Every week it seems like there’s another new disaster. The 10 plagues that Moses visited on Egypt to convince Pharoah to free the Israelites almost pale in comparison. Talk about plagues? We hoped that 2021 would see the end of Covic19 but noooooo. And as if that weren’t enough, an earthquake killed over 2,000 in Haiti, a super-typhoon flattened the Philippines, and floods devastated countries from China to Germany. In the US, Hurricane Ida in the east capped the record-breaking fires in California. We were all so overwhelmed by the magnitude of those crises that many of us probably didn’t even remember the extreme cold in Texas or the severe heat in the Pacific Northwest. We’ve pretty much all been collectively shaking ourselves off and getting down to the business of rebuilding, with the usual arguments of how much and who pays and whose fault was it all anyway. What’s next? After the blizzards, that is? No famine this year, I hope, at least no more than the usual malnutrition, and the wars, at least so far, are all pretty small. Even the one in Syria.
Was there really a time when we all thought that a trouble-free life was a natural right? Was there really a time when we all thought that disaster was something that happened to other people? Was there really a time when we could comfortably coast from day to day and never face up to the fact that life is a precarious condition, one which we do not dare take for granted?
Back in the Middle Ages - and indeed, through many times in the history of Western civilization - people deliberately kept the reality of death and failure and loss squarely in front of them. They often did this with images like skeletons, or the grim reaper, or tombstones. They were called “memento mori,” or reminders of death. In ancient Rome, the phrase is said to have been used on the occasions when a Roman general was parading through the streets of Rome. Standing behind the victorious general was a servant who had the task of reminding the general that, though he was up on the peak today, tomorrow was another day. The servant did this by telling the general that he should remember that he was mortal, i.e. “Memento mori,” or perhaps, “Respice post te! Hominem te esse memento.” (Look behind you! Remember that you are but a man!)
But the primary classical response to the imminence of death was “carpe diem”: “seize the day,” eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow you will die. Most memento mori are products of Christian art. The prospect of death served to emphasize of the emptiness and fleetingness of earthly pleasures, luxuries, and achievements, and invited people to focus their thoughts on the prospect of the afterlife instead. It wasn’t considered morbid, or unhealthy, or defeatist.
Some people are sure that such disasters are God’s judgment on sinners. I’m sure you remember some of the things that were said after 9/11, about God’s judgment on America’s sins. I think Jesus pretty much puts that interpretation to rest in the story Luke tells: “There were some present at that very time who told [Jesus] of the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered thus? I tell you, No; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, No; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.” [Lk 13:1-5] So when people ask, at times like this, “How can a God of mercy allow this sort of disaster to happen?” one of the answers needs to be, “so that we will remember that we are not gods.”
There are times when mercy - like forgiveness - is most loving when it is temporarily withheld. Like our comfortable lives in 21st century America, God’s grace is something we may have come to take rather too much for granted.
There’s a pretty strong correlation between forgiveness and mercy. Scripture talks about them in the same way: “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy,” is phrased in exactly the same way as, "Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you ... for the measure you give will be the measure you get back." [Luke 6:37-38] And it’s commanded for exactly the same reason: we are to be merciful and not to judge, to give and to forgive - because God will treat us as we treat others.
And, sometimes, disasters happen to our enemies. This year, it was the floods in China. Well, they wouldn’t want our help even if we offered it. But a few years ago there was an earthquake in the wild tribal corners of northwest Pakistan, where persecution of Christians - including rape and murder - is very nearly routine. This event gave us a very good opportunity to measure our response. Did we - do we - love our enemies? Pakistan apparently did not want international aid, but a few years before ChristianAid sent L50,000 following an earthquake in a different part of the country.
So these disasters hit us on both sides of the head. First of all, we are all mortal. And second, we all stand equally judged before God.
And it leaves us with several questions.
First of all, are mercy and forgiveness the same thing? If not, what is the difference?
And second, if God’s grace is free, why do we have to show mercy in order to receive it?
First, mercy and forgiveness are sometimes the same. They are one and the same particularly when it is God who is doing the forgiving.
Let me explain how it works. You see, mercy is both a response and an action. It is first of all a feeling of pity, a feeling of compassion, for the pain or suffering of another person. Mercy starts with a feeling. But then it goes beyond a feeling and moves to action. How often are we moved to pity when we see a photo or read a story of victims of war or famine or injustice, but go no further? And don’t get me wrong here - I’m not trying to lay guilt on anyone for not leaping up like Pavlov’s dogs whenever the bell tolls. It may be tolling for us, as John Donne said in that marvelous poem, No Man Is an Island, but it is not necessarily calling us to action. No one person, no one church, can meet all needs.
Anyway, mercy moves beyond feeling to action, to some action taken to ease the pain, to share the burden that the other person is enduring. And mercy is what God shows when he forgives us. God is moved to pity by the suffering of his people, even though most of it is self-inflicted, and he acts to alleviate our suffering. Just as he did during the times of the Judges, “when the Israelites cried out to YHWH, YHWH raised up a deliverer for the Israelites, who delivered them.” [Judges 3:9] They deserved what was coming to them, for having forgotten God, for having disobeyed his commandments and run after other gods and mistreated their fellows. So in order to show them mercy, God first has to forgive them for the wrong they have done. And even when our suffering is due to another’s sin, God’s mercy still always includes forgiveness, just as it did when the Israelites in Egypt cried out and he answered - because even though they didn’t “deserve” what the Egyptians were doing to them, they were still nonetheless offenders against God - because we all are. We can’t help it.
