Thoughts on the Beatitudes, Part 7b: Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

Last week we considered the fact that, when God answers the question, “Who are You?” his self-descriptive disclosure is this: The Lord, the Lord; God gracious and merciful; slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness … From these words I can draw a simple conclusion, which is that I live; I experience love; I can give love; I know forgiveness; I can trust and be confident; I can be free from fear and anxiety all because of the mercy of God. Conversely, no mercy and it’s over and out.

To make matters better, mercy appears as the companion of grace, which tells us that the mercy gift is a free one with no strings attached. From there, it’s not a very difficult leap to Jesus’ declaration that the merciful are blessed; and to the biblical principle that we freely give what we have freely received; and to the ultimate conclusion that our giving away mercy leads to even more of the mercy the Father gave in the first place.

How incredibly indispensable and profound is mercy for us. Given its nature as one of the prime sustainers of human existence, we might expect a ready and whole-hearted embrace of the call to a merciful life. And yet we find that it provides us with continual challenges. Five such come to mind. First of all, we all tend to be judges; we are gavel-carriers. This goes even for those who are naturally merciful. What do we judge in others? I judge you for things you do that I am not tempted to do. For example, I don’t have an addictive personality – I don’t smoke, am not attracted to drugs or heavy drinking, don’t binge eat or watch a ton of television. If you do, it’s not mercy that first comes to my mind, but judgment. I’ve got you pegged and pigeonholed, causes, reasons, and circumstances be damned.

Or we judge each other for those things we don’t do, but wish we could (but are too “good” to allow ourselves to). I don’t like speeders in flashy cars and often wish them legal misfortune, but I suspect that, if I were honest with myself, I could happily give myself to the ecstasy of playing Emerson Fittipaldi. Most egregiously, we fall prey to judging others who commit the very things that enslave us – but do not put ourselves under the same judgment.

In a similar vein, the mercy selectivity syndrome plagues every person. Even as I judge according to my own set of arbitrary standards, so I somewhat randomly dispense mercy. You might belong to a certain category of victim for whom I feel compassion. Or, as is the case with me, you might have unlimited mercy for those close to you. Or you and I might just feel good today – life is hunky-dory enough for some mercy drops. The problem is that the Father’s mercy is entirely indiscriminate; he “causes his rain to fall on the just and unjust alike.” Worse yet, he expects us to have the same attitude and practices of mercy and calls us to impossibilities such as forgiving our enemies and serving those who hate us.

This gets at our third difficulty with mercy, which is that we are all legalists when it comes to being merciful. Like Peter in the Gospels, we want to know how much and how many. I need numbers and standards so that I know when I’ve done enough. After all, mercy is just plain hard, and we can’t imagine that we’re supposed to find some kind of boundless mercy source for all those people who offend, wound, prod, ignore, disagree with, or are indifferent to us. But Jesus doesn’t seem to be very sympathetic, and his answer to Peter is problematic: Not your number, Peter (Paul Beckman or whoever), but God’s number, which is an expression of his perfection. And thus unattainable apart from grace. In fact, it’s more than God’s number, it is God’s character that is worked into us by the Holy Spirit. Be merciful, not as the best merciful you can be, but as your heavenly Father is merciful (Luke 6:36).

A fourth mercy problem that plagues some of us is that we confuse true mercy with sentiment or emotion. Some of us do have a natural bent toward a visceral connection with those who suffer, who are failing and falling, who are the products of challenging circumstances, dysfunctional upbringings, and chaotic environments. If we see such persons merely through a lens of natural sympathy, we become myopic and can miss something of what God is doing in their lives. It is too easy for the mercy personality to avoid drawing boundaries; to allow the suffering to run rampant over others; to make excuses rather than see reasons; and to spend a good deal of energy attempting to make bad things go away rather than understanding what the Father wants to accomplish through them.

The last mercy stumbling block that impedes our happiness is the structure of Jesus’ blessing statement: The merciful shall receive mercy. This sounds very karmic, very works-y; I have to do something to get something from God. Isn’t that what the text says in plain language? Well, yes, but not really. Why doesn’t it mean I don’t get mercy unless I first give it? Because mercy came from the Lord first, before there was anything offered on my part. His gift always has precedence over and is always greater than what I do with that gift. I began as a poor in spirit beggar and now I give alms out of what the almoner provided out of his generosity.

Then why does Jesus say the blessing of even more mercy is for the merciful? Let’s put this in terms of MFD – Monkey Fist Disease. Maybe you’ve seen the video on how to capture some little relative of Curious George: You set up box or other container with a tasty treat inside and an entry hole just large enough for George to reach in his hand and pull it back out, but too small for him to retract a balled-up fist holding the goody. Poor George is in a catch-22 conundrum. Does he open his hand and find freedom, or hold on as a captive to his greed. In a similar way, when we are unable to release mercy toward others, we end up incapable of receiving it for our own lives.

Two blog posts on being merciful, and I feel that I have barely scratched the surface.

Lord, have mercy.

As always, I would love it if your would like, share, or comment. May the Father pour out his goodness in your lives.