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Sunday, March 16, 2014

MERCY: The Art of Compassion

A sermon based upon Matthew 5: 7;  18 21-35
By Rev. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
2nd Sunday of Lent, March 16th, 2014

"Blessed are those who are merciful, for they will receive mercy.”  (Matthew 5:7)

When Mother Teresa first began her work among the dying on the streets of Calcutta, India, she was obstructed and opposed 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 ( Quoted in John Terry’s sermon “The Merciful”  (CSS Publishing, 1997) as it was told by Donald J. Shelby, in "Weakness and Power," Homiletics 1/93 (Santa Monica, Calif.), p. 21c.).

“Blessed are those who are merciful, for they will receive mercy….”   That was certainly true for Mother Teresa.  When she showed mercy, she and her work were given mercy by her attackers.    Her story serves as a good example of how this fifth beatitude is unique: It is reflective.  In other words, when you show mercy, you receive mercy; you get what you give.  While the poor receive the kingdom, the meek inherit the earth, and those who hunger for righteousness will be filled; those who show mercy will receive from God exactly what they show to other.  The reward of mercy is mercy. 

MERCY IS SOMETHING WE MUST DO
The ‘reflective’ nature of this beatitude reveals how practical true faith should be.  Faith in God is more than an attitude, more than an emotion, more than a feeling or even more than a sincere statement of our faith.   Faith in God is something we must do as a concrete expression of our relationship with the God who has been merciful with us.   The great reformer John Calvin once said that God’s existence cannot be proven by a theological argument from reason, but God’s grace and mercy can be proven because it shows up in us as we become people of mercy and compassion.  If we have experienced God as mercy in our lives, we will show God’s mercy from our lives.   Mercy becomes who we are and what we do because this is who God is and what God does


We are called to be merciful because God is merciful.   The words ‘mercy’ or ‘merciful’ are scattered all over the pages of the Bible (over 200 times).   In one of the most important moments of biblical revelation, right after the 10 commandments were given, Moses returned to the Mountain to converse with God again, and in curiosity, Moses asks God to show himself more fully and to reveal his full ‘glory’ (Exodus 33:18).  God agrees to reveal himself more fully to Moses, but God will only reveal his back, since no human can see God ‘face to face’ and remain alive.  Before God appears, he tells Moses what he will see:  “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name,  ‘The LORD’; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy….”  (Ex. 33.19).

Only the ‘goodness’ of being ‘gracious’ and showing ‘mercy’ reveal the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.    This was certainly an exceptional understanding of God in the ancient world.  In ancient pagan religions, the Canaanite gods had to be appeased and placated by sacrifices, gifts, and various offerings.  But Israel’s God is different.  Instead of waiting for people to bring the right offering, Israel’s God is ‘good’ and “merciful” because this is always his nature.  The offerings and sacrifices come to God because he is merciful, not to earn or merit God’s mercy and grace.  

This essential ‘difference’ about Israel’s God is what God has been revealing about himself from the very beginning.   All the way back to Abraham, in one astounding event, God changes how Abraham should understand everything God is about.  Do you remember in Genesis 22, when God asks Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac?    It sounded crazy to sacrifice a child, but it sounds even crazier for God to require Abraham to sacrifice ‘the child’ who was also a part of the promise God had given.  Why would God require this?   We are not told anything in the text, except that it was to ‘test’ Abraham’s faith.  But what kind of test was it?  What was clear to Abraham is not so clear to us; that in Abraham’s time, it was common practice for people to prove their faith by bringing the most precious gift of one of their children as a sacrificial gift to the gods.  This was to be a guarantee that the gods would show kindness and mercy.   But when Abraham binds Isaac and proceeds to make him a sacrifice, right in the middle of it,  God tells Abraham that this kind of ‘sacrifice’ will not be require.   Instead, God will provide the ‘sacrifice’, not Abraham (Gen. 22.14) and God will show kindness, mercy and grace because he chooses to, not because humans earn it.

