Mercy Lays Claim to Us
Author: Andrew Comiskey
March 15, 2021
‘Beware of refusing to go
to the funeral of your own independence.’
-Oswald Chambers
How dependent am I on
Jesus? Fickle, at best. Yes, I nourish sweet notions of Him at dawn’s early
light and may even hear His still small voice. Yet post-prayer I may curse Him
in the pinch of domestic overload and am quick to refuse Him interpersonally in
prideful self-justification.
This flies in the face of
merciful Jesus who pleads to hold our gaze long after the devotional moment. He
has earned the right to do so. His outpouring at Calvary—Blood, Water,
Spirit—lays claim to the whole of our lives. Here we must take seriously and
personally Scriptural references to His ransom of us (Mk. 10:45; Heb. 9:15)
through His purchase of our lives (Rev. 5:9)—how He ‘buys’ us at the expense of
His life (1 Cor. 6:20). Jesus gave all to gain us. Mercy lays claim to us.
A part of me chafes at
this: ‘Yeah, well, spiritually His, maybe. But I’m still my own person. Isn’t
mercy about setting people free? How free am I if I’m “bought”’?
Maybe the question hinges
on how we define freedom. To be sure, freedom must involve choice. And Jesus
grants us that choice freely. I can surrender to His ransoming me from sin’s
domination or not. That’s where Lent comes in. Our time in the desert exposes
varying degrees of separation, inner strongholds that refuse to yield to Him.
In the light and heat, I check uneasily my restless spirit; I glimpse the vacillation
between composure and grasping my cell phone like a fig leaf.
The desert is clear. It
humbles us in its clarity. Spacious spaces expose our little attachments and woo
us to let go, to let Him in. Lent invites us to unclasp hands stuffed with vain
things and take His. A small sacrifice: we let go as to take up.
Divine Mercy sanctifies
our surrender. Jesus woos us out of the small enslavements that weary and
divide then deride us with dull accusations. He has won us over with ‘living
water’; we can only cringe at the acrid taste of our own cisterns. It helps me
to understand His loving insistence as the Bridegroom who woos me to make me
new, virginal, for Himself. Origen describes the ‘wound in Christ’s side’ as
the transformational stream through which we are ‘made His Bride.’
Hosea prophesied that
encounter with Divine Mercy: ‘On that day, you will call Me ‘my Husband’, no
longer ‘my master’…I will remove the idols from your lips…I will betroth you to
Me forever…’ (Hos. 2:16-20). I can still weary myself in petty resistance. Or I
can repent out of love for this sweet Spouse who knows that only my surrender
to Himself will yield Love’s benefits—composure, love, peace, joy.
‘Do you not know that your
body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from
God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore, honor God
with your body’ (1 Cor. 6: 19, 20).
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