26th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A
Ezekiel 18:25–28
Psalm 25:4–5, 6–7, 8–9
Philippians 2:1–11
Matthew 21:28–32
Mercy is love offered again after it has been rejected. God gives us room to respond even after we refuse His love. There is time. There is room. There is a capacity for repentance. In our relations with one another, we must learn to allow for this space for active, enlivening, loving mercy.
Instead, we measure. We can be envious of the mercy others receive. We see those who have hurt us repenting and being forgiven. We hold onto our woundedness: “The Lord’s way is not fair!”
Often, we want God to show His justice to our enemies and His mercy to ourselves. Instead, God shows mercy to the ones who have harmed us at times. Life changes for the better for them. We do not rejoice in their good fortune or their change of heart. We cling to our pain.
St. John of the Cross is famous for a line that is painful to hear: “Pain is in proportion to the need for purification.” When we allow our pain to put others into a box labeled “destined for punishment,” we may find that we are sorely disappointed. “The Lord’s way is not fair!”
The biblical journey of understanding God and His ways is a path to mercy. The Hebrew Scriptures are often caricatured as having a God of justice and vengeance. But this is not the real story.
As the psalmist invites us to relate to God, we are reminded of the abundance of mercy. “Remember your mercies, O Lord.” This is a cry of the heart, asking God for mercy toward us, but at the same time reminding us to allow such mercy to reshape our own way of thinking.
Jesus gives the example of two sons who are told to do the will of their father. The response of the second is not a full response. It is a matter of words alone. He says he will do the father’s will, but he fails to do so. The first son reacts badly in the first instance, refusing in words to do what the father asked. But then, he thinks again. He chooses to repent and to act upon the will of the father.
This parable makes clear that God knows us. He understands our inability to make a full response to the invitation that He offers to be instruments of His love and mercy. Our self-centeredness is a part of the human reality we experience every day. And yet, God also calls us to recognize that He has mercy on our situation and gives us a new opportunity.
The first movement may be from our fallen human nature and our habitual way of reacting to things contrary to our own will. But there is always open to us a second movement, supported by grace, to make a new choice.
We can acknowledge our false reaction and make a true response. If one falls into a mud puddle, there is no real disgrace, as long as we choose not to lie there and do our best to get out of it. God’s mercy is available to us.
St. Paul appeals to the Philippians to live up to the example of Jesus Christ as expressed in an early Christian hymn:
“(H)umbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his own interests, but also for those of others. Have in you the same attitude that is also in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.
“Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
The hymn continues beyond the unfairness and cruelty of the sort of death Jesus suffered:
“Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name.” When we create room in ourselves, as Christ did, glory is the result. God’s mercy, flowing through our hearts and lives, leads us to proclaim: “Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”