God's Via Positiva #6 | Say Amen to Mercy

0:00 Today is the fifth Sunday in Lent. Next week is Palm Sunday. Boom. Throughout this sacred season, we've been talking about the attitudes and practices that our faith encourages us to embrace. And this has been challenging work because in this cranky world, it feels far easier to compile a list of all the things that we stand against. This Lent, we've pushed back against that impulse. We've identified spiritual truths that we want to wrap around our souls. What attitudes, we've asked, does our faith call us to lift up and honor with a robust amen?

1:01 In asking this question, we are following the path of the saints. In speaking about the life that he wanted to live, Archbishop Oscar Romero once remarked, I don't want to be anti, against anybody. I simply want to be the builder of a great affirmation, the affirmation of God who loves us and who wants to save us.

1:34 Building a great affirmation sounds a lot like learning to say amen. This week we're going to consider another affirmation of God, another Christian practice, you might even say attitude, that our faith has called us to embrace. Today we're going to contemplate saying amen to mercy. Our guide in today's conversation is a passage from the Gospel of John. Let's turn our attention now to this dramatic story as it echoes from John chapter 8 beginning with the first verse. Jesus went across to Mount Olives, but he was soon back in the temple again. Swarms of people came to him.

2:34 He sat down and taught them. The religious scholars and Pharisees led in a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They stood her in plain sight of everyone and said, Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. Moses in the law gives orders to stone such persons. What do you say? They were trying to trap him into saying something incriminating so they could bring charges against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger in the dirt. They kept at him, badgering him. He straightened up and said, The sinless one among you, go first, throw the stone.

3:36 Bending down again, he wrote some more in the dirt. Hearing that, they walked away. one after another, beginning with the oldest. The woman was left alone. Jesus stood up and spoke to her. Woman, where are they? Does no one condemn you? No one. Neither do I, said Jesus. go your way and from now on do not sin this is the word of god for you the people of god thanks be to god Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger in the dirt.

4:32 What do you think he wrote? Was he carving statutes from Hebrew law into the sand? Was he drawing stick figures? Stick figures tossing stones, inflicting violence on each other. Was he shaping the dust into swirls, tending a small Zen garden? Whereas doodle is a way to let time pass. A waiting game. Was he waiting for inspiration? Waiting for this moment to dawn on a crowd clamoring for rough justice.

5:19 Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger in the dirt. What do you think he wrote? Maybe some suggest Jesus was sketching his famous summary of the law. You know how that goes. Love God. Love God with every fiber of your being, every muscle in your body, every word that you frame with your tongue. Go all in on loving God. And then love your neighbor. Love your neighbor as much as you love your own precious skin. Care for your neighbor. Make sure that your neighbor has enough to eat, a place to lie down at night, an umbrella to hold over her head when it rains.

6:16 Maybe that's what he wrote in the sand. Or maybe, some suggest, he thumbed three simple Hebrew letters into the dirt. Chet, Samach, Dalet. Three letters that form the Hebrew word hesed. A word that we typically translate into English as mercy. I picture Jesus humming as he spells chesed in the dirt. I can almost hear a bluesy tune in the air. He's humming everybody's cryin' mercy. Now, I know that most people think that everybody's cryin' mercy was penned by jazz singer and pianist, Mose Allison. Careful musicologists will surely point out that Allison premiered the song right here in New York City in 1968 and that Bonnie Raitt and Elvis Costello would later cover the tune and lift it to new heights. But still, I think Allison stole this poignant song from Jesus.

7:39 I can't believe the things that I'm singing. I wonder about some things I've heard. Everybody's crying mercy when they don't know the meaning of the word. Is that true? Has mercy become a hazy concept for us? Hard to define? If so, we've got a problem.

8:14 Picture a society in which a prophet stands up to address a ruler. She calmly charges that ruler, an elected servant of the people, with an ancient and sacred obligation. An expectation that has been repeated to countless kings throughout the course of history. Please, sir, conduct the business of the state with mercy. Now, picture that ruler frowning. Picture members of the king's court laughing. I mean, who needs mercy when you've got power? Hold on to that question. Let's go back to hesed.

