13 August 2015 - changing our channel

You wicked servant!
I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to.
Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant,
as I had pity on you?

When we receive mercy we must be open to let ourselves become channels of mercy. We are all debtors forgiven a huge amount. Our master is moved with compassion and forgives us a debt we can never repay. We must not just go off our own way to pad and comfort our own. We should consider that the servant really is owed money by his fellow servants. It is, in a sense, a legitimate claim. It is a claim which he had not exercised so violently before. Only after being forgiven does he start choking them to demand payment. Clearly he has somehow missed the point. He himself reaches the point where his resources are totally inadequate to the demands placed on him and is forced to depend on his master. He should learn what a great master he has. He should learn how great forgiveness is. He should see how much of a better place the world can be when mercy triumphs over strict justice. But instead he turns inward and tries to protect himself against ever come to that point again. He tries desperately to scrape together his own resources in order to become self-sufficient. And in a sense, this is his prerogative. Except it isn't. Now that he is shown mercy, mercy must mark his own life.

Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers
until he should pay back the whole debt.
So will my heavenly Father do to you,
unless each of you forgives his brother from his heart.

The mercy described here seems passive. It sounds like the choice to simply not hold a debt against someone. But we are called to a more fearsome mercy than that. The mercy of God leads the children of Israel out of Egypt through the Red Sea at the hands of Moses. Joshua is among the recipients of this mercy. He in turn is called to actively make this mercy present to the children of Israel at the Jordan.

When the soles of the feet of the priests carrying the ark of the LORD,
the Lord of the whole earth,
touch the water of the Jordan, it will cease to flow;
for the water flowing down from upstream will halt in a solid bank.

Mercy active seeks out the imprisoned. Mercy provides the way through the sea to deliverance. It isn't enough to be merely passive. We are called, in fact, to love. But we should realize that we don't have the money to pay our own debts let alone those of any other. We must rely on the master who delights to lavish his riches upon us. The ark of his presence is the only place we will find the mercy we all need.

Why is it, O sea, that you flee?
O Jordan, that you turn back?
You mountains, that you skip like rams?
You hills, like the lambs of the flock?