God's Wide Mercy

"The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made." Psalm 145:8-9

Over the past few years, my appreciation for the Old Testament has grown exponentially. Probably my favorite theme of the Hebrew Scriptures is the change in the conception of the reach of God's blessing and mercy on the part of the Hebrew people. For much of the Old Testament, the Hebrew people see themselves as specially blessed because they are chosen by God. The descendants of Abraham quickly forget that they were chosen to be a blessing for the world, not to simply be blessed.  Not to trivialize the covenant, but the Hebrew people were chosen by God for a specific task, kinda like when I was growing up and I was "chosen" to clean up the kitchen or take out the trash.

There's a slow development in the Old Testament (if you are going by when these books were likely written) that moves from a limited understanding of God's mercy ("God is merciful to Israel") to a broad understanding ("The Lord is good to all…").  You see this reflected in many of the prophets, especially Isaiah and Jonah.  Of course, this is tied up the Jewish response to exile and a growing understanding of the larger world, moving from regional skirmishes to being in the middle of clashes between Empires. 

As a Christian, I understand Jesus as the way God has blessed all of creation - freely offering love and grace and mercy.  Jesus is the culmination and embodiment of God's steadfast love and compassion.  And what makes the crucifixion so tragic is that it shows how humanity responds to the grace, mercy, and love of God, especially when that grace, mercy, and love is offered to all people.  It can be a subversive, counter-cultural, and even dangerous thing to offer compassion and love to all people.  It can be a risky thing to offer love without regard for difference - and it breaks my heart that many of the people who resist abundant love and no-strings-attached compassion are the same people who claim to be disciples of the One who teaches us what unbounded love looks like.

For what it's worth, I'm sticking with Jesus…