What are the unmerciful attitudes to which we are tempted? Are we preoccupied with what others are doing wrong? Are we looking around us for people deserving of judgment and condemnation? If we notice that we do sometimes have these judgmental thoughts, why do we have them? What's in it for us? Have we become like the steward who was forgiven a large debt that immediately turned on those who owed him much smaller sums of money? The steward seemed to immediately forget the great mercy he himself received and set about with a new desperation to shore up his own resources so that he could be independent and never need to depend on mercy again. Are we too forgetful of the mercy we ourselves have received? We must often be thus forgetful or else we could not feel smug and superior enough to judge and condemn others. If we realized that we all stand in need of mercy and that any absence of behavior worthy of judgment and condemnation is not something that comes finally from ourselves, but from God at work in us, we would realize that we have no grounds to think ourselves better than anyone else. Daniel, who was doubtlessly not as personally implicated in the sins about which he pleaded to the Lord as others in Israel, nevertheless fully took the part of his people.
We have sinned, been wicked and done evil;
we have rebelled and departed from your commandments and your laws.
In Daniel we begin to see what a true heart of mercy looks like. It is not simply standing aloof and untouched, offering handouts to beggars from some imagined spiritual abundance. It is rather taking the part of precisely those people who deserve punishment and condemnation as one of them, of acknowledging our own lack and dependance and pleading to God for the abundance and grace of which he himself is the only source.
But yours, O Lord, our God, are compassion and forgiveness!
In the way that Daniel took the part of his people, a people who were by no means often friendly or welcoming to him, we see an echo of the way Moses stood in the breach for his people (see Psalm 106:23) and a prelude of the way that Jesus himself, though sinless, would walk in perfect solidarity with sinners. Jesus himself was the only one who did not need redemption or mercy and he was himself without any sin deserving of judgment. Yet, in spite of this, he chose not to judge or condemn, but rather to show mercy and forgive. He did not content himself with some elevated indifference but was moved by his solidarity with sinners to go so far as to die on the cross for us. We can't be merciful in quite the same way, because we do not begin with a clean slate. But for that reason we are all the more obliged to forgive and show mercy, to reciprocate the mercy we ourselves have first received.
Forgive and you will be forgiven.
We should be ready in advance to forgive offenses against us. Rather than calculating the appropriate amount of remorse or penance that we demand before offering forgiveness to others, or the correct level of conversion that would make others worthy of it, let us forgive as we ourselves we first forgiven, before anything is earned our deserved. An attitude of ready and habitual forgiveness can help protect us from getting too caught up in the path of judgment and condemnation.
Give and gifts will be given to you;
a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing,
will be poured into your lap.
We are afraid to give because we know that on our own our resources are insufficient. We already owe all that we have and all that we are be the mere fact of our creation. Further, we all have at one time or another mismanaged the gifts we ourselves have received and stand in an unpayable debt. These facts may tempt us to become even more closed fisted and self-protective. But they are meant to be lessons in how we ourselves are now supposed to live. We are called to be merciful in a way that is only possible and only makes sense if we remember that we first received and in which we now stand.
For the measure with which you measure
will in return be measured out to you.
Mercy is the only thing that can save the world. Solidarity is the only point of leverage where change is possible.
But when he knows that he is not only worse than all those in the world, but is also guilty before all people, on behalf of all and for all, for all human sins, the world's and each person's, only then will the goal of our unity be achieved. For you must know, my dear ones, that each of us is undoubtedly guilty on behalf of all and for all on earth, not only because of the common guilt of the world, but personally, each one of us, for all people and for each person on this earth.
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
No comments:
Post a Comment