And now, bless the God of all, who has done wondrous things on earth; Who fosters people’s growth from their mother’s womb, and fashions them according to his will! May he grant you joy of heart and may peace abide among you; May God’s goodness toward us endure to deliver us in our days. Sirach 50:22-24
Beloved, you are faithful in all you do for the brothers and sisters, especially for strangers; they have testified to your love before the Church. Please help them in a way worthy of God to continue their journey. For they have set out for the sake of the Name and are accepting nothing from the pagans. Therefore, we ought to support such persons, so that we may be co-workers in the truth. 3 John 5:8
Most of us have felt like strangers at some point in our lives. It’s not a nice feeling. You might have attended an event without a date or companion. You might have been the only woman in a group of men, or vice versa. You might have been the only Black person at a White funeral or the other way around. Didn’t we hope to find someone to connect to, someone who would offer us an open door?
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy: As we think about Paul’s teaching, and our own experiences, let’s prayerfully consider our attitudes and actions regarding immigrants and refugees. Persons displaced by climate, politics, poverty, lawlessness, and a host of other causes deserve our help, as Paul describes. Let’s ask ourselves how we’re doing with that.
Poem: The Kindness of Strangers – Sally Van Dorn
Here I am with all my flaws seeking form and shelter.
I blanche at the notion of violence, but it’s coming
after us, closing in like a superstition I can’t shake.
If I acquiesce to your harsh future you must promise me
one thing. Where we go we will find our youth again. Can you
see it there under the yellow linen tablecloth? I’m depending on it.
Music: Wayfaring Stranger – published in 1858, author unknown
I'm just a poor wayfaring stranger Traveling through this world below There is no sickness, no toil, no danger In that bright land to which I go I'm going there to see my father And all my loved ones who've gone on I'm just going over Jordan I'm just going over home I know dark clouds will gather 'round me I know my way is hard and steep But beauteous fields arise before me Where God's redeemed, their vigils keep I'm going there to see my mother She said she'd meet me when I come So I'm just going over Jordan I'm just going over home I'm just going over Jordan I'm just going over home
The Lord said: “Woe to you Pharisees! You pay tithes of mint and of rue and of every garden herb, but you pay no attention to judgment and to love for God. Luke 11:42
Jesus got fed up with those who lived a loveless law. The Pharisees were meticulous in their outward observation of the Law of Moses, but they failed its core test to love their neighbor as themselves as written in Leviticus.
Thought:
The only love of God that has any substance is the love of God enacted as love of neighbor.
Walter Brueggemann
Music: Love God, Love Your Neighbor – Dale Sechrest
For through faith you are all children of God in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:26-28
The faith we share with other Christians makes us one in Christ. If someone has become “the other” for us, the integrity our faith is damaged in some way.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy: We pray to truly be clothed in Christ – to so espouse his Gospel that we live in charity and reverence for all Creation.
Thought: from St. Augustine
O Sacrament of Love! O sign of Unity! O bond of Charity! They who would have Life find here indeed a Life to live in and a Life to live by.
Jesus said to the crowd: “No one who lights a lamp conceals it with a vessel or sets it under a bed; rather, he places it on a lampstand so that those who enter may see the light. For there is nothing hidden that will not become visible, and nothing secret that will not be known and come to light. Take care, then, how you hear. To anyone who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he seems to have will be taken away.” Luke 8:16-18
Jesus indicates that the only way to spread light in the world is to do it together. Some have been given more, some less. But pooling all we have creates a Divine Fire illuminating a shadowy world.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy: We ask for the courage to recognize, claim, and offer our light in a world that longs for it. We ask for the humility and insight to encourage holy fire in others.
Poetry: I Understand This Light to Be My Home – Mai Der Vang, the author of Afterland (Graywolf Press, 2017), which recounts the Hmong exodus from Laos and the fate of thousands of refugees seeking asylum. The book received the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets.
In the awareness, I am brought closer to my being from long before. In my awareness, there is only what I can take from the small spaces of
knowing, an earnest ascendance imparted by way of transmissions from the grid, a voice calls out unbroken below and above as the aura of faraway light.
There is a light that
shimmers so deep it never goes anywhere but to shimmer.
Light assumes its job is to shimmer, and so it is, but more than that, light is ancestral. Light is witness. Light is prehistory,
blueprint of vibrations shifting through all directions of time.
