Pastor Chris
If you’ve been paying attention to some of the national news of the past couple weeks, you’ve probably come across a “kerfuffle” (to use a certain member’s favorite term) involving the topic of having mercy. This came in the context of President Trump’s return to office, and the very real impacts his decisions have on vulnerable populations across this nation. But for some reason, invitations to have mercy on others became a hot button conversation point in our national discourse. So I thought it might be beneficial to talk briefly about what mercy is, and how the term appears in the Bible.
First, the term “mercy” or a variation of the word appears about 360 times in the King James Version of the Bible. Different translations have tried to give more nuance to the words that were translated as “mercy” previously, but even still, in our more current New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, mercy shows up over 150 times. There are still more instances of God acting with mercy that don’t technically use the term in our English translations.
A quick search in an online dictionary for a definition of mercy featured the following: “compassionate or kindly forbearance shown toward an offender, an enemy, or other person in one’s power; compassion, pity, or benevolence.” Key to that definition is the nature of power. Mercy usually happens when a person who has power chooses to act in a compassionate manner toward someone who has less power. And while our headlines have focused on how political power can be used (or misused), mercy and the dynamics of power show up in other places as well.
In scripture, we find mercy can be an act, such as in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10). A Samaritan – a person who was generally viewed with prejudice by Jesus’ Jewish community – was reported by Jesus to have shown mercy to the Jewish man who had been beaten and robbed by bandits. The Samaritan had the power to simply keep walking and ignore this ethnic adversary, much like the Jewish man’s own people did. But the Samaritan chooses differently. Mercy in this case involved personal care of the individual by bandaging his wounds, taking the time to transport the wounded man, risking his own welfare for the sake of the neighbor (bandits could very easily have been waiting for someone to wait to help the first victim in order to attack another person), and then providing for the injured man by paying in advance (and promising to pay more if needed) for the man’s room and care. Jesus asks the lawyer, “Who acted as a neighbor to the man?” and the lawyer responds, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus tells him – and us by extension – to go and do likewise. I think that’s a pretty good example of what mercy looked like to Jesus. As described above, this mercy was unconditional. And it is this mercy on which we rely as well.
Many Sundays in worship, we cry out, “Lord, have mercy!” in song or in prayer. We know through confession and forgiveness that we all sin and fall short of God’s glory. Day by day, all we can do is rely on God’s infinite mercy that gives us an opportunity to do better than we did the day before. In our current worship setting, we are praying “Kyrie, eleison” as we then describe where God’s mercy should be (and is) active – on our world, on our way. It isn’t contained to our church. It isn’t contained to one group of people. God’s mercy is meant for all, and this mercy is both active and constant. When we cry out “Lord, have mercy!” we are crying out for God’s care and providence upon all people. And that happens most consistently when we ourselves live out our baptismal call to be the body of Christ – God’s hands and feet in the world.
Family of God, every day we have the opportunity – as both burden and joy – to ask ourselves how our actions are acts of mercy and kindness, and how they might not be. I invite you today to live your life as one who has seen God’s mercy and is called to share that mercy with others. For it is in mercy that God chose to transform the world through the Son, and it is through that grace that we all can live with hope regardless of the despair and doubt that push us to leave hope behind.
This day, I hope you will choose mercy. I hope you will choose kindness. And in living our lives, may that mercy and kindness continue to transform the world with the love of God that reveals God’s eternal mercy on us, established in God’s eternal blessings given to all of us through the promise of joy found in God’s Son.
Pastor Chris