Just Mercy
Psalm 119:49-72 • Psalm 49, [53]
Eccles. 3:1-15 • Gal. 2:11-21 • Matt. 14:1-12
This morning’s Psalm invites us to meditate on God’s law. As I read, I found my mind wandering to thoughts of the laws of our land that order our civic life together. As a white man of some affluence, I sometimes take for granted the security and sense of safety I receive from a life ordered by laws that are enforced by officers of the law and regulated by a larger justice system. I have come to gradually discover over time, though, that a large segment of our society does not share this sentiment.
God’s law, on the other hand, seeks to order the lives of believers in such a way that we are in right relationship with God and right relationship with one another. As our faith tradition reminds us, life is rightly ordered only when it is grounded in and oriented by love of God and love of neighbor. God’s law becomes simply law when it loses relationship to love, for “God is love” (I John 4:8).
I think the same is true to a certain degree for our civic life together and the laws that order it. My faith tells me that this life too is rightly ordered only when the laws of our land and the justice system that enforces them are grounded in a kind of love that includes a sizable measure of mercy. When this is not the case our legal system can become cruel and excessively punitive, with little or no concern for the welfare and rehabilitation of those imprisoned. Unfortunately this is frequently the case for people of color and the poor.
I recently finished reading the powerful and disturbing book, Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson. Bryan, a black legal defense attorney, recounts his work with mostly black death row inmates in Alabama. Many of his clients were wrongly convicted and were victims of an entire legal system that had largely lost any connection to love or justice for its black and poor citizens. As I re-read our Psalm for this morning through the eyes of Bryan’s death row clients, I noticed something different in how I experienced the Psalm. I felt something of their desperate hope that the laws of our land and their enforcement might come to more perfectly reflect God’s law grounded in God’s love and mercy.
A Prayer for Prisons and Correctional Institutions (BCP)
Lord Jesus, for our sake you were condemned as a criminal: Visit our jails and prisons with your pity and judgment. Remember all prisoners, and bring the guilty to repentance and amendment of life according to your will, and give them hope for their future. When any are held unjustly, bring them release; forgive us, and teach us to improve our justice. Remember those who work in these institutions; keep them humane and compassionate; and save them from becoming brutal or callous. And since what we do for those in prison, O Lord, we do for you, constrain us to improve their lot. All this we ask for your mercy’s sake. Amen.
Written by Trent Palmer
Trent is a member of the Vestry, worships online at the 8:45 service (as do we all), helps out as needed with Morning and Evening Prayer, co-mentors the EfM class, helps with Community Meals on Mondays, and is doing long neglected chores around his house.