Mercy is one of the great New Testament words. It appears over 150 times and nine times out of ten refers to God’s mercy. “Mercy”, said Pope Francis, is “the bridge that connects God and man, opening our hearts to the hope of being loved forever, despite our sinfulness. We see God’s mercy supremely in the life of Jesus. To quote Pope Francis again: “Everything in him speaks of mercy. Nothing in him is devoid of compassion”.
Strangely the term mercy is rarely found on the lips of Jesus. However, it is clear that Jesus attached great importance to the concept. For instance, Jesus twice quoted Hosea 6.6: “I desire mercy and not sacrifice” (Matthew 9.13; 12.7). In Matthew 23.23 Jesus condemned the Pharisees for being too meticulous about keeping the detailed commands of the ceremonial law, but missing out on the great essentials of “justice, mercy and faith”. Not surprisingly mercy is one of the virtues highlighted by Jesus in the fifth beatitude.
What does Jesus mean by the term ‘merciful’? According to Frederick Bruner: “The gospel merciful are… those who put themselves under another to support them, to be sensitive to them, even to feel sad with them”. According to Don Carson, whereas grace is “a loving response when love is undeserved”; mercy is “a loving response prompted by the misery and helplessness of the one in whom love is shown”. According to John Nolland:
Those who are merciful are kind to people in serious need. Their mercy is marked by generosity and by emotional identification with the situation of those trapped in their need… It is costly in a variety of ways.
Mercy is not an attitude, but an activity and is something to be done. Florence Allhorn said: “An ideal is not yours until it comes out of your fingertips”.
Some have equated mercy with almsgiving, for in Greek the word for mercy (eleemones) is similar to almsgiving (eleemosune). Others have equated mercy with forgiveness, for a forgiving spirit is an aspect of showing mercy. In that regard Jesus told the parable of the unforgiving servant (Mattthew 18.23-24), which tells of a slave who had been released by his master from a debt of 10,000 talents (a single talent represented what a man might hope to earn in half a lifetime), who subsequently failed to release a fellow slave of a relatively piffling debt of 10,000 denarii. When his master learnt of this he was angry and said:
You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you had pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave as I had mercy on you?” (Matthew 18.33).
Mercy is much more broad ranging. It includes a willingness to forgive, but is far more than just a forgiving spirit. Dick France defined mercy as “a generous attitude, which is willing to see things from another person’s point of view and is not quick to take offence or to gloat over their shortcomings (the prime characteristic of love according to Paul in 1 Corinthians 13.4-7)”. He went on: “Mercy sets aside society’s assumptions that it is honourable to demand to revenge”.
There are no limits to mercy. We are called to show mercy even to our enemies. We see this in Luke’s Gospel, where Jesus said, “love your enemies” (Luke 6.35) and immediately went on to say, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6.36).
Jesus in this beatitude concluded that the merciful “will receive mercy”. Here we have what is called a ‘divine passive’: that is to say God is the subject. In the words of the GNB: “Happy are those who are merciful to others, God will be merciful to them”. Significantly, in the original Greek “they” is stressed to make it clear that the “unmerciful” will not receive mercy. Furthermore, this parable shows that it is possible for people who have already received God’s mercy to lose out on God’s mercy.
Being merciful is not a condition for God’s grace, but is a necessary consequence. If we do not reflect God’s loving-kindness, then it is because we have never grasped it in the first place.
Yes, Paul, I agree absolutely with the last line of your blog today: “If we do not reflect God’s loving-kindness, then it is because we have never grasped it in the first place.” The same goes for salvation and faith. When people lose their faith, or as in Brazil become ‘ex-believers’, is it not because they never enjoyed such a state rather than losing it once received? Our salvation is rooted in the cross, that is in what God has done for us, not in what we have done or can do. Of course, the gift has to be received in the first place. But who would hand back a gift such as this once received?
I enjoy reading your blogs and recently preached on the Beatitudes, as it was the theme in the Methodist Lectionary, which I sometimes follow when preaching in our local Methodist Church.
My latest book, ‘Touched by Love: Being in Relationship with God’, with a Foreword by Ian Randall, is due to be published by Kingdom Publishers next month. Would you be kind enough to write a review in your ‘Books for Today’ blog? As ever, John