The Fruit of Justice and Mercy

I’m going to touch on a sensitive subject in this post… wine. For some, it is a delightful addition to a meal, adding flavor and even a sense of occasion. For others, it is a dangerous substance that creates an unyielding demand capable of controlling their lives. And yet Scripture recognizes wine as part of ordinary life. In fact, in biblical times it was one of the ways people avoided illness from unsafe water. Wine then was weaker, diluted, and woven into daily life — a gentle joy rather than a chemical trap.

This becomes an issue for some when they face the Covenantal blessing in which Jesus uses wine to share his blood. Welch’s Grape Juice was created, in part, to allow everyone to participate in Communion without fear or jeopardy.

But there is a wine that comes from God that provides us with joy, and it is a necessary part of our Advent feast and celebration. It is the blended mixture of Justice and Mercy.

The “wine” God pours is a blended righteousness that steadies rather than overwhelms, gladdens rather than intoxicates. This image resonates with the story of Jesus providing gallons of the best wine at the wedding feast in Cana (John 2). It is a symbol of God’s joy being poured into human rejoicing — God participating with us in celebrating life.

More deeply than that, however, are the elements blended together: justice and mercy — the core ingredients of righteousness. Righteousness carries the experience of rightness, of fairness, that reaches into the life of everyone. Not long ago I wrote about how God understands that we’re doing our best. Righteousness — this blend of justice and mercy — unwraps that truth. It is what God recreates within our souls through the work of the Spirit. He gives us a taste of it in our receiving his mercy as we recognize that Jesus died to heal us rather than allow the illness of sin to destroy us. This is what Jesus provides us and that we celebrate in the arriving of Advent.

The justice of God recognizes our inability to help ourselves — our lack of power and wisdom. The mercy of God pours into us the joy that invigorates us with strength and insight we did not know before. Together, this blend loosens the grip that selfishness and fear hold on us and enables us to care for others as we care for ourselves.

Paul tells us that if we have the gift of mercy, we should share it “hilariously” (Romans 12:8) — with the cheerful heart gladdened by the “wine” of God. This is how we carry it into our Advent feast: sharing the truth of God’s love, knowing that everyone around us needs it just as much as we do.