Mercy Now

Mercy Now

Do you ever think the world has flipped upside-down? Malachi [3:1-4] did. Malachi, the unknown prophet from an unknown era was hoping, waiting for the coming “day of the Lord” to set things right-side-up once again. In fact, the Hebrew prophets in general noted that the world which God created “is good,” with all the resources necessary for all people and all creatures to thrive, had ended up with most of these resources in the pockets of a few powerful people through theft and hoarding leaving little else for everyone else. Malachi was particularly hard on the Temple priests who had become corrupt and lazy. Malachi is confident that that will all change on the day of the Lord, and that a messenger shall come first to “prepare the way.”

The central question, says Malachi, is: “Who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?” When he appears to turn things right-side-up again with the “goods” of creation falling out of the hoarder’s pockets to rain upon the poor, the widow, the orphan and the resident alien. A return to the day when the world was “good.”  Many wait for that day!

So also an old priest, Zechariah in Jerusalem during the time of the Roman occupation, is going about his priestly duties one day in the Temple when an angel appears to announce that his wife, Elizabeth, heretofore barren, shall bear a son, name him John, Yohanan, “YHWH is gracious, and that John will be filled with the Holy Spirit and will “make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” The old man stutters in disbelief. The angel assures him it is true, but for his disbelief Zechariah will be mute until the child is born. [Luke 1: 5-20]

Sure enough, the boy is born. On the eighth day at the babe’s circumcision they are asked for a name and Elizabeth says, “John.” But you have no relatives named John. You should name him Zechariah, they say. The old priest takes a tablet and writes, “His name is John!” Immediately his tongue is loosed and he begins to sing and praise God for showing “mercy to our fathers” and to us. “This was the oath he swore to our father Abraham, to set us free from the hands of our enemies,” and turn the world right-side-up again! “You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way, to give his people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins.” Suddenly, after months of waiting, the old man is a poet and a prophet himself. [Luke 1:68-79]

The text concludes, “The child grew and became strong in spirit, and was in the wilderness until the day he appeared publicly to Israel.” [ibid v.80] It was in the wilderness that YHWH, the God of the Exodus, forged a disparate band of peoples into a people, a people of God, strong in spirit. The wilderness is where Israel becomes Israel. The wilderness will be that place that the young man Jesus will go, “driven by the Spirit,” to become strong in spirit and discern what it means to be God’s Beloved as the voice proclaims at his baptism by Yohanan.

Yes, at the appointed time, when hoarders of fortune and power like Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate, Herod, Philip, Lysanias were ruling over Israel, and Annas and Caiaphas were the Temple priests, the people heard “Thunder in the desert!” Yohanan, like his father before him, began to speak. And the first words out of his mouth were those spoken and sung centuries before as Isaiah announced the liberation of God’s people from the wilderness of Exile in Babylon:

“Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God!” [Luke 3: 1-6] John demonstrates real power and strength against the so called “rulers of the age,” the thieves and hoarders of the Empire and the Temple. The very Temple priests whom Malachi had called to repair and reform their ways.

And all the people left the city and the towns to stream out into the wilderness to be with Yohanan, the strong man filled with the Spirit preparing the people and the way for the one to come who will set the world right-side-up once again. The one who will shower the people with God’s Mercy – a mercy so wide you cannot get around it, so high you cannot get over it.

Mercy comes and calls us all to join in a life of mercy for all people; a life of enough resources for all people. And the question of Malachi remains: “Who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?” The old man had sung that this mercy will consist of teaching and forgiveness – that to prepare for that day of the Lord’s arrival is to become a people schooled in the ways of YHWH’s Covenant and who know how to forgive as God forgives. Forgiveness is love, love is forgiveness. John, no doubt, had learned this in the solitude of his wilderness years.

John went into the wilderness to be emptied so as to be filled with God and the Spirit, so that he might become, as Jesus says after John’s death, a lamp to shine the path, the way, for us to welcome the coming of the Lord. John wants us to be prepared to welcome Mercy and Love as he comes to greet us. John knows, just as the Lord knows, sometimes this Mercy and Love can be unbearable. We all know what it is like to be in a supermarket as a child, having a tantrum with our mother’s or father’s arm around us, loving us at our worst, writes Maggie Ross [The Fire of Your Life, p 136-137]. “We remember the rage, not only the anger at being thwarted, but the even greater rage at being loved all the same. It is the hardest thing in the world for that little kid to pass through the terrible loneliness from rage, to the grief that burns the anger from us so that we can accept our parent’s love. Or, Gods… The wrath of God is his relentless compassion, pursuing us even when we are at our worst. Lord, give us mercy to bear your mercy.”

Malachi, Isaiah, Zechariah, Elizabeth, Mary and Jesus all lived in some kind of upside-down world of their own. They all spent time in some kind of wilderness. They all experienced some kind of solitude before accepting words like, “prepare the way of the Lord,” “do not be afraid,” “make the rough places smooth.” As Malachi envisions, God’s wrath, God’s love, God’s mercy are all the same thing – and that the Lord is like a “refiner’s fire and like fuller’s soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify” us, and refine us like gold and silver, until we present offerings of Mercy and Love to the Lord in righteousness.

We all live together in the wilderness where we are made into the Lord’s people. We do not flee the wilderness, we go into it as John did, or we are driven into it like Jesus. We go into the wilderness to be enabled to bear the Word, as the Spirit enabled the prophets to endure and bear it; that John might proclaim him; that Mary might bear him. We pray: Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy Immortal One, have Mercy upon us. Wherever and whenever we are in the wilderness with John and Jesus and Israel, we become like John, “bearers of the light, lamps in the windows of God’s house, fired with the oil of repentance, keeping us burning as we wait for him. Jesus, Son of the living God, be borne in us today.” [Ross, 141]  Every single one of us could use a little Mercy Now.