As Christians, we know that the story of God’s mercy given to Abraham is true to the nature of the ‘mercy’ God has shown to us in Jesus Christ.   When Jesus was on the cross, crying out, “Father, forgiven them, for they know not what they do,” (Luke 13.24) we know that God’s kindness, mercy and forgiveness was on display for us, and for all humanity.   As Martin Luther once said, ‘the cross’ shows us God from the ‘rearward side’  (As quoted in “Christian Theology Reader, edited by Alister E. McGrath, 2011, p 21).   When we look upon God as revealed in the suffering and sacrifice of Jesus, we are looking at the same God who revealed himself to Moses on the Mountain, to Abraham in the saving of Isaac, and to us in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who, in his great ‘mercy’ (1 Pet. 1.3) made a “merciful…. sacrifice of atonement’ (Heb. 2.17) and “bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness….” (1 Peter 2.14).       

Because our God who is ‘rich in mercy’  (Eph 2.4) has been ‘merciful’ to us, we are to be a people who are merciful to others.   This is why my first point comes to as this: Those who have been blessed by God’s mercy, are those who will actually show mercy to other people.  If we don’t show mercy, then God’s mercy has not been fully acknowledged by us, and when God’s mercy is not shown by us, it does not remain with us.   Wasn’t this the great failure of the man in Jesus’ great parable we know as the “Unmerciful Servant” (Matt. 18: 21-35).   The master forgave him a great debt (10,000 talents worth or about $600,000), but he in turn, would not forgive the much smaller debt (100 denari or about $360).  His ‘master’ showed him great mercy, but when the opportunity came for him to show mercy upon someone, even upon someone who owed him a much lesser amount, he did not ‘show it’ even in the smallest way.   The ‘unmerciful servant’ received great mercy initially, but because he did not acknowledge, appreciate nor appropriate that mercy into his own life, now, Jesus says, he has run out God’s mercy (vs 35). 

This problem of failing to acknowledge, appreciate or appropriate God’s mercy and grace is exactly the problem Jesus shows in yet another important parable, the Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican (or Tax Collector).   When they go to pray (to acknowledge God’s mercy), the Pharisee does not fully appreciate God’s mercy because he is doesn’t appropriate it into his own life, saying that he is thankful that he ‘isn’t like other people who are sinners.’   But the Tax Collector acknowledges God’s mercy with a heart that fully appreciates and appropriates it, because he humbles himself crying out, “God be merciful to me, a sinner!”  (Matthew 18: 10-14).   Jesus concludes that the one who goes home ‘right with God’ is the one who realizes just how much he needs God’s mercy.   This is what ‘mercy’ does to you.   It makes you see God differently.  It makes you see yourself differently.  It will make you see others differently too.

MERCY IS SOMETHING WE MUST DO FOR THE LESS FORTUNATE
So, since God’s mercy changes our perspective of God and ourselves, how does it change how we see others?  In other words, how does God’s mercy that is fully acknowledged and appreciated by us make us appreciate the needs of others around us?   What does it mean for us to become “merciful” as God our “Father is merciful” (Luke 6.36)?

I think it is quite interesting that at the center of every major religion in this world is a ‘reflective’ rule of reciprocity.  In our culture, we call it the Golden Rule: “Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you”.   The Golden rule is based upon Jesus’ words in Matthew 7: 12, as he explains that this ‘rule of mercy’ is a summation of everything the “Law and the Prophets” have been teaching all along.    What shocks many people is that this ‘mercy rule’ is not only found in the Bible, but it can be found in some form in every major world religion.   It is found in Hinduism, (Never do to others what would pain you), Buddhism (Hurt not others that which hurts yourself), Taoism (Regard your neighbor’s loss or gain as your own), Confucianism (Do not impose on others what you do not yourself desire), Judaism (What is hateful to you do not do to your neighbor) and in Islam, which says, (Do unto all people as you would they should do to you.) (As quoted by Dave Andrews in Plan Be, p. 39).   

