Matthew
18:23-33
The
problem with being merciful is that you can only show mercy to somebody who
doesn’t deserve it in any way, shape, or form.
That’s the nature of mercy. If
someone has done something wrong and it’s understandable, you can forgive them,
but mercy goes farther than that.
Let me
use two car accidents as an illustration.
In both of them, I got rear-ended and in neither case was it my
fault. One time I was sitting at a red
light in Harrisburg and I heard brakes squeal and then a “thump” and then a
split second later felt a second thump that pushed me forward. The car behind me had been hit, and then
rolled forward into mine. I had no
trouble forgiving the driver behind me.
He had done nothing wrong.
The
other time, I was sitting at a red light in Lebanon when my back bumper was hit
sharply. I looked up and there was a
State Police car in my rearview mirror.
I pulled over and got out, as did the trooper-in-training who was
showing obvious signs of remorse.
“I’m so embarrassed,” he said.
“You’re embarrassed?” I told
him. “I’m the one at the side of the
road, with a State Trooper writing my information.”
“I get it,” he said, “but I have to
report this and then I’ll have to repeat the last month of my training.” I could forgive him, but the only person who
could have mercy on him was his sergeant, and that was not going to happen.
Jesus said, “Blessed are the merciful…” and
that involves risk, because to be merciful means setting aside the rules of
crime and punishment and even of justice, and doing it at your own
expense. That’s the problem with
mercy. It costs more than forgiveness –
a lot more – and its returns are not as immediately certain, at least not in
this world. Mercy is a totally risky
virtue. It goes so far as to risk
everything in order to change someone else and the way that they live at the
deepest level, and sometimes the person responds well and sometimes they don’t.
Mercy is what the king in Jesus’
parable offered to his servant. He
forgave him all his debt. [Matthew 18:27]
Then the next thing that servant did was to find someone who owed him
far less than he had owed the king, grab him by the throat, and demand, “Pay what you owe.” [Matthew 18:28] That was exactly what the king had not wanted
to happen, and when he heard about it, he was angry.
(A bit of advice, here: if you can
avoid making God angry, avoid it.)
The point of mercy is to make more
people merciful, because the fact is that we all need it. When we get that through our heads and into
our hearts, good things begin.
Victor Hugo’s novel, Les Miserables, is all about the life of
a man named Jean Valjean who was sent to row an oar on a prison galley because
he stole a loaf of bread to feed his hungry nephew. On his release, which was itself a miracle,
he was marked as an ex-convict and no one would have anything to do with him
until he met a bishop who invited him to sit down at his own table and gave him
a place to stay for the night. In return
for that, Jean Valjean got up before dawn, stole the bishop’s silverware, and
ran. Later that morning the police
stopped him in a routine patrol, found the silverware, and took him back to the
bishop’s residence. Hauled into the
house, the bishop looked at him, then picked up two silver candlesticks and
told him he was glad to see him again, because he had forgotten them and now he
could be sure he had those, too.
“’Now,’ said the Bishop, ‘go in peace. By the way, when you return, my friend, it is
not necessary to pass through the garden.
You can always enter and depart through the street door. It is never fastened with anything but a
latch, either by day or by night.’
Then, turning to the gendarmes: --
‘You may retire, gentlemen.’
The gendarmes retired.
Jean Valjean was like a man on the point of fainting.
The Bishop drew near to him, and said in a low voice: --
‘Do not forget, never forget, that you have promised to use
this money in becoming an honest man.’ …
‘Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but
to good. It is your soul that I buy from
you; I withdraw it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give
it to God.’”[1]
That is what mercy is about.
That is
no different from what Jesus did on the cross for any of us. He did it without the certainty that his
mercy would make us merciful, but that was part of his hope. He offered himself in our place as the person
with whom all the terrible things in the world would find a stopping
point. He offered to take the
consequences for us, even though we did not deserve it, even though we did not
ask him to do it, even though we were hardly aware of our need for mercy, even
though we thought we could just go on with things as they are, unchanged and
unredeemed. Instead, he calls us out on
our sin with a word, not of judgment, but of mercy. “Father,
forgive them, they do not know what they are doing.” [Luke 23:24] Like a baby, who knows nothing but how to receive
love, we receive it, and then learn as life goes on how to return it, and then
how to show it even to those who do not love in return, we grow into the mercy
that comes from God and flows into human life.
At
least, that is what God hopes for us and expects of us. It cannot be forced. It must come from the heart – from yours and
mine. And when it does, that, too, is
God’s grace and God responds by adding more for us to share. “Blessed
are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” [Matthew 5:7]
[1]
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables, chapter
12. http://www.online-literature.com/victor_hugo/les_miserables/26/
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