Light as hidden winter that leads to shadow as the growth. Light as first language of source. Light as both terrestrial and celestial. Light of long nights far up
in the sky, I stare to the heavens and weep for the stars whose light I have always known and understood to be my rooting.
I once shared a life with the name of this light as I know it in the stars who gave me
my body. As I know it in the frequencies of my footsteps,
as I hear it in the code of a landscape imprinted on my fingers, as I spirit my eyes open from the inside, as I know and understand this light to be kin.
Consider then the pain of leaving this light, of losing the stars to spaces
no longer lit by its truth. I am shaped in the spaces where the light does not reach, a need for what does not shimmer
but opening to the shadow to receive just as much light. I miss this light always.
Then more light.
Ever more light. Deficit of light to bring more light.
Template of light to bring more love.
That is my one true wish, as I know and understand
this light to be my home, as a knowing up there in the galaxy is me,
and I am up there in my bones built from stars.
Music: Dark Sky Island – Enya – a beautiful song in which she names some of the stars.
Do to others as you would have them do to you. For if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same. If you lend money to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, and get back the same amount. But rather, love your enemies and do good to them, and lend expecting nothing back; then your reward will be great and you will be children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as also your Father is merciful. Luke 6:31-36
“Even” can be a parsimonious word – as in “get even”, “even-steven”. In such phrases, “even” means we settle things without forgiveness or generosity. It means we get our due without considering the other’s need.
But Jesus says the Gospel heart is not about “evenness”. Rather it is weighted on the side of extravagant mercy, generosity, and forgiveness.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy: We pray for the courage to model our relationships with others on God’s incredible kindness to us.
But to take the Gospels seriously, to assume that they say what they mean and mean what they say, is the beginning of troubles. Those would-be literalists who yet argue that the Bible is unerring and unquestionable have not dealt with its contradictions, which of course it does contain, and the Gospels are not exempt. Some of Jesus’ instructions are burdensome not because they involve contradiction, but merely because they are so demanding.
The proposition that love, forgiveness and peaceableness are the only neighborly relationships that are acceptable to God is difficult for us weak and violent humans, but it is plain enough for any literalist. We must either accept it as an absolute or absolutely reject it. The same for the proposition that we are not permitted to choose our neighbors ahead of time or to limit neighborhood, as is plain from the parable of the Samaritan.
The same for the requirement that we must be perfect, like God, which seems as outrageous as the Buddhist vow to “save all sentient beings,” and perhaps is meant to measure and instruct us in the same way. It is, to say the least, unambiguous.
Brothers and sisters: Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the Gospel, and not with the wisdom of human eloquence, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its meaning.
The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 1 Corinthians 1:17-18
Paul writes that the meaning of the Cross depends on who you are. If you believe, it manifests God’s Power. If you do not believe, it signifies foolishness.
The Gospel and the Cross turn the realities of the world upside down. For those who have falsely believed that power exists in egotism, legalism, division, aggression, vengeance, and greed, Paul says, “No!”. These are only signs that you are perishing.
The power of the Cross is manifested in mercy, justice, community, peace, forgiveness and generosity. This is the path to salvation.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy: We ask for the courage to trust the contradictory wisdom of the Gospel, and to live a life that reveals the “foolish” power of the Cross.
Poetry: Jesus Is Nailed to the Cross – Malcolm Guite
See, as they strip the robe from off his back And spread his arms and nail them to the cross, The dark nails pierce him and the sky turns black, And love is firmly fastened on to loss. But here, a pure change happens. On this tree, loss becomes gain, death opens into birth. Here wounding heals and fastening makes free,
Earth breathes in heaven, heaven roots in earth. And here we see the length, the breadth, the height, Where love and hatred meet and love stays true, Where sin meets grace and darkness turns to light, We see what love can bear and be and do. And here our Saviour calls us to his side, His love is free, his arms are open wide.
Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of our Creator God, Who makes the sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. Matthew 5:44-45
It must have been so hard to hear and accept Jesus’s words in his Sermon on the Mount. These listening disciples had been raised on the Deuteronomic principle “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”. What could ever make them turn that principle inside out to do just the opposite of what they had always thought? What would make us turn from this kind of “justice”? After all, it’s even-steven, isn’t it?
