There is a song based on Psalm 23, verse 6: "Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever." We sang this at church when I was six.
Back then, the song lyrics were delightfully weird. I pictured an older woman, Shirley Goodness and her stay-at-home adult daughter named Mercy. And they were following us. Until we died. A little creepy, perhaps. But even now, as I glance in my life's rear view mirror, I still see those gals are on my tail.
It is easier, perhaps, when one has privilege, both white and male, on top of education and spiritual formation provided by those who came before me. It is easier in such life conditions to perceive that I am followed by goodness, and not by a rogue cop about to beat me up over a broken tail light. It is easy, in the comfort of white middle class status, to tithe away ten percent of my income and more than get away with it. Easy peasy, bordering on dangerous - since the spoils of privilege can be easily baptized in our minds as blessing.
But white middle-classness is disappearing. Most Americans are either browner than I am or locked out of middle-class life by an imbalanced economy, increasingly rigged for the benefit of a few at the top. I don't know what most people see coming at them in their rear view mirrors these days, but I suspect it might different than what I see.
And yet, Psalm 23 was written many centuries before any of the dynamics of modern life had come to be. It was originally proclaimed by people with more skin pigment than I have. Verse 6 of the psalm is the back end of a profound faith affirmation that starts with God leading and guiding us as shepherd. It concludes with God's goodness and mercy bringing up the rear.
In light of the current events and the profound reckoning that is going on - I see Shirley and Mercy differently now. They are not the blessing brigade, following me to dole out even more benefit to an already quite privileged guy. Rather, they are more like the clean up crew. Because even on our very best days, to be American means that we warmed the climate in the wrong direction. Even on a good day, we perhaps wore a cheap shirt that profited the owner of a Pakistani sweat shop at the expense of good people. And complicating matters even more, we may have worn that t-shirt to march for justice.
Life at times is terribly complicated.
The mother-daughter duo, Shirley and Mercy, are the opposite of prevenient grace. They are what we might call not-quite-yet grace: that which comes behind our current sorrows and our current failings. They are God's clean up crew, bending the moral arc of the universe toward goodness and justice. When we fall dead on our journey, short of the promised land, they keep moving forward, coming from behind on the very roads that we traveled, overtaking the places where we fell.
Mercy, that hanger-on-daughter who just won't let go of Mom - what does Mercy have to do with Justice? I think of Mercy as Justice refined by the depth of God's love. She is beyond evening the score: she is redemptive. When I think about our moment in history, both beautiful and pathetic, being followed by Mercy - I imagine a generation coming where sweat shops no longer enslave, and where black teens are not shot for going on a morning run. I imagine a world where gay kids are fully loved at church, temple and mosque. Is it possible to imagine a world coming where the even the climate damage that we are doing is mitigated and healed?
This all challenges human imagination - Because we are doing an awful lot of damage these days. But God is bigger than than all of this, and certainly bigger than our damages. God's goodness and mercy is infinite!
Who (or what) do you see in the rear-view mirror? I think the 2020s could turn out to be a very tough decade, but I do see Shirley and Mercy on our tails, dodging IEDs in their beat-up Prius! The 23rd Psalm challenges me to believe that they are indeed on this road with us.
Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation (January 1, 1863) did not catch up with every soul alive that it was intended for. Some died before it overtook them. But on June 19, 1865 (two and a half years later), the news of emancipation arrived in Texas, spreading across the land like wildfire. Shirley and Mercy overtook them. Every now and then, those two, they catch us, even if briefly.
Can you see them in your rear-view mirror? I pray that they can catch us in the days ahead, even if briefly. We need them terribly.
Happy Juneteenth!
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