Mercy is not magic. . .

The reality is that we are far too comfortable with the familiar rhythms of a Good Friday death and an Easter resurrection.  They no longer shock us or even cause us to be somber.  We make our familiar journey every year from ashes to the cross and then quickly, too quickly, jump past the cross to Easter bunnies and eggs and ham dinners and such.  It is not because we do not value the mercy of God.  We do.  We count on it.  We expect it.  We presume we are entitled to it.  Sin is less a problem than it is an inconvenience, an unpleasantness.

How easy it is to think of mercy as wishing sin away.  Despite all the horrors of suffering and the agony of death, we rush into the arms of mercy as if it were just that -- magic.  But God did not wish away our sin.  He did not turn the other check.  He did not overlook it.  He did not shrug His shoulders and walk away.  He faced what we would not.  He looked into the shadows and saw what our eyes refuse to see.  He carried the weight upon His own shoulders that was ours to bear but we could not bear it.  He went into the cold darkness of the grave not as victim but as victor.  Mercy cost Him everything and yet He paid it willingly, knowing full well the price He must pay to show mercy.  That is the lesson of Easter.  Mercy is not free except to those who receive it.  It cost Him His very life.

Mercy is proof that sin not only exists but it is everything that God warns us of.  We need mercy only because sin is real, its threat real, and judgment real.  It is a fool's conclusion that mercy means these things no longer exist.  No, indeed.  Mercy proves sin, proves death, proves judgment, and proves hell. When the Church cries out for mercy, she does not call out because she thinks little of sin.  It is because the Holy Spirit has opened her eyes to know what sin is that she can also behold the costliest gift of all -- the privilege of mercy.  The Church pleads for mercy with the cross for there is no mercy without it.

How foolish it is to think of mercy as magic, to rush hurriedly past the cross to Easter and then to forget it all and go back to the old life.  That is a sure sign that repentance has not made its home in the heart and the mind is still ruled with desire.  When we would imagine mercy as no more than a wish, we would remain in the throes of sin and in the grasp of desire.  Piety is not a loose clothing to be worn on the outside but the mirror of the soul.  Our walk in faith called the Church Year is not some external rite imposed upon us but the yearning of the faithful heart desiring again to hear of the promise through the ages, of the visit of the angel to the Virgin, of the baptismal water marked by the Spirit's entrance and a voice from heaven, of the prediction of the cross, of the body limp upon it, of the scattered disciples, of a garden and an empty tomb, of visits behind locked doors, of the promise of the Spirit, and of the tongues of fire.  Mercy beckons only to the guilty and those who know their shame.  The miracle and magic is that it does not leave the soul to it guilt and shame but gives life and hope where there was only death and despair.

We preach Christ and Him crucified.  Mercy knows nothing but Christ and Him crucified.  Blessed are those whose guilt is removed and whose sin is forgiven.  Mercy makes blessed even the sinner deserving only rejection and wrath.  That is why we rejoice.  We are not happy because sin does not matter but because it mattered so much that God gave Himself into our plight.  The fruit of the cross, announced in glory on Easter, and lived out in the life of the Spirit-filled Church is mercy.  Lord, have mercy upon me, a sinner.