Mercy retold against a history of refusal
Prepared for the Irvine chapter of the Google Christian Fellowship
Two days after the feast ends, the people assemble again in fasting and sackcloth, with earth on their heads. For a quarter of the day they read from the Book of the Law; for another quarter they confess and worship. Then the Levites lead one of the longest prayers in Scripture—a psalm that retells Israel’s whole story: creation, Abram called and renamed, the sea divided, bread from heaven, the pillar of cloud that did not depart even after the golden calf. Against every rescue stands the refrain of refusal—‘they acted presumptuously’—and against every refusal, the counter-refrain of mercy: a God ready to forgive. The prayer ends in the present tense: we are slaves in our own land, and in great distress.
“But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them.”Nehemiah 9:17
“When we transgressed His commandment…He did not forsake or neglect us…but He loved us, visited us, spared us, had mercy upon us”Anaphora of St. John Chrysostom · Ethiopian Divine Liturgy, Anaphora of St. John Chrysostom §15–16 (trans. Daoud)
“Repentance is the daughter of hope and the renunciation of despair.”St. John Climacus · The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 5 (trans. Lazarus Moore)
“I will now call to mind my past foulness, and the carnal corruptions of my soul; not because I love them, but that I may love Thee.”St. Augustine · Confessions II.1 (trans. Pusey)
“We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right.”Richard Rohr · Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, Introduction (p. xxii)
“Israel was intended to be a looking-glass in which every one of us might look and see his own image.”Charles Spurgeon · “A God Ready to Pardon,” sermon #1272 on Neh. 9:17 (1876)
“We all too often view the believing community as a fellowship of saints before we see it as a fellowship of sinners.”Richard J. Foster · Celebration of Discipline, ch. 10, “The Discipline of Confession”