This article was originally published in the Lent 2023 Bellringer.
Mercy is much on our minds during Lent. Indeed, in the Rite II order of service we use at 11:00 which begins with the Penitential Order and includes Form I of the Prayers of the People, the word Mercy appears thirty-four times, not counting how many times it may show up in the Collect of the Day and the Lessons. Nonetheless, for as many times as we ask God for mercy, week in and week out, I wonder how many of us stop to think about exactly what it is we want from God. Mercy, after all, doesn’t get discussed much in today’s world. Other than the occasional occurrence of defendants throwing themselves on the mercy of the court, we rarely hear the word used. So, in looking at the legal use of the term, what are those defendants requesting? Generally speaking, defendants seek the mercy of the court in situations where the facts make fairly clear that the individual in question is guilty as charged. However, if the person has never before been in legal trouble, if the circumstances that existed at the time of the crime reflect an otherwise decent person doing something in desperation, perhaps on behalf of a family member, then the individual may make a plea to the judge for leniency, sometimes referred to as throwing oneself on the mercy of the court. The hope is that the judge will recognize some inherent goodness in the offender and will decide to impose a lesser sentence than sentencing guidelines might recommend.
So is that what we’re asking of God, leniency? I daresay we want more than simply the sense that our sins have been forgiven, we want to be welcomed home when we feel least worthy of coming through the door. We want to experience the sort of mercy described in Psalm 103 - the mercy of a God slow to anger, rich in kindness, the sort of mercy Jesus offered to others throughout his earthly ministry. Yet as often as we pray for mercy I suspect we often have trouble accepting it because it just seems too good to be true. But it isn’t. We were created by a loving God whose glory is always to have mercy. Perhaps our challenge this Lent is to learn both to accept mercy but also to be merciful, with others of course, but most of all with ourselves.
