Sunday, November 24, 2019

The King of Mercy



We end the liturgical year today with this image of Jesus on the cross between two criminals.  We can hear the mocking voices ringing out, “Behold your king!”  A crucified king was not what people were expecting.  In fact, it was no king at all.  The king they were hoping for was a king who would destroy Israel’s enemies and bring healing and peace to God’s people.  They were looking for a righteous king bringing retributive justice, so that everyone would finally get what they deserve.

Are we so different today?  While we don’t relate to the language of kingship in our democratic republic, we sure respond to the desire for a leader who will punish the bad guys and reward the good guys.  Many hope for a leader, someone God-chosen, who is clear about the friend-enemy distinction and acts accordingly.  We may have different ideas about who the good guys and the bad guys are, but we all pretty much agree that justice is about them getting what they deserve.

That isn’t what we get with King Jesus.  He is not the messiah that we’ve been waiting for.  He is a very different kind of king.  He is the king of mercy. 

All along, Luke’s Gospel makes this clear.   From the very beginning, Jesus announces that he comes to bring good news to the poor, release to captives, sight to the blind, and freedom to the oppressed.[1]  He revived the Jewish practice of the Jubilee Year, when debt is forgiven, slaves are released, and ancestral lands are returned to poor peasants who have lost them – and extended it to include all people.  This is a program of mercy, wiping the slate clean so that everyone can make a fresh start.

Jesus ministers to the poor, the sick and the outcast not because they do or do not deserve it, but because their well-being enriches the whole community.  People are scandalized because Jesus hangs out with corrupt officials and notorious sinners; again, not because they “deserve” it, but because it is the sick who need a physician, not those who are well.[2]   He goes so far as to say that we should even love our enemies because “God is kind to the ungrateful and to the wicked.  Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”[3]

This teaching is memorably illustrated in the parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son.[4]  God just isn’t preoccupied with reward and punishment; or, maybe it is better to say, divine justice cannot be separated from divine mercy.  It is always in the service of reconciliation, the restoration of relationships.   Jesus demonstrated the truth of this teaching not only with his words, but with his life. 

It is not that Jesus was a Pollyanna or denied the reality of evil.   Quite the contrary, he was fully aware of evil and confronted it directly.  What he refused to do was allow evil to in any way define or limit the scope of love.  So even as he is hanging on the cross, he demonstrates a tremendous freedom in his capacity to forgive his enemies.[5]  Jesus refuses to abandon anyone finally to the dominion of evil,  because that would make evil more powerful than God, more powerful than love.  Jesus entrusted himself, his enemies, everyone and everything, to the mercy of God.  He is the king of mercy.

How do we respond to this mercy?  Luke invites us to imagine ourselves in the place of the criminals crucified alongside of Jesus.[6]  Note that these “criminals” were likely instigators of violent resistance to Roman occupation – that is why they were executed by the state.  They have witnessed the forgiveness Jesus offers, even though he is innocent and thus unjustly condemned.  One criminal joins the leaders and soldiers mocking Jesus.  A real king wouldn’t be in this position.  “Save us both and let’s stick it to the Romans if you are the Messiah!  That is what they deserve!”   He remains locked in the logic of retributive justice, of reward and punishment.

The other criminal recognizes Jesus’ offer of forgiveness as an opportunity to move beyond this logic.  He acknowledges “we are getting what we deserve” but begins to imagine that God may desire something different, something more, for us.  He entrusts himself to the king of mercy – “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  And Jesus responds, “Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

God’s mercy is so much larger than what we think we deserve.  Our sense of desert is actually a barrier to our relationship with God.  If we feel we deserve to be rewarded for our goodness, our sense of entitlement places us outside the flow of mercy; we don’t think we need it.  And if we think we deserve to be punished because of our failings, our sense of disqualification places us outside the flow of mercy; we think we are unworthy.  But it isn’t about what we deserve.  It is about what God desires to share with us: Paradise. 

When we let go of our preoccupation with reward and punishment, we enter into the flow of mercy and find ourselves in Paradise.  I don’t mean Paradise as some state of bliss beyond the pale of finitude and pain, but as a basic trust and acceptance of the goodness of creation and the intrinsic relationship of the good of each to the good of all.  We become free to respond to people and situations from the perspective of this greater good.  How we embrace this wholeness that already is ours becomes more interesting than the question of what we deserve.   It entails humility and gratitude, rather than praise or condemnation.

The king of mercy revealed on the cross is more powerful than evil and death, because forgiveness keeps open the possibility of a future with hope.   Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, because he is transparent to the flow of mercy.  In the words of St. Paul,

For in Christ all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Christ God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.  And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, Christ has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him – provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven.[7] 

We are reconciled to God through the death and resurrection of Jesus, not because we deserved to die and Jesus took our place; not because God demanded a sacrifice to appease the divine justice; but rather because through it the power of God’s ineffable mercy triumphs over all that resists it and reunites that which has been divided by sin and evil.  All things – not just some – every creature – not just humans – all are reconciled to God through the king of mercy.  When we trust this, we can embrace the future with hope.  God desires so much more for us than what we think we deserve. 

This morning, I invite you to consider the difference between the question, “What do I deserve?” verses “What do we need to be whole?”  This seemingly slight shift in attention opens up a whole new world.  Today, we can be in Paradise. 




[1] Luke 4:14-30.
[2] Luke 5:31.
[3] Luke 6:35-36.
[4] Luke 10:29-37; Luke 15:11-32.
[5] Luke 23:34.
[6] Luke 23:39-41.
[7] Colossians 1:19-23.

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