Episode 1. Blessed are the Merciful
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We all know what mercy is. It’s when someone gives us a break, cuts us some slack, forgives us, when we don’t deserve it. And have you noticed what a blessing it is to be on the receiving end of …
We all know what mercy is. It’s when someone gives us a break, cuts us some slack, forgives us, when we don’t deserve it. And have you noticed what a blessing it is to be on the receiving end of some mercy. After all, mercy is only mercy when you don’t deserve it.
And it’s right in that place, when we don’t deserve it, that we need people to cut us some slack. But let’s put the shoe on the other foot for a moment. How are you at showing mercy to others? You know, to those people who don’t deserve it? Hmm?
I was chatting the other day with a good friend of mine, Paul, who’s a magistrate in the children’s court here in Sydney. I’ve always been intrigued at what it must be like to have to make those sorts of judgements, the judgements that a judge makes or a magistrate makes on the bench day after day after day, to do that for a living.
As he shared the sorts of cases that come before him what struck me was the tragedy of so many of them, the incredible human tragedy. See so often you and I maybe we watch or listen to the evening news and we hear about this murder or that rapist or the latest tit for tat gang land shooting and we judge those people so quickly, we do.
And of course when people are found guilty of crimes like that you have to look at the crime and say, “That’s terrible and yes the people should pay the price of justice.” But as Paul shared some of the tragic circumstances that some of the children who come before him have grown up in, you have to say, “There but the grace of God go I”. If I’d grown up with those abusive parents who taught me their trade of crime and violence would I be at all different to the kind that Paul just put away for knifing someone?
It’s a dilemma isn’t it? It’s a fine line. On the one hand crimes have to be punished but on the other the circumstances in which people are born, in which they grow up and live, often those are 99.9% of the cause. It’s why the courts often take those circumstances into account. So why is this so difficult? Why does justice walk a fine line?
I guess when we’re the judge albeit through the evening news we’re much more likely to come down on the side of a heavy sentence. Punishment, retribution, why should that murderer walk free after just twenty five years in jail?
But this is what I think about. What if it was me being sentenced by Paul? What if I had committed some terrible crime in a fit of rage or stupidity or because of something that happened to me in the past? What if that was me standing in that sentencing dock? What if it was you? Guilty for the whole world to see but with this terrible, terrible, unspeakable pain in our hearts over what we’d done, with a remorse beyond words.
If only we could turn the clock back. If only we could undo it. If only we could take it back. If only in that instant we hadn’t done it. So there you are standing in the dock awaiting sentencing, you never, ever thought the shoe would be on this foot. Not in a million years did you imagine that you would ever find yourself in this place.
You’re trembling, shaking like a leaf, pale, detached and the judge opens his mouth and he begins to pass sentence. What’s the one thing you want to hear come out of the judge’s mouth? I’ll tell you what you’d like to hear, I know what I’d be looking for. I’d want to hear compassion in his voice. I’d want to hear him speak words of mercy, wouldn’t you?
Okay let’s snap out of that terrible scenario and come back to the here and now. Do you feel your quick to judge attitude towards those people on the news is maybe just a bit rash, a bit harsh? It’s all about what foot the shoe’s on. Have a listen to Jesus unpack this terrible reality. Matthew chapter 18 beginning at verse 21:
Peter came to him and said, ‘Lord if another member of the Church sins against me how often should I forgive them as many as seven times?’ And Jesus said, ‘Not seven times, I tell you seventy seven times. For this reason the kingdom of heaven can be compared to a king, a king who wanted to settle accounts with his slaves.
When he began the reckoning one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought before him and as he couldn’t pay his lord ordered him to be sold together with his wife and his children and all his possessions in payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before the king saying, ‘Have patience with me, I’ll pay you everything I owe you’. And out of his pity for him the lord of that slave released him and forgave his debt.
But that same slave as he went out came upon a fellow slave who owed him just a hundred denarii and seizing him by the throat he said, ‘Pay what you owe me’. Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, I’ll pay you.’ But the first slave refused and then he went and threw the second slave in prison until he could pay the debt.
When his fellow slaves saw what had happened they were really distressed and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘you wicked slave, I forgave you all the debt because you pleaded with me. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow slave as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he could pay his entire debt.
So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you if you don’t forgive your brother or sister from your hearts.
Wow, what a story and it’s a story about which foot the shoe’s on. It’s a story about judgement and mercy and you and I are that first slave, you and I are the one who’s been forgiven everything by God but we then refuse to forgive just little things that people do to us. The one who’s been shown mercy and yet refuses to show mercy in return.
Do you feel you’re quick to anger, quick to judge, slow to forgive? Attitudes been put fairly and squarely in the spotlight here, do you see them for what they actually are? I do and frankly it makes you and me both squirm in our seats because Jesus is cutting right to the bone here, Jesus is dealing with something that needs dealing with in our hearts, in our attitudes and in our actions.
Last week we were chatting about the strange blessings that Jesus talked about in His famous Sermon on the Mount. Blessed are the totally spiritually bankrupt, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and justice and today we’re looking at the very next one in that list. Matthew chapter 5, verse 7:
Blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy.
And when you listen to that story of Jesus, that parable, this blessing doesn’t need anymore explanation than that does it? It’s pretty obvious. God’s a God of mercy, God pours His mercy and forgiveness out on us, a huge cost to Himself, at the cost of the death of Jesus Christ on that cross and all He asks us in return is to keep pouring that mercy, that love, that forgiveness out on other people.
But, but, but that person who hurt me deserves what’s coming to them. Of course they do, that’s the whole point. You can only show them mercy if they don’t deserve it and every time you and I show mercy it costs us something, it costs us being right, it costs us getting our own way, it costs us getting compensation or justice or retribution or whatever we’d like to call it.
Mercy can only be shown and received when it is not deserved. If it was deserved it will be right and mercy always costs us something when we show it and give it. Those are two laws of the universe that God created because mercy is an attribute of God, Psalm 103, verse 8:
The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
As I was praying earlier the thing that I prayed is that you and I when confronted with hurt and injustice would remember that picture that I painted of us trembling in the dock awaiting sentence. That you and I would remember that we have been forgiven our sin through Jesus. That you and I would remember the heart of God through that parable of Jesus. That you and I would remember the words of Jesus when He said:
Blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy.
Mercy ain’t always easy to give but there is such huge blessing when we show mercy.
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