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The nature of mercy

By Michael Jensen - posted Monday, 2 March 2015


One of the truest things Shakespeare ever wrote was put in the mouth of Portia, from The Merchant of Venice:

The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.

Two young Australians, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, have discovered that their final plea for mercy to the President of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, has been rejected.

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There is no doubt that they have committed a crime, and that it is a serious one. They are not arguing for their innocence. But they are pointing to an amended way of life – to Christian conversion, to a life of good works amongst the prisoners, to human potential and to rehabilitation.

But all to no avail. Widodo is not inclined to mercy. Mind you, we shouldn't be too morally outraged about this: a slight majority of Australians, in a poll ran by Triple JJJ, agreed that Chan and Sukumaran should die. We are not inclined to mercy either.

And maybe we should agree with them: they had no regard for, and indeed, sought to profit from, the devastation that drug addiction wreaks upon its victims. It was an appallingly callous and greedy act, and they brought a bunch of gormless youths along with them to help, and their lives have been ruined.

They deserve a severe punishment, perhaps even death.

The service of Morning Prayer in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, authored, edited and compiled in the main by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, opens with an appeal for mercy to another ruler. As with Chan and Sukumaran, it is a completely open-handed plea. It recognises immediately our guilt:

We have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep.
We have been faithless, lawbreakers, trespassers.

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But we also say:

And there is no health in us.

Now this is something different: for we are not asked to point to our reformed ways, or to our trying our best to be good. We bring nothing to this table – Archbishop Thomas Cranmer's words make that abundantly clear. The general confession has we human beings as not only guilty of sin, but as unable to change. It is not simply our actions that have marred us; it is that we are broken creatures, helpless and hopeless.

There's a searing honesty about this which not all find comfortable. I remember having discussions about this when I was among earnest young Christians at University: did confessing not only our sins but ourselves as sinners really express the confidence and joy of the Christian gospel? Wasn't this an awful thing to ask visitors to do when they came to church, perhaps for the first time? Wasn't this the problem that so many found with church, that it made them feel judged, not accepted?

In fact, I needed to look more closely at the way in which God himself is addressed in the Book of Common Prayer. He is not flattered like some potentate; there is nothing obsequious in the way he is addressed. Rather, Cranmer has us remember, even us we approach the heavenly throne, that is it is the throne of mercy. The God of the Bible is Almighty – his sovereignty is beyond our scope. It is reflected in the works he has made, the stars of heaven and the depths of the oceans, and the way nations rise and fall according to his plan. He is unstinting in his concern for holiness, purity and righteous – a God who does not compromise.

But he is also the God whose love for his creatures and concern for his name results in mercy. When God passes before Moses in the time of the Exodus, he as it were shouts his own name:

The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin…

These are the words that the prophet Jonah will recall as he sits in disgust watching Nineveh fail to be destroyed.

This is the God we are called to address in the Book of Common Prayer – the Almighty God, the Father of Jesus Christ

Who desireth not the death of a sinner but rather that he may turn from his wickedness and live

Unlike an Indonesian president, he has no constituency to please; he is not capable of being bullied by Prime Ministers, nor is he open to bribes. We have no other option but to come to him as we truly are.

But we are invited to do so not in fear and trembling, but knowing that he is a merciful God. The confidence of the confession, and the certainty of the absolution lies with the character of the one who is addressed. We approach the throne of heaven in the knowledge that it is a throne of grace.

And where comes that knowledge?

He pardoneth and absolveth all them that truly repent and believe his Holy Gospel.

These words echo Jesus' own message at the beginning of Mark's gospel; and they remind us, that God does not compromise or distort his righteous character, but that the divine mercy takes Jesus Christ to the cross, where he made (as the old book says)

...by his one oblation of himself once offered a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world.

Ministers of the gospel can then, with full authority, declare pardon and absolution, not because these words enact pardon and absolution, but because pardon and absolution have been made by God himself, on the cross of Jesus Christ.

And there is no better way to begin the gathering of people seeking God than to be reminded of how it is that we come to gather, and what sort of people we happen to be. We are not worthy, in Cranmer's anthropology, so much as to gather up the crumbs from under God's table.

This is not an abject self-loathing, designed to fill us with guilt, and send us running to the nearest life coach.

This is finally someone being honest with us. There is a searing realism in the Book of Common Prayer that simply clears away every human pretention. And yet it does so without crushing us, because the God who we approach, who is far holier than the Indonesian president, and more righteous than the Australian public, and is a far more reliable judge than both of these, is also the one whose character is to have mercy.

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About the Author

Michael Jensen is the rector of St Mark's Anglican Church at Darling Point. He has a doctorate in Moral Theology from Oxford University.

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