Messenger and Message: The Promise of Mercy

Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors…  -  Luke 1: 72 (NRSV)

I am assuming, following the traditional seasonal format, that these Advent commentaries will be read one day at a time. So I am writing them one day at a time and finding that I am not necessarily quite the same person who worked on yesterday’s message. Perhaps yesterday’s mindset came from the dreary news of the day. Perhaps it was the daunting challenge to produce six more commentaries in a short time (procrastination, of course). And perhaps, just perhaps, it included the fear element in the Malachi passage. Yesterday I was pretty glum, and scared, and desperate for hope.

But that was yesterday, and today is today. And this morning I have moved to the long passage out of the mouth of  Zechariah, words of blessing for his baby son John, part of  the hope and promise beginning Luke ’s gospel. Which is not to disparage or discount the Malachi words. One thing I love about the Bible is the mixed-ness within its pages. All of the human condition is expressed and I need to read and think about it all. Yesterday I found believable, if disconcerting, reality in the Malachi scripture—and thankfully, I ultimately found hope as well.

Today I am hugely aware of my gratitude for the gift of that hope. Father Zechariah’s heartfelt and eloquent evocation of prophecy is a hymn of thanksgiving for his son offered to the God who is to be trusted—to bring hope and mercy, in the past and in the present. The day on which I write this commentary is my mother’s birthday. As I sit at the computer I am remembering my mother who raised me with hope and whom I achingly miss after eighteen years. And I remember, too, all the others who preceded me for whom God’s mercy was ever-sought and to whom it was granted. A promise carried generation to generation through the words of scripture. Mercy—we are promised mercy. God sends the messenger to bring mercy.

Mercy for the world. For the Mideast, the ancient place of the messenger’s story where the present is filled with agony. For Iraq and Iran and Afghanistan where we carry so much responsibility—and guilt. Mercy for suffering children everywhere whose futures seem to be doomed because of what we have or haven’t done and been for them. Mercy for the poor and exploited everywhere. Mercy for us, who are not poor and who, directly and indirectly, are the exploiters.

If I am less anguished today than yesterday,  it is, perhaps, partly because I am in a “remembering” mood and feeling overwhelming gratitude for the hope instilled in me by my mother. But today  I am also deeply thankful for the promise of mercy known in scripture and passed on to us by others, over and over. I hope because of the promise.