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“Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”  

March 4, 2022

Isaiah 58:1–9a | Matthew 9:10–17 | Psalm 51:1–10

Where can I go this Lent to learn a lot more about mercy than sacrifice? Where can I find, eat with and love at least one of those “taxpayers and sinners” whom Christ came to heal and to save? Probably not far.

Thinking on paper at my kitchen table yesterday, I realized how I might live last night the speaks-to-me scriptural sentence set in bold type above. I realized that for life — “l’chaim!” – to happen anywhere (but especially where I’ve often lived for 60+ years, on an amateur theater’s stage), I need to get so far over myself. I need to get over my self-pity and pride, but especially the delusion that I’m putting up with everyone else’s short-sightedness.

So, after six weeks of often-rocky rehearsals for a “bucket list performance,” i.e., my playing the Nurse in a scene from Romeo and Juliet, I experienced last night the joy that comes from relying not upon my own sacrifice but instead upon my teacher’s, my classmates’ and especially my scene partners’ sheer mutual mercy. 

How and why?  I’d recognized and forgiven myself.

Marie Hennedy