Define "Loving-kindness"

05Apr
Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, 
for his mercy endures for ever.
-Psalm 136:1

Psalm 136 calls for our response 26 times: "for his mercy endures forever." This calls for word study.


Word!


חֶסֶד


It is a uniquely Hebrew word, with no exact English equivalent. Variously translated as mercy, kindness, loving-kindness, goodness, kindly, and steadfast love, the word is in fact a world.


Chesed (also transliterated as hesed) and variously pronounced, most properly with the beginning consonant like the final one in Bach, who composed on this one word many masterpieces.


The Dalai Lama did not invent "loving-kindness" (metta, in Sanskrit), nor did the Scots with their coinage of “loyal love,” a close approximation of the ancient notion of a king’s fealty towards his people and theirs to their ruler. Rather, chesed is a covenentual, mandated or contracted love, very much like that between a man and a woman: “to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part.”


I do, Amen. So help me God.


Miles Coverdale, the psalmist of the 1549 Book of Common Prayer, coined the English compound “loving-kindness” used predominantly in - you guessed it - the Psalms.


Psalm 135 and Psalm 136 are featured prominently in the Passover Seder and here we have it again in Easter week. Why?


This Psalms recount God’s everloving mercies and acts from Creation to deliverance in the Holy Land. The Pesach (Passover) is not a mere anniversary, but a ritual and existential reenactment, very much like the Eucharist. For Christians, the same salvation and steadfast love that endures is celebrated in the gift of the Resurrection.


Robert Indiana's sculpture, "Ahava" ["Love" in Hebrew] is set in that very place and the image of the heavenly skies above and the earth below may help us understand that, as we are created in God’s image, so his chesed is ours to return to others.


Alleluia!

Musical reflection - Let us with a Gladsome Mind "Monkland" Wakefield Cathedral Choir

Ever loving and eternal God, help us to accept your love and spread it to others, as you have graced us with your loving kindness. Amen.

Psalms

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