Preached at St Mary’s Potterne
Joel 2. 1-2, 12-17; John 8. 1-11
“Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
Ash Wednesday—a day when we think about our sinfulness. Is that depressing?
The Temptation of Christ on the Mountain by Duccio (1308-11), originally part of an altarpiece in Siena Cathedral, now part of the Frick Collection, New York.
Well, I think it’s only depressing if we forget that thinking about our sinfulness is also an opportunity to think about God’s mercy. There’s a phrase I often use, that expresses one of the central truths of the Christian faith—God came to save us in the person of Jesus Christ not because we are good, but because He is love. We don’t save ourselves by being just about good enough to reach a pass mark for heaven set by a cosmic headmaster—instead God saves us out of His mercy.
I don’t think there’s enough mercy in the world. Mercy is easy to misrepresent as something soft-headed. One of the problems with the culture of our times, which is driven by what happens online, is that it usually lacks mercy. I think there are two main reasons for that. One is that most of us don’t realise when we type angrily behind our screens that there is a real person at the other end of the Internet receiving that anger. But this lack of mercy is also because on the Internet we’re always looking over our shoulders to see if what we’re doing is sensible and socially acceptable. Social media is a great X-ray machine into human psychology and it shows us that mercy is often seen as weak on transgressors and, in times of conflict, that exercising mercy is seen as letting the side down. This hostility to actually showing mercy is as prevalent among those who like to think of their attitudes as embodying kindness and concern for the marginalised as much as it is among the rest of us.
But that is to misunderstand mercy. When we show mercy, we don’t have to pretend that wrong has not been done to us. We show mercy when we choose not to take up the redress or vindication that would quite rightly be ours.
Perhaps in recent times, the Church has focused too narrowly on the idea of justice. Now, justice is a wonderful thing and I would hardly argue against it. But few of us would want to be on the receiving end of an entirely fair share of God’s justice for the worst things we’ve done in our lives. And there are other great aspects of human character, besides justice, to which Christians are called to live out. We all need mercy sometimes. If justice isn’t tempered by mercy, it can be a cold and even cruel thing.
Mercy transcends justice. When we are merciful we touch God’s nature.
It is interesting that mercy was a major theme in the early part of Pope Francis’ period of office. I’m not sure I can remember such a significant Christian leader making mercy such a central theme in their teaching and preaching in my lifetime. It’s a pity that it seemed to get lost later on in Church politics.
With Francis so ill, that popped into my head as I meditated on this morning’s Gospel reading to prepare for preaching on it. We are all familiar with the story of Jesus saying to the mob, “Let He without sin cast the first stone”. We all know that this teaches us something profound about God’s character, and about our own relationship to God’s mercy. When we truly understand how much we depend upon divine mercy, then we should be prepared to show mercy to others. Interestingly, most scholars think this story didn’t appear in John’s Gospel until several centuries after Christ’s life—much, much, later than any other part of the New Testament. When you read it along with the parts of John immediately before and after it, it reads like a later addition, fitting very awkwardly with them, and in a very different writing style to the rest of John’s Gospel. Perhaps it was an oral tradition about Jesus’ life that only came to be written down much later. And yet, and yet… somehow we know when we read it we are reading of the true nature of Christ and therefore of God the Father.
Our first reading, from the prophet Joel, was written when King Jehoash was on the throne in Jerusalem. I’m guessing that Jehoash doesn’t mean much to you, but he was an interesting and indeed troubling figure—he started out well, but later slipped into worshipping idols and then into great cruelty and violence, especially to people who criticised him abandoning his faith. So it is interesting that the theme of this reading is that God always remains willing to show us mercy if only we turn from our sins. No matter what we have done, God is willing to forgive us if we truly turn to him.
If mercy is when we choose not to fully exercise the right to justice that is ours, then fasting is when we choose not to take from God’s bounty in a way that we are perfectly entitled to.
There is always a lot of talk that Lent should be about doing more good things rather than giving things up. Well, it’s not a matter of one or the other – we can do both. At the same time in a society of both abundance and great stress, demanding that we do more instead of giving anything up can end up being of well-meaning but quite damaging tosh.
In an abundant society, where we can have any material thing we want delivered to our door at the touch of a button, and have it all on tick thanks to our credit cards – for a while, anyway – it does us good to do without some things we really like, just for a little while, even if it all it does it make us appreciate the thing we’ve given up all the more when Easter comes. Of course, we want to say Lent should be about doing things rather than giving things up, because our society screams at us that our value comes from the things we do, the things we consume, and the things we buy. But you are still just as valuable if you buy less, consume less, do less.
So, I urge you all to give up something you really like, but know you could live without, as your priority in Lent… and if you can take up something more – more praying, more spiritual reading – and that is absolutely wonderful too. But if you already feel like you don’t have enough hours in the day, then don’t feel bad because you can’t take on anything more. Don’t feel that you need to try very hard to be especially holy to pass the cosmic headmaster’s exam– because that’s not how God works at all. Instead of trying to be good enough for God, work instead to free yourselves from the things that hinder you from truly embracing God’s mercy. We all spend emotional energy trying to justify to ourselves the things we’ve done wrong rather than simply accepting God’s forgiveness.
God usually gives us far more than we need and forgives us far more readily than we are to accept that forgiveness. Proceed with Lent on that basis, and I hope you will find that it is not a season of depression and austerity, but one of freedom and trust.
Now praise, glory, and honour be to God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who is with us in times of plenty and times of austerity, when we are doing and when we are fasting, in all the earth and for ever and ever. Amen.
Top image—Waterlogged fields between Worton and Poulshot in winter, pretty much at the geographical centre of the Wellsprings Benefice. © Gerry Lynch, 22 December 2024.
