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?
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.
