Mercy

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy (Matthew 5:7 NASB emphasis added)

And He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’ I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 18:9-14 NASB emphasis added)

ἐλεέω (eleeō) — Mercy

I am a man in need of mercy. Of this fact I am ever more keenly aware… 

But to better appreciate the nature of mercy I have had to gain an understanding and recognition of mercy’s particular characteristics, its nature, to grasp how mercy differs from other virtues such as kindness and generosity. Helpful to this endeavor has been an effort to picture in my imagination examples of mercy, beginning with the simple and working on towards the more complex before seeing how these examples square with episodes recorded in the Gospels.

The first example is one common to most of us.

Picture yourself behind the steering wheel of your car. You come to a stop sign. Your destination requires that you turn left. The problem is, the road you are turning onto is one of the busiest in town and you’ve hit it at the time of day when traffic is heaviest. So much so that, if someone doesn’t cut you a break, chances are you’ll be there for several minutes. After what seems like forever you begin to mutter in frustration, “C’mon guys. Give me a break. Show a little mercy!”

To your relief a fellow motorist, noticing a break in the oncoming stream of cars, flashes her lights and waves her hand giving you an opportunity to slide out into traffic and be on your way. Mercy at last!

But is it really?

We may have used the word, mercy, in our under-the-breath prayer but it may be misplaced. Perhaps what we wanted and got was simple kindness. The sort of act that accompanies someone who empathizes with our situation. Yes, it springs from compassion—but not towards someone who is guilty for we haven’t done anything wrong. We don’t owe the kind-hearted motorist a debt.

Or perhaps we do…

If you are like me, you’ve been a driver in both roles of the above example: that of one of many motorists on a busy road as well as the frustrated driver at the stop sign trying to gain a place in the pack. And again, like me, there are times when you’ve stopped to let someone out and other times when you’ve pressed on without cutting the other guy a break. If you’re part of the pass-‘em-by crowd then, like me, you’re guilty and in debt.

How so you ask?

Two commands quickly come to mind: Matthew 7:12 which admonishes us that, “In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you…” and Philippians 2:3 which says “…with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves.”

So perhaps, when it comes to this first example (which seemed to me at the time to be so simple) it is a case where we are all debtors one to another and all in need of giving and bestowing mercy in the everyday affairs of life.

The next example embraces a situation of greater consequence. The setting is this: Young Kevin hops on the skateboard he has just gained as a birthday present and, in his exuberance, rockets down the neighborhood sidewalk just in time to upset Mr. Smith who lovingly carries a new antique vase he has purchased for his wife. The vase is costly and one his wife has been admiring for months. It now lays shattered, a terrified Kevin quaking in his Nikes.

Kevin has no ability to cover the cost of the vase or replace it with another just like it. To make matters worse, his parents told him to wait until he reached the park before riding the new board, the neighborhood sidewalks being off bounds.

Kevin is a boy in need of mercy on multiple fronts!

And he gets it.

Mr. Smith remembers what it was like to be Kevin’s age, his mind presenting him with examples from his own past of a similar nature that he’d just as soon forget. He gets together with Kevin’s parents (eager to administer a hearty dose of corrective discipline!) and work out an arrangement whereby Kevin will mow his neighbor’s lawn free of charge for the remainder of the summer. Given what the consequences could have been, Kevin is the relieved recipient of mercy.

My third example presses the matter of mercy to even greater boundaries and against stronger opposing currents.

In the movie version of Les Miserables, the one with Liam Neeson playing the role of the convict Jean Valjean, there is a scene early on of great significance. Jean Valjean has recently been released from prison and carries documented proof that he is a convict. Such a past, at this time in the history of France, condemns Valjean to a life of widespread rejection. Entering a village at the end of a long day’s walk, tired and hungry, he has no expectation that anyone will give him either lodging or food. Yet he finds both, and a warm if wary welcome, at the residence of the local priest, a gritty man whose being permeates with the love of God.

During the night hours when the household is asleep, Valjean slinks from his bedchamber and begins shoving the household’s silver into his knapsack. He will steal from his benefactor and gain security for himself through the stolen ware. But he is interrupted by the priest before he completes the theft. Startled, he strikes his benefactor, knocking him to the floor, then flees into the night taking the articles of silver with him.

The next day finds the bruised priest working in his garden when the police arrive. They’ve caught Valjean redhanded with the stolen goods. Of course, Valjean claims that the priest gave him the silver as a gift and the police have brought him back, believing the claim the lie of a convicted thief.

One sees that Valjean expects the priest to discredit his story. He will again face time in prison. His first conviction, as he had related to the priest during the prior evening’s meal, was for stealing a loaf of bread as a boy when he was starving. Years of forced and brutal hard labor had been his punishment.

To Valjean’s utter amazement, the priest confirms to the police that the stolen silver is a gift and, his eyes locked on Valjean, declares to the bewildered man that, with the gift, he has ransomed him for God.

The recipient of such extravagant mercy, Valjean becomes a thoroughly changed man as born out by his actions over the remaining duration of his life. Through the priest’s act, Valjean finds the God of all mercy. Having done nothing to deserve the mercy that has been lavished upon him it undoes him.

So then, what is mercy if not action taken to relieve or lessen the distress of another who lacks the ability or resources to ameliorate their suffering. Although akin to kindness, in that it springs from compassion, mercy is kindness done to a guilty party, to one responsible for an offense.

But does such a definition hold up in light of the gospel record?

In the ninth chapter of Matthew we find two blind men seeking the Lord’s mercy that he might heal them of their blindness. In similar fashion, a Canaanite woman in chapter 15 and distraught father in chapter 17 seek healing for their daughter and son respectively. These are but three examples of many who sought the mercy of healing from the God-Man in their midst.

How does such requests for healing line up with the definition I’ve proposed?

In each instance, those seeking mercy lack the means to satisfy their own request: they cannot heal either themselves or the one they love. Such healing must come from One whose resources are limitless.

But do they who ask, ask from a position of guilt? Are they offenders seeking mercy from whom they have wronged?

I think the answer lies in the parable Jesus shared as found in Luke 18. The parable compares the mindset of two men who are praying to God in the temple: a Pharisee and a tax collector.

In the eyes of the Jewish culture of the day, the Pharisee was thought of as righteous and the tax collector a sinner through and through. Yet Jesus points out that it was only the tax collector, a man who beat his breast as he acknowledged his sinful state yet cried out for mercy, who went away justified.

Justified! The Greek word used here (dikaioō) reflects Jesus’ pronouncement that he declared the man righteous—not in a moral sense but in having a right understanding of himself in his relationship with God.

Not unlike the tax collector—and everyone else in the gospels who came to Jesus crying out for mercy—we are all debtors, helpless sinners in need of our Father’s mercy to draw so much as our next breath. And, conveying the truth about his Father, Jesus never shut his heart to any sinner who sought his help.

Mercy is one of the vital tributaries of love, a common coinage of divine currency. Those who recognize their own need of mercy and respond by showing mercy to their fellows are, as Jesus pointed out in the Sermon on the Mount, blessed.

James, Jesus’ brother who spent years with our Lord during his time on earth, points out a grand truth that often gets overlooked: “For judgment will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.” (James 2.13 NASB emphasis mine) 

~m