In Jesus Christ, there is no even-steven. The Mercy of God is given to all of us without limits. It rains from the heart of God over all Creation. Jesus showed us that there is no place in Mercy for quid pro quo justice. If a disciple wants to love like Jesus, this precept is foundational.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy: Perhaps we are someplace where we can watch the rain today. If not we can remember how rain falls without distinction over everything within its embrace. So too does God’s Mercy fall on us moving us to be its agents in our world.
Enjoy the Peaceful Rain
Poetry: from The Merchant of Venice – William Shakespeare
The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: 'T is mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown: His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above this sceptred sway; It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then show likest God's When mercy seasons justice.
The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common. With great power the apostles bore witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great favor was accorded them all.
Acts 4: 32-33
In this passage from Acts, community is noted as an essential aspect of life in Christ. We were not created to be alone. We are created to find God in the love of our sisters and brothers. That merciful and generous love, imitative of Jesus, makes us one with Him in the Trinity, that primordial Community of Generative Love.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We pray to understand that our capacity for community deepens in relationship to our generous and merciful love for each person. As we widen our circle of mercy and caring mutuality, the face of God becomes clearer in our lives.
Poetry: When Someone Deeply Listens to You – John Fox
When someone deeply listens to you it is like holding out a dented cup you’ve had since childhood and watching it fill up with cold, fresh water.
When it balances on top of the brim, you are understood. When it overflows and touches your skin, you are loved.
When someone deeply listens to you the room where you stay starts a new life and the place where you wrote your first poem begins to glow in your mind’s eye. It is as if gold has been discovered.
When someone deeply listens to you your barefeet are on the earth and a beloved land that seemed distant is now at home within you.
Music: In Christ There Is No East or West – Choir and Congregation, St. Martin in the Fields, London
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, as we memorialize the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., our readings speak about leadership and its continuing call to renew the world in the image of its Creator.
But Samuel said: “Does the LORD so delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obedience to the command of the LORD? Obedience is better than sacrifice, and submission than the fat of rams. For a sin like divination is rebellion, and presumption is the crime of idolatry. Because you have rejected the command of the LORD, he, too, has rejected you as ruler.”
1 Samuel 15:22-23
In our first reading, Samuel relays God’s displeasure to Saul who, though a conquering hero, has failed in humility and obedience before the Lord.
In the story, God has given a clear direction to Saul to obliterate Israel’s centuries-old enemy, the Amalekites. Instead Saul, after executing the masses, keeps the enemy king alive as a war trophy. He appropriates the cattle as personal spoil. He also sets up a shrine to commemorate the victory as his own.
God is not happy. When we profess to lead in God’s name we must act as God directs us. In order to understand God’s direction, we must cultivate an honest, just and merciful heart.
Martin Luther King was such a leader. By his faithful obedience to God’s inspiration, Martin, at the ultimate cost, turned the tides of history toward justice and freedom.
But the tides still need turning, because there will always be those who seek “war trophies”, and personal spoil, and domination for themselves. Our times are tortured by such selfish and failed leadership, just as all of history has been from ancient Israel until 1968 and until now.
Today, as we pray with Martin Luther King, great prophet and leader, we ask that selfless, merciful, and faith-impelled souls continue to hear the call to justice in our day. May Dr. King’s witness strengthen and inspire us.
Poetry: Devouring the Light – Cheryl Boyce-Taylor
The day they killed Martin we could not return to New York City our visiting senior class stuck in Huntsville streets blazed with suffering in that small Alabama town in the dull shroud of morning the whole world went crazy devouring whatever light that lit our half-cracked windows.
Music: Precious Lord, Take My Hand – Mahalia Jackson (Lyrics below)
Per Dr. King’s request, his good friend Mahalia Jackson sang his favorite hymn, “Take My Hand, Precious Lord”, though not as part of the morning funeral service but later that day at a second open-air service at Morehouse College.
Precious Lord, take my hand Lead me on, let me stand I’m tired, I’m weak, I’m lone Through the storm, through the night Lead me on to the light Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home
When my way grows drear precious Lord linger near When my light is almost gone Hear my cry, hear my call Hold my hand lest I fall Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home
When the darkness appears and the night draws near And the day is past and gone At the river I stand Guide my feet, hold my hand Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home
Precious Lord, take my hand Lead me on, let me stand I’m tired, I’m weak, I’m lone Through the storm, through the night Lead me on to the light Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home
Lavish Mercy 