People of all religions, and even people with no religion, understand that the mercy must be shown to others, or life is not worth much of anything at all.   The great problem within religions and with people in general is not that we are different (we are), not that one is completely true or completely false (we all can be), but the greatest challenge of life and faith is whether or not people put into practice what they say they believe.   All religions have ‘mercy’ written at the heart, but they do not always show it, nor do they follow the light they have.  This was certainly a failure of Judaism in Jesus’ day, which Jesus pointed out over and over as he asked, “What does the Law require?” because they had forgotten.  The challenge of living out what we say we believe is also a problem for Christians, as it is the problem for every expression of faith in our world.  I recall a person of one faith saying to another, “We don’t have to understand each other, we don’t have to agree with each other, and we don’t even have to like each other, but we do have to care and show compassion to each other or our religion will prove to be false.”   Will we show the mercy to others that we hope to receive from God?

But how do we show mercy?  What does it mean to be ‘merciful’?  In Matthew 25, in the powerful and unforgettable parable of final judgment, Jesus gives us a picture of a future moment when “all the nations will be gathered (before God)”.  What separates the good from the bad, or as Jesus says symbolically, “the sheep from the goats”?   What separates the two is the mercy that was or wasn’t shown ‘to the least of these’ (Matt. 25.45).   Here, six specific deeds of mercy are a ‘given’ to being merciful: feeding the hungry, quenching thirst, showing hospitality to ‘homeless’ strangers, clothing the naked, visiting and caring for the sick, and visiting the imprisoned.  You can’t be called a church of mercy, nor can you be considered to be a merciful person, unless you do these kinds of things when needs arise.  Others deeds or acts of mercy could be added to this list, but the point of Jesus’ parable is that the needs of the helpless and the hopeless are being addressed.  This is what makes faith ‘worth its salt’ (Matt 7.13) and makes people ‘light’ to the world (7.14).

MERCY IS SOMETHING WE MUST DO FOR OUR OWN GOOD
But there is one more very important thing mercy does.   The ‘merciful’ are not only compassionate for the sake of the ‘least of these’---the helpless and the hopeless, but by being merciful, the ‘merciful’ are also helping themselves.  The merciful are blessed, Jesus says, because they ‘will receive mercy’ (5.7).    

There is a powerful story in the one of the greatest books of world literature, The Brothers Karamazov, written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, published in Russia around 1880.   It is a story about a woman who was almost saved by a single onion.  The story goes:

“Once upon a time there was a woman, and she was wicked as wicked could be, and she died. And not one good deed was left behind her. The devils took her and threw her into the lake of fire. And her guardian angel stood thinking: what good deed of hers can I remember to tell God? Then he remembered and said to God: once she pulled up an onion and gave it to a beggar woman. And God answered: now take that same onion, hold it out to her in the lake, let her take hold of it, and pull, and if you pull her out of the lake, she can go to paradise, but if the onion breaks, she can stay where she is.

The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her: here, woman, he said, take hold of it and I'll pull. And he began pulling carefully, and had almost pulled her all the way out, when other sinners in the lake saw her being pulled out and all began holding on to her so as to be pulled out with her. But the woman was wicked as wicked could be, and she began to kick them with her feet: “It's me who's getting pulled out, not you; it's my onion, not yours.” No sooner did she say it then the onion broke. And the woman fell back into the lake and is burning there to this day. And the angel wept and went away.” (As quoted in “The Ladder of the Beatitudes” by Jim Forrest, Orbis Books, 2011, p. Kindle Edition).

Hell is not to love anymore” says, George Bernanos.   Why would anyone want to be in heaven with different people if they don’t care for other people who are different?  And why would God reward someone with heaven who does not know how to be merciful toward another?   It doesn’t make sense.   As Jim Forrest rightly says, “Why would you want to be with people in heaven forever whom you have spent your whole life trying to avoid?”  

