Matthew 5:1-12Matthew 18:23-35

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,It droppeth as a gentle rain from heavenUpon the place beneath: it is twice blest;It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomesThe throned monarch better than his crown.(The Merchant of Venice, Act IV, scene 1)

In our practice of "mercy" there is a kind of "I'll scratch your back -- you scratch my back" philosophy. Be decent to others and they will be decent to you. It is like the story on which George Bernard Shaw based his play Androcles and the Lion. Androcles was a Roman slave who lived in the days of the Emperor Tiberius. He ran away from a cruel master and took refuge in a cave. A lion came wandering by, limping badly. He held out the damaged paw to Androcles, who skillfully extracted a huge thorn.

Scene two took place some time later. Poor Androcles had been caught and was being thrown to the wild beasts in the circus. But the lion sent to devour him turned out to be his old friend. So, instead of attacking him, the lion nuzzled up and began to caress him, whereupon the crowd was so astonished that Androcles was set free. Happy ending. And a tale of fantasy.

Christians are not to be merciful because there is some payback system. If I lend my neighbor my hedge clippers when his break, then I can borrow his lawn mower when mine stops working. We are not merciful to receive reward but we are merciful simply because God is merciful. We are merciful because we are committed to act like Jesus and he was filled with mercy. The mercy of which Jesus speaks is the attitude of someone who not only acts expecting nothing back, but who knows he may receive abuse for his act of mercy.

Acts of mercy are not always rewarded with gratitude. In this world the merciful are often devoured by the lions, even those whom they have helped. We live in a world where the merciful get taken for suckers, where kindness can be seen as character weakness. No one showed more mercy than Jesus. Jesus' reward for showing mercy was the betrayal of his closest friends, condemnation by religious and political leaders, flogging by soldiers, and death on a cross.

As Balzac said, "Society, like the Roman youth at the circus, never shows mercy to the fallen gladiator." Which reminds me of the story of a mother who was appalled and angry that her daughter had gotten into a fight at school. The mother said, "That is not how I taught you to behave. The devil must have made you do it!" Her daughter replied, "Maybe so, but kicking her in the shins was MY idea."

Refusing to show mercy is compared with breaking down the bridge over which you yourself would have passed. In God's system of justice, we receive the mercy or judgment we give others. Several years ago, Lavrenti Beria, the former chief of the Russian Secret Police, was arrested and "liquidated." He became the victim of his own actions. Locked in the prison where he had locked others, subjected to treatment that he had taught his secret police, tried in the sort of trial he had helped to engineer, he was mocked by his own cruelty.

We know the blessing of this beatitude, but we need also to consider the warning of the parable. In March of 1976, Carlo Gambino, boss of all bosses of the Mafia, died in New York. He was the model for the role of Don Vito Corleone, the part played by Marlon Brando in the movie The Godfather. We lived in New York City at the time of Gambino's death. In a local news report, it said that the funeral service included the words "Be not severe in Thy judgment."

Think of the souls and bodies scarred and killed by what he did -- the youth seduced into drugs, countless people led into crime, the women forced into prostitution, the politicians corrupted, the businesses compromised and destroyed. We can ask for God's mercy, but that does not cancel out God's judgment. Our God is a God of mercy, but when we expect to receive mercy without giving mercy, the parable tells us about the nature of God's judgment.

When we live a life without mercy, we live a life without hope. There is a communion prayer whose words include these: "We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under Thy table. But Thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy." Mercy is what God seeks to give, but when we are unmerciful, we block God's mercy.

It is what we pray for each time we pray the Lord's Prayer: "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors." After teaching us to pray for forgiveness, Jesus added: "For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."

This beatitude marks a shift from the passive to the active, from the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those hungry and thirsting, to acts of mercy. Mercy is active. It is not a passive "Oh, gee, isn't that too bad." Mercy is active. It is reaching out to the suffering of the world. It is carrying the basket of food to the hungry family. It is dialing the telephone to check on a lonely neighbor. It is stopping at the roadside to change the tire of a woman traveling with her little children.

This is the beatitude of the givers, of the charitable. This refers to those who have such an attitude of compassion toward others that they want to share gladly all that they have. It does not view the needy as beggars to whom we give just a little bit, but brothers and sisters with whom we share all. This understanding of charity or mercy led some of the early Christians to a state of voluntary poverty in which "all the believers were together and held all things in common" (Acts 2:44).

Mercy is not simply feeling sorry for someone. "I am sorry your cat is sick." It is more than an emotional wave of pity. It is a profound sympathy, being with others in their pain. There is a story about Queen Victoria of England. She was a close friend of Principal and Mrs. Tulloch of St. Andrews. Prince Albert died and Queen Victoria was left alone. Just about the same time, Principal Tulloch died and Mrs. Tulloch was left alone.

