MERCY DOES NOT CALCULATE

Merciless people often do calculate, plotting to get their own back,

In the TV comedy ‘Drop the dead donkey’ about a chaotic newsroom in London

there is one character, Joy, an Irish girl who despite her name

excels in being merciless.

She keeps a little black book for noting down

the people who have wronged her, the people who will be paid back.

In one episode someone apologises to her for having treated her badly

so she crosses his name out of the book and then almost as an afterthought

she gets out a heavy gardening glove and reaches into his desk drawer

 to remove the poisonous spider she had placed there.

Not a person to get close to, you conclude

but it’s not just the merciless who indulge in tit for tat and little black books

There’s a kind of calculating mercy about which is chilly & joyless.

It is also tit for tat.

Do we ever say to our friends?

I’ve done you a good turn, so you most do something for me

Do we ever say to God?

‘Look, I have been merciful to that man in the street.  I bought a Big Issue

or I gave a fiver to famine in Ethiopia

so God, you have to be merciful to me.’

That’s not how mercy works.

That’s not what the beatitude means.

What it means is that we instinctively show mercy to others

because we know God’s overwhelming undeserved mercy to us

What is mercy?

It is being treated in a way you don’t deserve, it’s very similar to what grace is.

Mercy and grace are very close to each other, their meanings overlap

If grace is the attitude that God takes to us

loving and forgiving us although we don’t deserve it

mercy is grace demonstrated in action, grace getting its hands dirty.

Mercy is about healing and freedom.  It’s about forgiveness and compassion.

It is something that is overflowing and that is central to the heart of God.

God has always treated his people throughout history with mercy.

God saw the affliction his people in Egypt and came to liberate them.

God stuck with them through the rebellious wilderness wanderings.

In his justice and righteousness God had to allow them to suffer defeat,

but in his mercy he brought them back from exile and restored them.

And the ultimate act of God’s mercy was to send his son,

to save us when we could not save ourselves

‘In that sending, in that giving and obedience of the Son,

a tidal wave of mercy flows from the cross for all people, for all time.’

(Rev Ruth Patterson)

Doe God dole out his mercy?  Do we have to do him a favour first?  No.

But if we have received his mercy it should show in the rest of our lives.

Jesus told a story about a man who was let off an immense debt by the king.

To try and pay it off he and his wife and children were to be sold into slavery

but the king had mercy on him and forgave him his huge debt

But what did the man do, freed from his own huge debt.

He went out and met a friend who owed him just a few pounds

and he grabbed him and began to choke him.

‘Pay back what you owe me.’ He demanded

It was no use the other man pleading for time.

He had him thrown into jail until he should pay the debt.

What did the king say to that unmerciful man:

‘Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’

And he had to pay back everything he owed.

God’s mercy to us should make us merciful

And if we are unmerciful, ungenerous, tit for tat people

keeping a note of wrongs done to us

expecting rewards for favours we do to others

then that suggests we have a very weak grasp if any grasp at all

of God’s immense mercy to us.

Jesus is telling us in Luke 6:35-36

that mercy should not be and cannot be worked up, it is the family characteristic.

‘Be merciful, just as your Father in heaven is merciful’

Isn’t it true that children who reared in an atmosphere of generosity

are much more likely to be generous than children of mean parents

brought up where every good action was weighed and doled out sparingly?

Well, we can’t do much about our family background in the past

but we can do lots about our involvement in the family life of God.

We can begin to appreciate more and more

how generous and merciful God is to us in Jesus Christ

and we can begin to reflect that generosity and mercy in what we give to others

Practical test:

how do I react when have chance to throw the book at someone I don't like?

Am I vindictive,

looking for "pound of flesh" or willing to temper justice with mercy?"

In Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice unmerciful Shylock is defeated

in his demand for a pound of flesh.

Why is he so unmerciful?  There is a long history of ill treatment

Shylock gives a moving account of  the tit for tat mentality

"if you prick us, do we not bleed?  If you tickle us, do we not laugh?

If you poison us, do we not die?  If you wrong us shall we not revenge?

The villainy you teach me I will execute

and it will go hard but I will better the instruction"

The tragedy for Shylock is that he cannot break out

of that vicious circle of precisely measured revenge.

Irish history  has its own sad lessons about lack of mercy.

Be it 1690 or 1916, each side and every generation has its memories of some atrocity to breed more atrocities.

Do we wonder why does trouble go on,

even with some movement towards peace?

People are absorbed in calculating revenge rather than in showering mercy.

The principle is the same,

in Ireland, Israel, Palestine, Bosnia Serbia, Afghanistan

there is a great need for generosity and mercy.

A need to pray that people overlook generations of grievance, injustice

and learn to trust each other and a find a new way forward.

This is not easy; the word is out that mercy is for wimps

and we need strong vengeful action.

Listen to this from one American journalist:

‘We know who the homicidal maniacs are.

We should invade their countries, kill their leaders

and convert them to Christianity’

As if that is actually going to work, converting to Christianity people

whose country you have invaded and whose leaders you have killed.

There’s no mercy there and little wisdom.

But listen to Jim Wallis, an American Christian teacher

who has made this response to the present tragedy

‘We must find a way to make this a "teachable moment"

rather than merely a blame game.

We must speak of the need

to drain the swamps of injustice that breed the mosquitos of terror,

but without seeming to justify or excuse the utterly inexcusable acts

we witnessed in New York and Washington.

To be a real international effort against terrorism,

it must demonstrate a new compassion, generosity of spirit,

and commitment to justice precisely toward

those people who have been abandoned and abused.

Yes, let us stop bin Laden¹s plans to hurt more people,

but then let us undertake a massive and collective effort

to keep the people of Afghanistan from starving this winter.

Such a dramatic and public initiative would clearly demonstrate the relationship

between halting terrorism and removing injustice.

Suffering people everywhere would see the clear signal,

and the recruiters of pain would be dealt a death blow.

‘a new compassion, generosity of spirit,

and commitment to justice precisely toward

those people who have been abandoned and abused’

that’s being merciful

But what about you and me?

In regard to those near to us, those we meet and know

whatever about the world situation

are we merciful, generously forgiving, not calculating towards them?

Before this table that reminds us of the sacrifice and mercy of Christ

can we have any other attitude?

Lord, as we would come to your table

let us appreciate truly your great mercy

forgiving our unpayable debts.

And let that appreciation be shown in the way that we treat others

May you freely receive and freely give