Are you a person of mercy?   Sometimes the best way to know something looks like is to compare it with the opposite.  In other words, what does an unmerciful person look like?    In modern literature and thought, few people have taken so hard and so close a look at ‘merciless’ evil as the Russian author and prison-camp survivor Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Was atheistic communism the worst, most unmerciful evil imaginable in our world?  In his writing Solzhenitsyn insisted that the human race is not divided between the good and the evil; rather that the division is in each of us.  He writes: “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either– but right through every human heart– and through all human hearts.  This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of hearts, there remains… an un-uprooted small corner of evil.  (Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), vol. 2, part 4, “The Ascent.”).

Do you have an ‘un-uprooted small corner of evil’ that is unmerciful in you?  Often we think that evil is something ‘out there’ that has to be stopped.   It can be.  But evil is also something in us, though it may only left ‘un-uprooted in a small corner’, it is still there, waiting to rise up in us.  Donna Eddy, a teacher in Milwaukee, while still a college student, had a pizza-delivery job. One night her job brought her face to face with three boys who demanded the money she was carrying.  Two of them had small handguns– Saturday Night Specials, she later found out. “All I had was twenty dollars belonging to the pizza company. It wasn't my money; I didn't care, but I didn't take them seriously. Those guns looked like toys to me. As far as I was concerned, they were just kids playing a game. So I just got back in the car. Then one of the boys pointed the gun at me and started to cry. ‘But I could shoot you,’ he pleaded. I decided I'd better give him the money, but he didn't give me a chance. He pulled the trigger.

The gun made such a little noise, just a pop, not like what you hear in the movies. I felt this hot pain, like a pellet gun. “Thank God those boys ran as fast as they did or I would have done some terrible harm to them. I gunned the engine and used my car as a weapon, chasing after them. It took me about ninety seconds to come to my senses. I thought to myself, What are you doing? If you catch up with them, are you going to run over them? “So I drove to the police station, but all they did was tell me I was a fool for delivering pizzas in that part of town. I still didn't realize I had been bleeding– I told the police it was just a pellet gun. But they said a medic should take a look. It was only at the hospital that I realized that I'd been shot!”

Donna was lucky. The bullet had hit her belt buckle, angled off to the side, tunneled between two layers of skin, and then come back out. It was a superficial wound but a life-changing experience. “That was the day I learned I had the potential for that kind of violence. For ninety seconds of my life, primitive rage ruled. If I'd had a gun, at least one of those boys might be dead today.”  (Jim Forest, IBID, Kindle Locations 1203-1211).

However you come to understand what Jesus meant when he said, “Blessed are the merciful”, what you must never fail to grasp is that learning ‘mercy’ is just as important for your own sake as it is for God’s sake, or for the sake of needy world around us.  One more story, a much less violent one is perhaps even more instructive. Recently on an air flight from Disney World, a Canadian family and their Autistic child were on a connecting flight to Canada.  The family is always nervous about flying, because Mouland, their Autistic daughter’s   behavior can be unpredictable.   Fortunately, on this flight she was seated next to a man, Eric Kunkel, a business man from New Jersey, who put down his work, and for the entire duration of the flight (2.5 hours), entertained Kate by allowing him to fiddle with his iPad and played video games with her.  Being most thankful for help and ‘mercy’ from a stranger,  Mouland’s mom when home and posted and ‘open letter’, entitled “Dear Daddy in seat 16c” thank him kindness show to their daughter. (http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/businessman-befriends-autistic-girl-flight-makes-everyone-39-235300300.html).

It doesn’t make much in life to ‘test’ our true colors and prove ‘who’ we are.   When they interviewed the businessman on T.V. news, tears came to his eyes and good feelings flowed all over him, because of what he had done, even without fully realizing it.   That’s exactly what Jesus meant, when he told us:  “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink….?  ...Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me”  (Matthew 25.40).   Without realizing it, those who are merciful will receive exactly what they give and they, says Jesus, will end up truly ‘blessed’, both in life, and in eternity.   Amen.


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