Sunday, March 15, 2020

Lent Three: Lord have mercy

During Lent, my church, like many others, begins each worship service with the decalogue: a reading of the ten commandments, with the refrain, after each: Lord have mercy.

It’s a reminder, a prayer, a confession.

Lord have mercy.

In the Prayers of the People we repeat the same refrain:
For the aged and infirm, for the widowed and orphans, and for the sick and the suffering, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord, have mercy. 
For the poor and the oppressed, for the unemployed and the destitute, for prisoners and captives, and for all who remember and care for them, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord, have mercy. 
For deliverance from all danger, violence, oppression, and degradation, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord, have mercy. 
This past week has been a difficult one. I began the week deep in preparation for a large Rally to End Gerrymandering in Harrisburg on March 23, with 14 buses coming from all corners of our state, with over 600 people already registered. Volunteers had been working for months arranging bus routes, scheduling legislative visits, preparing and ordering materials.

On Tuesday it became clear we would need to cancel and began the hard work of communicating that change. That was confirmed two days later when the capital complex closed to all events and visitors. Our roll-back of programs escalated: canceling or postponing events across the state, unraveling many hours of work by dozens of volunteers.

We’ve been working for four years now to change our state constitution. A tight timeline suddenly looks impossible as our state legislature struggles to put emergency legislation in place before recessing indefinitely in the face of a spreading pandemic. We are grieving the hard work dismantled, the forward motion suspended.

Lord have mercy.

Multiply our losses by millions: conferences upended, athletic careers put on hold, senior years disrupted, vacations, travels, celebrations abruptly upended.

And far more important: lives lost. Health threatened. Family finances for many who live on the edge suddenly more difficult than ever.

Thrown into glaring relief are realities too long ignored:

Leaders who put polls above people.

Healthy systems built on profit rather than public good.

Governmental structures that reward partisan maneuvers rather than enable efficient enactment of data-based solutions.

A harsh economy that offers no margin to the most marginalized among us. No guarantee of income in times of illness. No guarantee of continued employment when markets drop or doors close unexpectedly. No steady supply of medical care when situations change.
Lord have mercy.

I’ve wrestled with that word mercy before:

Ancient Hebrew offers three root words linked to mercy. One, "racham," is related to the word for womb, carrying with it a sense of family love, compassion, strong carrying weak, parent tenderly carrying a tiny child.  In the King James, “racham” was regularly translated “tender mercy.”

Another Hebrew word, "chanan," is sometimes translated pity, or generosity: those who have much giving to those with little.

The word most often translated mercy, “chesed,” or “hesed,” is also translated “steadfast love,” “lovingkindness,” “unfailing love,” “faithfulness.” Mercy is love that won’t give up, won’t let go, never grows tired. 

An Old Testament refrain insists: “For the Lord is good, his mercy (chesed) endures forever.” (Repeated in Psalms 100:5; 106:1; 107:1; 118:1-3; 136; 1 Chronicles 16:34; 2 Chronicles 5:13; 7:3; Ezra 3:11; Jeremiah 33:11) 

This is the unconditional love we can’t quite get our heads around.

“Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love (hesed) for you will not be shaken.” (Isaiah 54:10)

“No one is cast off by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love (hesed).” (Lamentations 3:31-32)

Suffer the little children; Orthodox icon
In the New Testament, the word translated “mercy” is the Greek word “eleos,”  from the same root as oil, “oil poured out”. Again and again, Jesus was asked for mercy and extended it in healing, in forgiveness and finally, in his greatest act of mercy, in conquering death through his own death and resurrection. 

In this fractured time, my heart turns toward that image of God carrying us, like frightened children, in strong arms of mercy.

We don’t deserve it, can’t earn it. We fight against it until overcome by grief or fear.

Lord have mercy.

The word carries mysteries: how can mercy intervene when our best efforts fail?

In the beatitudes, the first lengthy teaching Jesus offered, he said “Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy.”

At first sight, this looks like a contradiction: if mercy is something unearned, then why does it seem conditional?

That word “eleos”, like oil poured out, suggests a way of understanding this: when we allow ourselves to be channels of mercy, we experience it more fully, see it more clearly.

When we refuse to offer mercy to others, we shut ourselves off from mercy itself, like rocks hardened to God and to each other.

To live in the mercy of God.
To feel vibrate the enraptured
waterfall flinging itself
unabating down and down
to clenched fists of rock.
Swiftness of plunge,
hour after year after century . . .
not mild, not temperate,
God’s love for the world. Vast
flood of mercy
flung on resistance.
(from “To Live in the Mercy of God.”
Denise Levertov, 1996 )

In this time of loss, anxiety, uncertainty, fear, may we set down our resistance, pray for God’s mercy, live in God’s mercy, act as agents of that mercy we so desperately need.  

Lord have mercy.



The song is from a CD my son gave me for Christmas from The Porters Gate, a sacred arts collective founded in 2017 to be a "porter" for the Christian church: "one who looks beyond the church door for guests to welcome." The Porters Gate CDs, Work Songs and Neighbor Songs, have become the soundtrack for this season in my life: a time beyond the church door, working in the political arena as I try to live out love for my neighbors across the state of Pennsylvania.


This is the third in a Lenten series:

Parts of this post are reworked from earlier posts on mercy:

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