us one more chance, but seventy times seven – the Gospel writer’s way of describing a holy and unending sacrament of forgiveness. And if God offers that, then who are we to say otherwise? Let him who is without sin cast the first stone. “We have been condemned justly”, says the thief, yet Jesus turns to him and says “today you will be with me in Paradise”.

So the message of Jesus is simple – nobody, whatever heinous, despicable and deplorable thing they have done, is beyond the pale. We must repent of our sins, of course – that is, turn again to God and endeavor to live a more godly life. Yet if we are given this forgiveness, then we too must learn to say ‘Father forgive’. Retribution, punishment, execution – all of these might sound ‘just’ and acceptable, yet we are given our Law in Jesus, and as Christians we have no alternative – ‘forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us’. We must repent of our sins to God and neighbor, and of course true forgiveness needs true repentance. But God’s mercy demands that we follow in the footsteps of our savior, however much we stumble or mess up. God’s mercy means seventy times seven new chances, and infinite tenderness and compassion. It isn’t easy – but nor was the way to the cross. God wants us all to be in his communion – forgiven and forgiving, repenting and praying, loving and loved – creatures of God. And with our hearts cradled in his arms, we must pray, aided by the intercessions of our blessed mother, that God’s kingdom of mercy might come, here on earth, as it is in heaven.

Amen.