9:11 Will you say that treasured Hebrew word with me? Hesed. Hesed. The word hesed appears 248 times in the Bible. My former professor, Catherine Dub Sackenfeld, wrote an entire book on hesed. Chesed can be translated, she argued, as loving kindness, as solidarity, as steadfastness, and as mercy. In the good book, chesed is a word that most often applies to God. God demonstrates chesed. In the Psalms, David, in a moment of great remorse, asks God to treat him with hesed, with steadfast love and mercy. Hesed is a description of God's character.

10:20 God is hesed. God is merciful. And this probably explains why at various places throughout the Bible, God asks humankind to put hesed at the top of their to-do list. What does the Lord require of you? Asks the prophet Micah and then proceeds to answer it. but to do justice, to love mercy, chesed, and to walk humbly with your God. Clearly, Jesus has committed verses like that to heart. When local leaders criticize the fact that Jesus has been spotted breaking bread with sinners, Christ responds, go and learn what it means.

11:17 when God says, I don't want your sacrifices, I want you to show each other mercy. Other figures in scripture chime in. They embody chesed. When Ruth clings to Naomi, when that immigrant woman stands alongside her mother-in-law during a time of great travail, she is showing, scripture tells us, Hessen. is there chesed in today's text?

11:55 You be the judge. In the midst of teaching a Sunday school class, Jesus is interrupted by a group of religious leaders who have taken a woman into custody. According to the law, they claim, this woman ought to be stoned to death. Now here, this impromptu jury is playing fast and loose with the truth. The actual law in question, an ancient punishment laid out in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, says that if two people are caught in adultery, both shall be put to death. It's a harsh and sweeping penalty.

12:47 So why did these men bring this woman all by her lonesome to face judgment? It's time to return to our earlier question. Who needs mercy when you've got power? Get caught? No problem. Here's what you do. Phone a friend. Write a check. Hush things up. Squeeze a little juice on the wheels of justice. Sadly, tragically, some things never change.

13:31 How does Jesus respond to the crowd's one-sided, not so very lawful thirst for blood? He shakes his head and then plunks himself down like a toddler in a sandbox. He starts riding in the dirt. He annoys everyone, including us, by failing to act quickly, by not immediately calling out the mob's misogyny and its hypocrisy. Where's the loving kindness that we've been taught to expect? Why doesn't Jesus start lecturing, calling to account these people who want a street corner execution? Where's the mercy?

14:21 Good question. Right question. And maybe an answered question. When Jesus writes in the sand, he pauses the conversation. And in so doing, he gives the crowd time to contemplate. contemplate time enough to allow the truth of the moment to dawn in their pinched minds.

14:53 Surrounded by hard-heartedness, Jesus is a non-anxious presence. Does it work? Not at first. The angry throng keeps after him. They badger Christ for an answer. They demand violence. Again, Jesus stands.

15:17 He looks at these very angry people and then he calmly wanders aloud whether their righteous rage is really all that righteous. Okay, he says, you want to purge sin from this community. You say that's what you're after. So why don't we try this? Why doesn't someone who's managed to stay pure, someone who's never messed up, never personally needed the mercy of God, why doesn't that person step forward why doesn't somebody who is in no way ever sinned throw the first stone and then Jesus goes back to the sand.

16:16 The text paints this scene with great irony. The only sinless soul in the frame, the only person pure enough to chuck a stone, turns his back on this kangaroo court. He kneels in the dirt, drawing stick figures, acting like a child. Faced with this sacred innocence, this uncommon gentleness, the mob pauses. It ponders Christ's words. And then it starts to disperse. The gospel describes it like this. They walked away, one after another, beginning with the oldest.

17:14 Why do you think the oldest members of this lynch mob walked away first? Were they tired? Had they lost energy for this trumped up trial? Or does the gospel have something else in mind in providing us with this curious detail? In recent weeks, I've been slowly turning the pages of a beautiful book. I'm deliberately reading this new novel at a snail's pace because I love being immersed in its world. I'm speaking of a book by gifted Irish author Niall Williams. It's entitled, This is Happiness.

18:12 The setting for William's multi-generational story is Faha, a rural parish in Ireland in the 1950s. Our narrator is an old fellow looking back on his adolescence. In 1958, Noel Crow arrived in Faha as a 17-year-old lad to live with his quirky grandparents. Big things were happening in Faha in that season. Electricity was coming to the parish, and with it, change. Change for a community that, for centuries, had not changed very much at all. Mostly though, this novel is not about electricity It's about people It's about their habits And their flaws Their graces And their joys Their talents And their conceits There are many different ways of looking at the world Early in the novel the narrator makes a comment that's stuck with me.

