There's a wideness in God's mercy

Sunday 19^th July – Trinity 6 – Proper 11

Wisdom 12: 13, 16-19. One of our options for today was the opportunity to hear a reading from the Apocrypha. The thrust of this treatise on “Wisdom” is that God is merciful to all that he created and He does not need to justify himself to anyone. His mercy though should not be mistaken for weakness, but it comes from his strength. The main message is that as followers of this God we too must use whatever power or strength we possess to act in the same way. “The righteous must be Kind” (Verse 19)

Romans 8: 12-25. The magnificent extent of this part of chapter 8, challenges any theology that limits God’s redemption to just human beings. We need to be more extensive and more embracing in our view of God’s all-encompassing sovereignty over all creation. Our identity within this great scheme of things is as “children of God” and so we have the right to speak to God in familial terms. Being “joint heirs with Christ” makes Jesus our brother and in him we are all brothers and sisters.

Matthew 13: 24-30, 36-43. The sovereignty of God to decide the extent of human salvation is given a twist in this parable (which only appears in Matthew). The takeaway message for us is that you cannot judge the destiny of anyone because we just cannot tell. Wheat and tares (Darnel) are indistinguishable from each other in the early stages of growth. God is sovereign, merciful, and just. God decides, not us.

We sing a hymn called “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy” that accurately describes the relative readiness to judge harshly on the part of human beings generally and God’s readiness to show Mercy. One of the verses goes

But we make his love too narrow by false limits of our own

And we magnify his strictness with a zeal he will not own

One of those limits of our own that we apply is that we generally suppose that redemption is limited to just human beings but any such position has to deal with this monumental piece of writing by St. Paul in chapter 8 of Romans. When we read verses like John 3: 16 that tells us that God so loved the world – we hear God so loved humanity (and he does) but the world is much greater than ourselves.

Paul is much plainer when he says “The whole creation has been groaning in labour pains” waiting for redemption just like us.

God’s mercy extends to all things and the mere fact that “matter” matters should inform a Christian environmental ethic. We are stewards of God’s creation.

That God indwells everything is part of the sacramental understanding of Christianity – that God can be present in bread, wine, oil, water, a flower, a grain of wheat, the stars, and in our hearts.

The sourceless source of all things is God the Father, and He loves all that he has made including you and I.

He wills our salvation, was willing to go to the cross for it, and took the sins of the whole world on his shoulders.

A friend of mine at college used to do a caricature vindictive priest who used to say,

“God bless you all” “But not you or you and especially not you!” (pointing at certain people. Let’s not make God in our own judgemental image

This human tendency to judge and judge harshly goes against the very concept of Grace which is free and unmerited. To put limits on Grace means it is no longer Grace.

God wills the salvation of all things and people, but we like to limit his salvation to just certain people in certain places who believe certain things. We use our own criteria.

That is the underlying message of the wheat and the tares in the gospel parable by Jesus.

Our inclination is to try and pull up the weeds amongst the wheat ourselves but Jesus says no. Leave it until the harvest. God decides and if there is any sorting out to do I’ll do it – thank you very much.

We all do it of course. I am as guilty as the next person. I have to continually remind myself that I am not God. That is a hard job I think you’ll agree!

Don’t judge anyone unworthy of salvation because God saw fit to die for that person. Grace is a hard message to preach, because radical Grace is, well just so amazing.

It undermines human wisdom. In the wisdom of Solomon reading we started with we ostensibly have God trying to defend how merciful he is and says in effect. Because I am so merciful don’t make the mistake of believing that I am weak. My mercy comes from my strength.

And that is how followers of God in Christ are also to act if they want to follow the way of Jesus. Those who have any strength or power in their hands are commanded to show mercy whenever they can. That is not a sign of weakness, as the world’s wisdom would have us believe but a sign of real strength.

In showing mercy ourselves, even and perhaps especially to those we judge don’t deserve it are real imitators of Christ.

At the level of simple personal interaction with each other as it says in the book of Wisdom – The righteous must be kind.