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. 

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[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.

2020 Vision: A Future With Hope

May I speak to you in the name of the one, holy, and living God.  Amen.

This morning I want to share about the 2020 visioning process currently underway at St. James.  As many of you know, next year will mark the 130^th anniversary of the founding of the parish and the 10^th anniversary of my tenure as your rector.   Realizing that the congregation has not engaged a formal strategic planning process since 2008, the vestry agreed that 2020 is an opportune time to renew our vision of the future.  "For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”[1]  The prophet Jeremiah tells us that God already knows the plan.  Our work in the coming months is to discern together what the future looks like consistent with God’s hope for us.    

In undertaking this visioning process, we do so confident that God desires St. James to be a spiritually vital congregation engaged with God’s larger mission of renewing the world.  Here, the vestry has been guided by the work of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research,[2] which defines spiritually vital congregations as those that come together for a divine common purpose in ways that are transformative to the people within them and their communities. 

There are three critical indicators of vitality:

1.     Relationships – building strong, respectful, and loving relationships among members, between members and leaders, and between the congregation and the wider community.

2.     Leadership – sharing vision, building consensus or motivation, being willing to experiment and try new things; model spiritual practices and moral leadership.

3.     Practices – engaging in activities that cultivate faith and action, in terms of personal spiritual growth and compassionate service to others. 

As we move through this visioning process, I invite us to be attentive to these three important indicators of vitality.   The prophet Jeremiah speaks of a new covenant between God and God’s people, one in which religion is not merely an external law or ritual, but is internalized, written on the heart; in such a way that lives and communities are transformed by a direct relationship with God.[3]  Our mission is to transform lives and communities through the experience of God’s love revealed by Jesus and poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.   The vision we cast is in service to this mission.

I also want to emphasize that the vision we cast must be rooted in collective discernment.  It is not my vision.  It is not the vestry’s vision.  It must be our vision if it is to come anywhere close to the future with hope that God desires for us.  But there is more:  this vision is not the property of the members of St. James.  The church exists for the sake of the world, and the Holy Spirit is at work outside as well as inside the church.  It is not enough for us to listen to one another as we discern God’s hope for us.  We must listen to our neighbors as well.   How can we serve in partnership with them if we do not know them and understand their hopes and needs?

To that end, the visioning process includes several components.  We have already completed the first phase: a congregational survey using an instrument developed by the Hartford Institute.  More than fifty members of St. James have completed the survey, which is an inventory of membership participation and demographics, programs, worship, beliefs and personal piety.  This provides us with a baseline understanding of who we are and the hopes and needs of a representative cross-section of the congregation.   

We are about to embark on a second phase: listening to our neighbors.  Along with Faith in Action Bay Area, we are hosting a “Soul of the City” workshop on October 30 and November 6, one of many that will be held across San Francisco.  This is an opportunity to learn about San Francisco history and explore what it would look like to reclaim the soul of the city; aligning civic engagement with our values.  These sessions will inform our visioning of the future at St. James. 

In addition, this fall we are conducting three focus groups with specific demographic cohorts in our neighborhood, supported by Stephanie Martin-Taylor, our diocesan Communications Officer, who will facilitate the sessions.  Each focus group will consist of a small group of 6 – 10 neighbors, unaffiliated with St. James or any another religious group. 

The first focus group will consist of single young adults.  A surprising 46% of households within a three-mile radius of St. James consist of single, young adults under the age of 35 living with roommates.  The second focus group will be with older singles and couples, and the third with middle-aged parents with children.  Together, these three demographic groups constitute about 80% of households in our area.  The purpose of the focus groups is to explore with the participants their experience of community, spirituality, and civic engagement in San Francisco.  

This will help us to learn more about the hopes and needs of our neighbors, and fill out the demographic data that the diocese makes available to us. 

Finally, we will engage with each other in small group discussions informed by the results of the congregational survey and what we are learning about our neighbors.  We will prayerfully explore the challenges and opportunities we face in the next five to ten years, as we seek to be a spiritually vital congregation.  We will discern how best to deepen relationships, foster leadership, and engage practices that support God’s mission in our time and place.

In this process, we all have a role to play in prayerfully listening, sharing constructively, and dreaming boldly together.  The vestry’s responsibility is to collate and interpret what we discover, and draft a 2020 vision plan to share at a congregational meeting early next year, which will then be further refined by your feedback.  As we move into developing a written plan, we will do so with the support of diocesan staff, who will facilitate the process.   Who is God calling us to become to receive the future with hope that God desires for us?  That is the big question before us.

Of course, this question isn’t just before us – the whole Church is grappling with it.  We are undergoing a huge cultural, economic, and ecological transition that is challenging all our institutions and norms.  The Church is not immune to the anxiety and uncertainty that surrounds us, but we must and we can respond with hope, because we have been here before.   We have a usable past, a tradition of faithful ancestors, who can guide us as we adapt to new circumstances.

The new covenant of which Jeremiah speaks is, in fact, a renewed covenant.  The people of his time were discovering anew God’s desire for their well-being as they began to heal from the traumatic experience of war, forced migration, and finally return to their homeland.   Seventy years they were in exile, and the Temple had been destroyed: the symbolic center of their whole way of life and all that they held dear.  They had to discover a new way to be faithful to God’s steadfast love, to reimagine beloved community, and to risk vulnerability in the aftermath of bitter failure and profound suffering.  They had to risk embracing change, even if they made mistakes in the process, to preserve what was truly life-giving for future generations.   We face a similar challenge in our time.

In such circumstances, we would do well to remember two things.  The first is that we have the treasure of scripture, a living tradition, to ground and guide us.  We are rooted in a lineage of faithful witnesses.  Scripture is inspired by God; it is God-breathed or God-spirited.[4]  It is a living word that comes to life through its transmission in community.  One of the great sages of the last century, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, described Jewish scripture and tradition in this way,

The storing of the Spirit, the content of Judaism’s memory, is the educational material that nourishes us.  What has been written down into books is like the body.  The soul exists only in the act of transmission.  The books are only signs, notes.  It is the aliveness of the Jew that makes music from it.[5]

We might say the same thing: it is the aliveness of the Christian that makes music from scripture.  We bring it to life, and it brings us to life, in the dialogue between memory and hope.   Scripture represents the pole of memory.

The second thing is that we must always pray and not lose heart, as Jesus reminds us.  In the parable of the persistent widow confronting an unjust judge, we are given an image of prayer as active engagement in the work of justice.[6]  Prayer is not passive, opposed to action.  It is not a question of praying or acting, but of acting mindfully or acting mindlessly; specifically, it is a matter of acting with awareness of God’s desire for justice, for right relationships in the world. 

There is a story told about Rabbi Heschel, who walked with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the long civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama to demand justice from Governor George Wallace.  Upon returning home, someone asked the rabbi, “Did you find much time to pray while you were in Alabama?”  To which the great man replied, “I was praying with my feet.”  Praying with our feet represents the pole of hope.  It is in the interplay between memory and hope that we discover how to live into the future that God desires for us. 

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

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[1] Jeremiah 29:11

[2] Linda Bobbitt, Vital Congregations (2018, p. 2-5) at www.FaithCommunitiesToday.org.

[3] Jeremiah 31:31-34.

[4] II Timothy 3:14-17.

[5] Abraham Joshua Heschel, “The Idea of Jewish Education,” in Helen Plotkin, ed., In This Hour: Heschel’s Writings in Nazi German and London Exile (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2019), p. 13.

[6] Luke 18:1-8.