Daniel
12.1-3
Psalm
16
Hebrews
10.11-14, (15-18), 19-25
Mark
13.1-8
It may be difficult to admit, but we tend to
find comfort in passages like the one in the Book of Daniel: “Many of those who
sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some
to shame and everlasting contempt.” (Daniel 12.2). We find comfort in them because, at best,
they appeal to what we like to term our sense of justice. At worst, because they speak to our
desire for vengeance; and more than that: to our desire to have our ways and
purposes – even ourselves – cosmically justified over and against others and
the ways and purposes of others. They
appeal to our sense of being right and righteous. But perhaps most basically, when it comes
right down it, we like them because they appeal to our sense of fairness. Fairness demands that there be rewards for
behaving well, playing according to the rules, and punishments for doing the
opposite: everlasting life and everlasting contempt.
In this we are in company with the great
philosophical tradition of the ancient Greeks.
Plato defined justice as the harmonious function of diverse elements of
society. Aristotle believed that justice
existed in two forms: retributive and
distributive. The first held that anyone who caused injury
to another should suffer exactly the same injury in return. This is the Hebrew Scriptures’ “eye for an
eye”, which the Book of Deuteronomy puts most graphically: “Show
no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for
foot.” (Deuteronomy 19.21) The second of
Aristotle’s forms of justice – distributive justice – is concerned with the equitability or
fairness in interpersonal relations.
Indeed, most modern understandings of justice are based on this, and the
contemporary American political philosopher, John Rawls, said it quite
succinctly when he defined justice simply as “fairness.”
But for Christians there is something more
than merely justice, retributive, distributive or otherwise. There is mercy. And this is something, we are still trying to
come to grips with. It certainly was a
very difficult concept for the ancient world to come to grips with as it first
encountered Christianity. It was one of
the aspects of the Christian faith which set Christians apart so distinctively. Because by its very definition mercy involves
providing unearned help or relief, it
was contrary to justice. Remember,
justice is about fairness; it is about what is owed to you and what you
owe. The pagan philosophers understood
mercy as unreasonable, and an impulse which must be curbed. Regarding mercy or pity in the ancient world,
one historian of the early Church, E. A. Judge, wrote: “Pity was a defect of
character unworthy of the wise and excusable only in those who have not yet
grown up. It was an impulsive response
based on ignorance.” It is
characteristic of this that in the Republic,
Plato’s treatise on the ideal state, the great philosopher says that the
problem of begging be dealt with not through philanthropy, but rather simply by
dumping beggars over the state’s borders.
Sound familiar?
In this climate, what did the early
Christians preach? They preached that
mercy, far from being a weakness, was one of the primary virtues, that it was a chief attribute of God, and that a
merciful God requires mercy of human beings: “love your enemies, [and] do good….for
[your Father] is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is
merciful.” (Luke 6.35-36) Moreover, they
preached that mercy in all cases must extend beyond the boundaries of family
and tribe, that it must extend to “all those who in every place call on the
name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Corinthians 1.2) Indeed, mercy must even extend beyond the Christian community. “Do not
judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” (Luke
6.37)
Yet still, apocalyptic literature and an
apocalyptice outlook was and is
popular. Passages like that from the
book of Daniel and, in the New Testament, the Book of Revelation, speak to a
base, and perhaps even basic, human need – the need for vengeance and
justification. This kind of apocalytic
literature and outlook announces that God has given us alone a special and secret revelation about a cataclysmic divine
intervention to bring about the end-time and thereby restore peace and justice
to a disordered world. The evil
oppresors, the evil-doers, will be punished and banished forever. The holy oppressed, the righteous, will be
rewarded and be in charge under God. No
doubt, it is a comforting scenario, but in it there is little evidence of the
divine attribute of mercy, that unearned
compassion of a compassionate God. In
fact, such scenarios say more about human beings and our fantasies of vegeance
than they do about God, the Holy One, the Compassionate One, the Merciful
One.
Is there then to be no judgement? Is there then no justice? Certainly not, but it does seem that we human
beings are inclined to go very quickly first to judgement and justification,
rather than to mercy or compassion. And
maybe, just maybe, we are called to compassion and mercy first, and judgement –
if at all – only secondly. We must begin
to ask ourselves realistically how much of what passes as “God’s plan for the
future” or “God’s justice” are actually literary and dramatized projections of
our unwillingness to practice mercy; and more frighteningly, of our desire for
vengeance. In a cosmic economy why is it
not enough for us to live well and do right,
without projecting onto God our need to see the punishment and
destruction of our enemies, of those we have classified as wicked or
unworthy? I doubt not that there is to
be a judgement, but it is not for us to decide what it will look like, far less
to decide its outcome. The judgement is
not our business, it is God’s.
Our business is the imperative to imitate God
in God’s mercy and compassion. Our
business is to rise above our petty and base instincts towards judgement and
vengeance. It is to think of mercy first
and to approach the world in an attitude of forgiveness and compassion. One of the great attractions of Christianity
in the ancient world was precisely this life of lavish and indiscriminate mercy
which the early Christians practiced.
For example, while pagans abandoned the cities and the sick in times of
plague, Christians often remained to care for not only each other, but also for
their non-Christian fellows, those who also were children of God, made in the
image of God. This witness to the
merciful God brought many to faith.
The games of judgement, and perhaps even
justice, can become very quickly a never-ending, self-justifying spiral – “I
deserve this.” “She did that to
me.” “He only wants his due.” “I’m
going to give him what is coming to him.” – a spiral which becomes a dark and
vengeful game of tit-for-tat. A game
that – if we are honest – we aren’t very well equipped to play, our vision
being too narrow and short-sighted; and yet, a game that we want to project
even into the hereafter. Only mercy can
deliver us from that spiral, deliver us both as supposed victors and as
victims. Perhaps, it is time for us to
leave the comfort of the apocalyptic vision, and enter into a less comfortable
but certainly more whole-making vision of the merciful God which Jesus preached. Perhaps, it is time to look beyond a simplistic
sense of fairness and heed more closely Jesus’ absolute call to imitate that
merciful God. What would it mean to us
and to the world if once again we Christians were known among all people for
our inordinate compassion, our extraordinary and even unreasonable mercy? What would it mean if today in our time
people really could tell we were Christians simply by our love? What would it mean indeed?
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