19:27 It's not my intention to paint the parish in an overly rosy light. It had its full share of villains. Vaha was no different from the rest of the broken world, he continues. Cruelty and meanness and ignorance all had a place then. But as I have grown older, the instances and stories of these things seem less compelling, as if God has inbuilt in me a spirit of clemency that I wasn't aware of when I was younger. they walked away says the gospel of john one after another beginning with the oldest what if wisdom can jump start mercy what if having been around the block a few times helps people grow softer. Perhaps they find it easier to recall all the times when they have needed mercy.

20:44 What if mercy is a way of seeing tempered by experience? I like that definition. Mercy relies on wisdom. Mercy relies on humility. And this may seem, this may explain why mercy often seems like a foreign concept to people with great power. If you've never been on the receiving end of mercy, if you've always managed to buy your way or lie your way out of messes that you or others have created. If you've never found yourself lying in a ditch, needing a helping hand, well then, mercy could seem like a joke.

21:52 In his March 4th speech to a joint session of Congress, the President of the United States touted recent cuts in foreign aid. Among the cuts, he declared an end to $8 million in aid to Lesotho, a country, he quipped, which nobody has ever heard of. Members of Congress chuckled. It's difficult to be merciful when you've never felt the need for mercy.

22:34 It's difficult to be merciful when you've never seen, when you cannot picture other people as being worthy of care, when you cannot imagine their circumstances. The aid to Lesotho that the American government has cut provided funding for anti-HIV AIDS programs in a nation that has been incredibly hard hit by this devastating disease. I wonder what would have happened if during that speech at that moment in the halls of power someone had pushed pause. What if someone said, let me sketch a few faces for you in the sand. Children's faces.

23:27 The faces of young souls who depend on antiviral drugs for their very lives. Let me give you a chance to see. Is that a fantasy? I don't think so. Because here's the thing. This church has, in fact, heard of Lesotho. And we've seen these faces up close. For years, this congregation has supported a critical mission in Lesotho, the Ministry of Hope. an orphanage for children whose parents have died because of HIV AIDS. Thanks to people like Sally Harwood, Susanna Black, Tim Palmer, Bryn Hartzell, Dottie Cannon Emmy Iwata Naomi Kroger and Emily Dumbroff we have extended mercy to these children and they have believe it or not extended mercy to us they have pointed us toward what matters in this brutal world they have clung to us with chesed.

24:59 Final story. This one's short. Last week I took a bit of a mid-Lent break to do some Holy Week prep and to visit our son Oliver at Carleton College. Ollie is a junior and a resident assistant. He takes his job caring for those who live in his dormitory very seriously. While dropping Ollie and a prodigious pile of clean laundry off last Saturday, I spent some time studying a collage on his dorm room wall. It was composed of pictures of friends, funny postcards, encouraging notes, quirky, delightful college stuff.

25:58 In the midst of it all was a post-it note. It said simply, Oliver, thank you for always trying to see me. I smiled. Here was a little slice of chesed hanging on a dorm room wall. After the crowd disperses, when Jesus finishes scribbling in the dirt a second time, only one other person remains. Jesus looks at her.

26:41 Jesus sees her. And bemused, Jesus asks, woman, where are they? Does no one condemn you? No one, she responds. Neither do I, says Jesus. What is mercy? Is mercy a virtuous perspective that if we're lucky, life cultivates in our hearts? I do think this is true. Life can nurture clemency in us. But there's more to it, isn't there? Mercy offers us a different set of lenses for looking at the world. When things get heated, says Jesus, pause for a second.

27:41 Pause and look. Look around and you will notice what God has noticed for a long, long time. The world is full of broken souls. And in the face of this fact, you've got a choice. surrender to the meanness laugh at human tragedy pound each other into the dust or embrace the contrarian words of Micah the fierce actions of Ruth the unconventional ways of Jesus risk extending loving kindness to each other. I suspect, my friends, that this is what Chesed is all about.

28:39 It's what our bedraggled world needs. It needs big-hearted people bravely drawing faces in the sand, offering angry and bewildered humans a chance to pause. to unclench their fists, drop their stones, and see. It needs mercy.