God's incredible mercy and justice

Today’s first reading, Jeremiah  2: 1-3, 7-8, 12-13, is proclaimed to all of us in today’s world, as we, too, have “defiled [the Promised Land], “made [God’s] heritage loathsome,” “rebelled against [God], “went after useless idols.” 

The psalmist speak of God’s awesome, all prevailing mercy, which “reaches to the heavens.” God’s “faithfulness,” the psalmist reminds us, “to the clouds.”   God’s “justice is like the mountains of God; [God’s] judgments, like the mighty deep”  (Psalm 36).  If you and I, or any sinner, comes before God,  God takes out his gavel and proclaims: “Not guilty!”  “What?” we ask in amazement. God replies:  “Your debt has been forgiven through my Son, Jesus.  Your sin is no more. It is erased, blotted out, forgiven.   His promise of salvation is real. What God says to us, through Isaiah, is trustworthy: “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool” (Isaiah 1: 18).

Volumes of testimony against the human race could be compiled to prove our guilt.  Those volumes would reach into the farthest depths of the earth and reach up into the farthest heights of the heavens.  God’s mercy, on the other hand, would be deeper and higher than any of our transgressions.   “…The  One sitting on the throne…[says to us], ‘Look, I am making the whole of creation new. Then He …[says] said to me, ‘It has already happened. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give water from the well of life free to anybody who is thirsty; anyone who proves victorious will inherit these things; and I will be his/[her] God and he[she] will be my son/[daughter].  But the legacy for cowards, for those who break their word, or worship obscenities, for murderers and the sexually immoral, and for sorcerers, worshippers of false gods or any other sort of liars, is the second death in the burning lake of sulphur.” (Revelation 21:  5-8).

Obviously, the choice is ours.  God is not the one who proclaims “Guilty” nor the one who condemns us. We do that to ourselves by the choices we make.  As far as God is concerned, He says to us: I “sent…[my] Son into the world not to judge the world, but so that through him the world might be saved” (Jn  3:17).

What choices are you and I going to make today?

God never abandons us

As we read today’s first reading, Is 10: 5-7, 13b-16, we might want to imagine how Jesus would say this to us. I came up with the following imaginative conversation parallel to Isaiah’s message to those who brought harm to Israel:

                Dorothy Ann, nations rose up against my people Israel. They boasted of their of

                crimes against my people: raping women, killing those left as orphans following

                a hostile, bloody takeover. They destroyed sacred vessels and confiscated treasures.

They boasted of their military prowess, their domination and destruction of all

that survived the massacre. These same abominations persist throughout the

world of today and have been a reality of one nation putting down another, one

ruler putting down his people, one violent individual putting down another.

My inheritance you inflict:

Widow and stranger you have slain in your wars,

the fatherless you have murdered with violent weapons

 or with violent words of gossip;

women you have raped; young girls and boys you have sold into the sex slave;

young men and women you have killed for drug money

or by the fleeting pleasure of gossip;

unborn infants you have slaughtered in the womb.

And you have the audacity to say, as Assyria said:

“By my own power I have done it,

And by my wisdom, for I am shrewd…

(L)ike a giant I have put down the enthroned….”  (cf. Is 10: 5-7, 13b-16)

God’s response to us is contained in today’s psalm (Ps. 94: 7-8, 9-10, 14-15)

                “Understand, you senseless ones

                of my people;

                and, you fools, when will you be wise?

                “Shall he who shaped the ear not hear?

                Or he who formed the eye not see?

                Shall he who instructs nations

                not chastise,

                he who teaches [human beings] knowledge?

                “For the Lord will not cast off his people

                nor abandon his inheritance;

                but judgment shall again be with justice,

                and all the upright of heart shall

                follow it.”

My response: O God, have mercy.