Unannounced, Queen Victoria came to call on Mrs. Tulloch when Mrs. Tulloch was resting on a couch in her room. When the Queen was announced, Mrs. Tulloch struggled to rise quickly from the couch and to curtsy. The Queen stepped forward: "My dear," she said, "don't rise. I am not coming to you today as a queen to a subject, but as one woman who has lost her husband to another." That is what God did in the person of Jesus. He came not as a removed monarch, but as one of us. In his mercy, Jesus shared in our own pain.

And so this attitude of mercy is a mark of our nature as a Christian people. One of the leaders of the early church is named Tertullian. He had these words of insight and encouragement to the early church members: "It is our care for the helpless, our practice of loving-kindness that brand us in the eyes of many of our opponents. 'Look!' they say, 'How they love one another! Look how they are prepared to die for one another.' "

Mercy is shown to friends as well as to enemies. The merciful are those who banish all feelings of revenge and ill will out of their hearts, seeking to cultivate an attitude of love and sympathy toward all.

When Mother Teresa first began her work among the dying on the streets of Calcutta, India, she was obstructed at every turn by government officials and orthodox Hindus who were suspicious of her motives and used their authority to harass her and to frustrate her efforts. She and her fellow sisters were insulted and threatened with physical violence.

One day a shower of stones and bricks rained down on the women as they tried to bring the dying to their humble shelter. Eventually Mother Teresa dropped to her knees before the mob. "Kill me!" she cried in Bengali, her arms outstretched in a gesture of crucifixion. "And I'll be in heaven all the sooner." The crowd withdrew, but soon the harassment increased. Even more irrational acts of violence and louder demands were made of officials to expel the foreign nun in her white sari, wearing a cross around her neck.

One morning, Mother Teresa noticed a gathering of people outside the nearby Kali Temple, one of the holy places for Hindus in Calcutta. As she drew closer, she saw a man stretched out on the street with turned-up eyes and a face drained of blood. A triple braid denoted that he was of the Brahmin caste, not of the temple priests. No one dared to touch him, for people recognized he was dying from cholera.

Mother Teresa went to him, bent down, took the body of the Brahmin priest in her arms and carried him to her shelter. Day and night, she nursed him; over and again he would say to the people, "For 30 years I have worshipped a Kali (god) of stone. But I have met in this gentle woman a real Kali, a Kali of flesh and blood." Never again were stones thrown at Mother Teresa and the other sisters.1

Mercy is a costly gift to give, not easily given, and often not a gift properly received. There is the story of the old mountaineer who was on trial for stealing a horse. He hired a good lawyer and the lawyer won the case. "You have been acquitted," said the lawyer. The mountaineer scratched his head and asked, "Does this mean I get to keep the horse?"

Or there is the spirit of the little boy who was protesting having to take a bath. His mother said, "You have dirt all over you. Don't you want to be clean?" The little boy inquired, "Can't you just dust me?" Mercy is a gift that can be taken most seriously or very lightly. Mercy is a great gift not because it takes sin lightly, but because it takes it so seriously.

A pastor told me how a member of the congregation he was serving had gone out one Friday night, gotten drunk, chased a young lady down an alley, and was then beaten up by the people who stopped him. Saturday morning this man's picture appeared on the front page of the local paper. The man's face was all banged up, his eyes were all puffy, and the picture was accompanied by a complete account of the incident.

When the pastor got a copy of the paper, he sat down, wrote this man a note, and sent his wife out to deliver it. The note read, "We would be most disappointed if we did not see you and your family sitting up front in church tomorrow." The next morning, they were there, facing all of the painful humiliation, paying all the emotional cost of being there. The pastor could have ignored him and the congregation shunned him. They could have stayed home alone with the shame and guilt. Instead, they were welcomed back and the one who was lost became found. Mercy was needed and mercy was shown. The quality of mercy is such that while considering a person dead wrong in what one has done, we can still offer compassion and forgiveness.

This is the nature of a merciful God. The mercy to which Jesus referred is not simply our being merciful to one another, but God being merciful to us. All acts of mercy have their origin with God. God is the source, the author, the creator of mercy.

There is a dual sense in which we receive mercy. We receive mercy now and in the kingdom. We know the joys of performing acts of mercy. We know the pleasure of receiving the merciful actions of others. In this world we will not always find mercy returned when mercy is shown. But in being merciful, we are sure, in God's time, to obtain mercy from God.

"The merciful are partakers of the divine blessing for they shall receive mercy." (Jordon)

"Happy are those who are always alert to the needs of others and do what they can to meet those needs. They shall find that God will take care of their needs." (The Pulpit 12/54)

"Happy are those who are ready to make allowances and to forgive: they will know the love of God." (The Pulpit 12/59)

"O the bliss of the man who gets right inside other people, until he can see with their eyes, think their thoughts, feel with their feelings, for he who does that will find others do the same for him, and will know that that is what God in Jesus Christ has done." (Barclay)

"The happy man is he who overlooks little slights and forgives large offenses."

"Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." (RSV)

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1. Donald J. Shelby, "Weakness and Power," Homiletics 1/93 (Santa Monica, Calif.), p. 21c.