ADVENT WEEK FOUR
December 22, 2020
America’s Wanting Love: Mercy as Covenant
Luke 1:46b – 55
What we need today in the onward march of humanity is a public sentiment in favor of common justice and simple mercy … [T]wo things are wanting in American civilization—a keener and deeper, broader and tenderer sense of justice [and] a sense of humanity… — Frances E. W. Harper, 1875
Today’s devotional text presents Mary as theologian and lyricist. Drawing from Jewish scripture she asserts that, “G*d’s mercy (exists) in generation after generation on behalf of those who respectfully revere him.” The divine mercy depicted in Mary’s song, however, reverses neither her moral nor religious state but alienation caused by societal strictures that denied her full humanity: poverty, Jewishness, femaleness, premarital pregnancy.
Mercy, traditionally, offers lenient judgment to admittedly guilty and blameworthy petitioners. Such mercy judges Mary’s class, ethnicity/race, religion, gender, and circumstance as undesirable, of her own making, and requiring transcendence. Judicial mercy demands full submission to institutions in hopes that those controlling said institutions use their privilege to protect petitioners from the very same systems. This toxic mercy buttresses unjust systems and beats the downtrodden into a posture where relief requires submission and pardons become propaganda.
Mary’s song, with its psalter allusions, invokes an alternative covenant-oriented mercy as love or hesed (steadfast love, loyalty). Here, mercy symbolizes that unbreakable, steadfast love and loyalty that is the essence of G*d’s covenantal devotion toward humanity. Despite society’s judgment, Mary’s soul rejoices because G*d’s hesed recognizes her value and worth.
Some 145 years ago, Frances Harper poignantly described America at social, moral, and religious crossroads. Her calls for common justice and simple mercy tragically fell before a hard-hearted nation. In this 2020, marred by COVID-19 and routine evidence of police brutality against unarmed Black folk, Mary’s song and Harper’s call exhort Christian America to commemorate and model Christ’s advent as more than judicial relief but as covenantal love and simple mercy.
Dr. Arthur F. Carter, Jr.
Assistant Professor of New Testament
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