March 2021 – Page 4 – Lavish Mercy

Wednesday of the Second Week of Lent

March 3, 2021

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 31 which expresses a pleading reflective of our first powerful reading from Jeremiah.

Come, let us contrive a plot against Jeremiah.
… let us destroy him by his own tongue;
let us carefully note his every word.
Jeremiah 18:18

This verse (18:18) is the pivotal turning point where everything goes south for Jeremiah. The Israelite power structure really didn’t want to hear what Jeremiah was telling them. He pins their troubles – the destruction the Temple and Babylonian Captivity – on one thing: their faithlessness to the Covenant with Yahweh.

Jeremiah is an archetype of the condemned prophet whom we meet in Jesus. Today’s Gospel reveals the same pivotal turning point for Jesus:

We are going up to Jerusalem,
and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests
and the scribes,
and they will condemn him to death,
and hand him over to the Gentiles
to be mocked and scourged and crucified,
and he will be raised on the third day.
Matthew 20:18-19

They told the Truth – that we must continually discern God’s Word for our lives, always seeking love, mercy and justice. Few had the courage to listen. Most chose sinful resistance.

The suffering prophet has only one recourse when “hearing the whispers of the crowd, that frighten me from every side, as they consult together against me, plotting to take my life.” Psalm 31:14

That recourse is complete and trusting surrender to God. Psalm 31 reveals this surrender in a verse Jesus ultimately prays from the Cross:

Into your hands I commend my spirit;
you will redeem me, O LORD, O faithful God.
Psalm 31:6

Lent calls us to the message of Jeremiah and Jesus – to examine our lives in light of love, mercy and justice. Let us pray in the spirit of Jesus today to be open to Truth in our own lives and to build Truth in our communities.

Poetry: The Paradox by Paul Laurence Dunbar
The poem carries a tone similar to sorrowful Jeremiah’s poetry.

I am the mother of sorrows,
I am the ender of grief;
I am the bud and the blossom,
I am the late-falling leaf.

I am thy priest and thy poet,
I am thy serf and thy king;
I cure the tears of the heartsick,
When I come near they shall sing.

White are my hands as the snowdrop;
Swart are my fingers as clay;
Dark is my frown as the midnight,
Fair is my brow as the day.

Battle and war are my minions,
Doing my will as divine;
I am the calmer of passions,
Peace is a nursling of mine.

Speak to me gently or curse me,
Seek me or fly from my sight;
I am thy fool in the morning,
Thou art my slave in the night.

Down to the grave will I take thee,
Out from the noise of the strife;
Then shalt thou see me and know me–
Death, then, no longer, but life.

Then shalt thou sing at my coming.
Kiss me with passionate breath,
Clasp me and smile to have thought me
Aught save the foeman of Death.

Come to me, brother, when weary,
Come when thy lonely heart swells;
I ‘ll guide thy footsteps and lead thee
Down where the Dream Woman dwells.

Music: Symphony No.1 – Jeremiah by Leonard Bernstein

Summary: an excellent introduction to this symphony

Entire Symphony:

Tuesday of the Second Week of Lent

March 2, 2021

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 50 which Wikipedia describes as “a prophetic imagining of God’s judgement on the Israelites”.

It’s a rainy day here, after a foggy yesterday. A cheery psalm this morning would have been nice…. but, well it’s Lent.

Why do you recite my statutes,
and profess my covenant with your mouth,
Though you hate discipline
and cast my words behind you?
Psalm 50: 16-17

The psalm is a divine rebuke. It shouts, “Wake up! You’re missing the point!”

Psalm 50 calls us to examine the failures in love that we might bury under routine. It demands that we look under the surface of our daily practice for the depths of grace and transformation that we might be overlooking.

We can get pretty comfortable with our beliefs, our judgements, our attitudes, our habits. Left unexamined, these can deteriorate into prejudices and indifferences, into bigotry and self-righteousness, into betrayals of mercy.

Today’s Gospel gives us a perfect description of what happens to us when we fail to discern the “hardening of our spiritual arteries”. We get Pharisaical! Here’s what Jesus says about pharisees:

… they preach but they do not practice.
They tie up heavy burdens hard to carry
and lay them on people’s shoulders,
but they will not lift a finger to move them.
All their works are performed to be seen.
They widen their phylacteries and lengthen their tassels.
They love places of honor at banquets, seats of honor in synagogues,
greetings in marketplaces, and the salutation ‘Rabbi.’
Matthew 23:4-7

Let’s learn humble, contrite self-examination by sincerely praying Psalm 50:

Those who offer praise as a sacrifice glorify me;
and to those who go the right way
I will show the salvation of God.
Psalm 50: 23

Our first reading from Isaiah sums it up:

Wash yourselves clean!
Put away your misdeeds from before my eyes;
cease doing evil; learn to do good.
Make justice your aim: redress the wronged,
hear the orphan’s plea, defend the widow.
Isaiah 1:16-17

Poetry: God must give us a renewed mind (from Vale Millies) by Hadewijch. She was mystic of the 13th century
English version by Mother Columba Hart, Original Language Dutch

God must give us a renewed mind
     For nobler and freer love,
To make us so new in our life
     That Love may bless us
And renew, with new taste,
     Those to whom she can give new fulness;
Love is the new and powerful recompense
     Of those whose life renews itself for Love alone.
— Ay, vale, vale, millies — (farewell, farewell, a million times)
     That renewing of new Love
— Si dixero, non satis est — (If I can speak, it is not enough)
     Which renewal will newly experience.

Music: Psalm 50

https://youtu.be/ddUlZbcBQ_s

Lavish Mercy

Month: March 2021

Psalm 31: The Plot

Psalm 50: Clean It Up!