Sometimes, of course, when human beings show mercy, it is to someone who has wronged us. In 2006, ten girls 6–13 were shot at an Amish one-room schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, PA. Five were killed. Following the shooter's suicide, the community reached out to his family, and went so far as to set up a charitable fund for them. “He had a mother and a wife and a soul,” said one, “and now he's standing before a just God.” In 2015, Dylann Roof shot 9 African-Americans at a Bible study in Charleston. This, too, is as heinous a crime as can be imagined, and yet these survivors also forgave. “We have no room for hating, so we have to forgive,” said the sister of one. “I pray God on your soul.”
No one else could have done that. You see, you and I can only forgive wrongs done to us. Since all wrongs are ultimately against God, for him showing mercy always includes forgiveness. None of us can forgive the wrongs done to someone else, which is where the question of public justice comes in. We can, however, show mercy to anyone who is suffering - whether forgiveness is involved or not.
The power to pardon is vested in presidents and governors because they speak for the state, which alone has the power to punish. The state does not, in my opinion, have the authority to forgive unless, as in South Africa following the end of apartheid, the entire community chooses to do so. A pardon is not forgiveness; it simply removes the penalty. Nonetheless, there is room for mercy in the public arena. However, a governing authority has additional responsibilities. Micah 6:8 says “Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.” Public acts of mercy must not compromise God’s call for justice. Private acts of mercy are not so constrained.
Private acts of mercy are not constrained in the same way because God’s mercy toward us is not constrained. He found a way in Christ to maintain justice and extend mercy at the same time. His mercy is limitless, lavish, and life-giving. But we cannot receive God’s mercy unless we give it to others because it’s all part of the same package.
Let’s review the first 4 Beatitudes. The first step is to recognize that we are poor in spirit, that is, spiritually weak and needy, incapable of being righteous on our own. The second step is to mourn over the reality of sin in the world and in ourselves. The third step is to become meek, submitting to God’s discipline and authority. The fourth step is to hunger and thirst after righteousness, to long to be with Christ and to be like Christ. These steps change us on the inside.
Once you’re at that point, once you’ve been changed on the inside, how can you not show that change in your behavior? Having seen yourself for who you are, and seen God for who he is, and fallen in love with Jesus, you cannot turn your attention from God to people in the world without mercy. Lack of mercy at that point is simply evidence that you have not, in fact, truly believed in and embraced God’s own gift of mercy. We all know the line, “there but for the grace of God go I...” If we can’t see that we ourselves are only one step - or one mis-step - away from being in the same position, we have not yet grasped what God has done. There’s a marvelous song that Joan Baez sang back in the 60's that got secularized, but it’s still wonderful, “Show me the alley, show me the train, show me the hobo who sleeps out in the rain, and I’ll show you a young man with so many reasons why, there but for Fortune go you or I, you or I.” Of course it’s not fortune we have to thank, but God. Mercy to others is our grateful response to what God has given us. We could rephrase the Beatitude to say, "Blessed are the merciful, for they have already received mercy, and will continue to do so.”
Let’s be careful, though: there are some actions that look like mercy but are not.
For instance, some people interpret this verse selfishly, showing mercy only to those who will be able to return the favor, sort of the “one hand washes the other” routine. Then there are the self righteous Pharisee types, who show mercy to in order to make points with God, you know, every time they do something for someone else they glance upward and check to make sure God has gotten it written down. Some people think they are showing mercy when they overlook sin, either in the justice system - because it was society that caused their crimes - or by letting children get away with destructive behavior so their self-esteem doesn’t get bruised. This is laziness, cheap grace, simply an unwillingness to call people to God’s standards. It is not merciful to leave people in their sins.
So our impulse to mercy should be tempered by wisdom. Later on in this sermon Jesus talks about not throwing pearls before swine, and in all the gospels he tells the people to shake the dust off of their feet when leaving an unresponsive town.
It’s not that we’re only to show mercy to the grateful. That’s not it at all. We are to love mercy, we are to feel compassion even for the undeserving, as God does, but remember: It’s not compassionate to tell an injured patient not to do their exercises if they hurt. It’s not compassionate to throw charity at someone just to make the pain of your own pity go away.
To be like Christ, our desire to be merciful must spring from our hearts, spontaneously, freely, un-strainedly, as Shakespeare puts it in The Merchant of Venice. Mercy should flow lavishly, and powerfully, a Niagara overflowing to the marvel of the world. But that impulse to mercy must be channeled so that its power doesn’t wash away topsoil, root out seedlings, destroy homes, or drown non-swimmers caught in its path. Unstrained mercy needs to be constrained by the same constraints that God himself recognizes: by wisdom, by justice, and by the long-term, eternal good of the person you are trying to help.
