Richard Rohr Meditation: Swimming in Mercy
[W]hen we think of mercy, we should be thinking first and foremost of a bond, an infallible link of love that holds the created and uncreated realms together. The mercy of God does not come and go, granted to some and refused to others. Why? Because it is unconditional—always there, underlying everything. It is literally the force that holds everything in existence, the gravitational field in which “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Just like that little fish swimming desperately in search of water, we, too “swim in mercy as in an endless sea.” [1] Mercy is God’s innermost being turned outward to sustain the visible and created world in unbreakable love.
.. From our traditional theological models, we are used to thinking in terms of God “up there” and ourselves “down here”—God wholly unknown to us and of a fundamentally different substance, of which we are but a very distant reflection.
.. Just as we now know that matter is actually “condensed” energy (i.e., energy in a more dense and slow-moving form), would it be too great a leap to say that energy as we experience it—as movement, force, light—is a “condensation” of divine will and purpose? In other words, energy is what happens when divine Being expresses itself outwardly.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. (John 1:1-3)If we understood Word to mean at root vibration—the out-speaking of the divine will and purpose—then the Word is that which makes manifest the fullness of divine purpose as it moves outward into form.
Covenant Love
YHWH, YHWH, a God of tenderness and compassion, slow to anger, rich in kindness, and abounding in faithfulness. For the thousandth generation, YHWH maintains his kindness, forgiving all our faults, transgressions, and sins. —Exodus 34:6-7
.. “I am not doing this for your sake, house of Israel, but for the sake of my holy name” (Ezekiel 36:22). God is God’s own reference point. God is just being true to Godself in loving. God’s faithfulness has never been dependent on our worthiness or readiness. This is restorative justice, the divine form of justice.
.. The word translated as “steadfast love” is often rendered “covenant love” or “faithful love.” Today we often call it unconditional love. It’s “one-sided love,” if you will, because Israel never keeps its side of the covenant, just as we never keep our side of the relationship to this day. YHWH has learned to do it all from God’s side since we are basically unreliable as lovers. That is the constant message of much of the Hebrew Scriptures from Moses to Job. Yet, as Paul says, “Is it possible that YHWH has rejected God’s people? Of course not!” (Romans 11:1). Divine Love is not determined by the worthiness of the object but by the Total Generosity of the Subject.