Wrath Check

Saturday of the Second Week of Lent

Micah 7:14-15, 18-20

Psalm 103

Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

It is probably a good idea NOT to miss Luke 15 during any Lent.  And in year B it doesn’t get any better that this pairing of texts.

Micah is no Pollyanna!  Today’s pericope comes after a long litany of just how bad things are…think Gotham City at the end of Batman’s extended sabbatical!  Nonetheless:  focus=mercy.

Then Psalm 103 acts as a yellow highlighter:

He will not always chide,
nor does he keep his wrath forever.
Not according to our sins does he deal with us,
nor does he requite us according to our crimes.
and the repeated refrain:  The Lord is kind and merciful.

Luke 15, The Prodigal Son

The first two lines remind us who Jesus is talking to. A/K/A me!  The audience is meant to see themselves as the older brother.  In so doing the story is not all neat and tidy.  Wrapping up the story is the listener’s job. 

What will I do?

Will I stay in anger and resentment?

Will I defend to the death my commitment to duty and law over compassion and mercy?

Will I let wrath be my lover?

Will I lead with criticism and judgment…the world’s comfortable ethos?

Of the seven deadly sins…wrath doesn’t get enough attention.  I am talking about my wrath…or maybe more accurately my participation in the corporate wrath that divides us into a bunch of me’s without an us.  (as Ken Burns puts it:  e pluribus unum, too much pluribus, not enough unum) It is wrath that so easily spins out of control as the culture overfeeds it.

It simply isn’t proscriptive in the biblical worldview…And when it is descriptive it is our human description of the unknowable God. 

So, even though I WILL fall short, when it comes to imitation I best work toward the merciful.  Too bad the wrathful comes so easily.