4/17/55
Who Can Be Merciful?
Scripture: Matthew 9: 1-13.
Text: Matthew 5: 7; “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”
There is a considerable appeal in the fifth beatitude: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” Some would rate it a favorite. We have to explain the “poor in spirit” before we can appreciate them. Likewise, it takes some explanation to see any blessedness about “mourning.” We must learn that “meekness” is not weakness, before we can conceive much happiness about it. But there is a spontaneous appeal about the merciful. One side of our nature responds to the suggestion of magnanimity; and another side of us likes the anchor-to-windward in the thought that, if we are merciful, we shall obtain mercy!
As in the case of so much else in his teaching, Jesus was, in this beatitude, underlining and illuminating Old Testament teaching which he knew so well, and could count on other students of the Scriptures to know. On one occasion, when His “hecklers,” the Pharisees, chided his disciples about his eating with sinners -- thus ceremonially defiling himself in their eyes -- he referred them to the prophecy of Hosea. In that prophecy, God is represented as saying: “I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: [Hosea 6: 6]; for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” Doubtless he treasured in his mind as well the assurance of another prophet, Micah, who had written: “What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with they God?” [Micah 6: 8].
So our Lord had in mind the sayings about mercy, which were already the heritage of the Jewish people, as he strove to make this quality real in the lives of his hearers. No doubt they praised the quality of mercy. And we praise this virtue as well. When we think of God, the quality which makes His nature most lovable to us is His mercy.
And yet, though we praise mercy, it is a difficult virtue. Kindness may be at the core of creation, but it is too simple and superficial for us to say that all this old world needs is the “simple art of being kind.” For the art of being kind is not so simple. It calls for study, and for a practice that is difficult.
Perhaps it helps us to understand the beatitudes if we remember that Jesus took for granted certain other cardinal virtues: wisdom, temperance, justice, courage. He might have included, in the list of “blesseds,” some of these other virtues: “Blessed are the brave,” or “Blessed are the just.” But he evidently assumed these.
Jesus’ teaching in the beatitudes, and indeed in the whole Sermon on the Mount, urges upon us an ethic that is beyond the ordinary, and far in advance of any legalistic minimum. He would say, bluntly and directly, “Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” [Matthew 5: 20]. He asked, repeatedly: “What do you do more than others?” So when he gives to his hearers and followers these beatitudes, among them, “Blessed are the merciful,” he is talking about virtue beyond the ordinary.
Ralph Sockman says that mercy begins in compassion and sympathy. The Good Samaritan in one of Jesus’ parables, pitied the victim beside the road. But pity might have stopped there. Quite likely the Levite who saw the same victim, but hurried, pitied him too. It could be that he even shed a few tears of sympathy. But mercy takes action, and it was the Samaritan who acted. [Luke 10: 30-37].
And, too, mercy has its connection with justice. We may pity a person without passing judgment on whether or not he deserves his suffering or his punishment. But to be merciful to him means that we show compassion over and above what the sufferer or the sinner may deserve.
Mercy involves justice, for justice stabilizes a sympathy that might be otherwise spineless. If, for instance, a father tries to be generous and forgiving, without trying to be just, he is likely to demoralize the character of his child.
Some of us remember the personal testimony of a man, son of a store keeper, who said that, as a child, he had taken change from his father’s till. When he could no longer endure the guilty feeling he had of having done what was not right, he went and told his father directly what he had done. And how did the father react? Well, he was a kindly man who immediately forgave the boy. But his wisdom included some justice. He told the boy to put back his earnings until he felt that he had replaced what he had taken. I addition to his forgiveness on the spot for the young son, the father offered to pay the boy 25 cents an hour for the boy’s work thereafter. The boy was first to work out his debt to the business; then he would thereafter be paid in cash for his work. The father’s mercy included instantaneous and full forgiveness; it also included a helpful and understanding provision for the boy to earn his money rather than be driven by continued temptation to take it. And it included the proviso that he return, out of his labor, that which he had taken. The love and the justice which went into that father’s understanding and action, made it an occasion of comprehensive mercy.
If a judge were to dispense mercy without justice he would soon make a mess of law and order. The “good-hearted soul” that pours out philanthropy without regard to study of what is fair in the situation may prove more upsetting than uplifting.
Suppose that your neighbor owed you a thousand dollars, and in the goodness of your heart you said to him, “I’ll forgive the debt; forget it.” And suppose you owe another neighbor a thousand dollars, and you go to him and say, “I’ve just forgiven this man his debt to me. Will you not therefore cancel my loan?” And suppose that kind of generosity spread from person to person, would that guarantee a stable and equitable society? Or would it rather be demoralizing?
I know of a church in a midwestern state that was so heavily in debt that it seemed able neither to pay its interest nor its principal payments during the Great Depression of the 1930s. A new clergyman came to direct its affairs. He was of the authoritarian tradition. He may have been one who could offer comfort and solace to his parishioners. But his sense of ethics did not prevent him from putting a cold proposition to the banking house that had given the church the loan. The proposition was simply this: “We can’t pay the loan. You’ll have to foreclose. But obviously, you don’t have any use for a church building. You couldn’t sell it to some other congregation, and it is of no use to any commercial buyer even if you had a commercial client. Anyway, you don’t want the ill will of a local congregation, and the whole denomination of which it is a part, through foreclosure proceedings. So suppose you just write off most of that loan and make out papers for a new contract calling for about one quarter of the former amount? We’ll try to pay that much.” Well, the long and short of the story is that the banking house took its loss and did settle for only a fraction of the debt. It was hardly an act of mercy. It was just a cold deal -- and no particular credit to the church and the clergyman that negotiated it.
I knew of another situation which was handled differently. One of the largest churches in the Congregational fellowship in this nation has been a church in Southern California. It has a tremendous plant covering a large city block, and when the depression struck, found itself with a debt of a half million dollars. 35 years ago, that was a lot of money! Distress was acute, and the danger was real that the congregation would lose its property. In 1935, the church called the Rev. James W. Fifield from Grand Rapids, Michigan to come and head its staff of ministers. He accepted this very challenging call, and difficult situation, and entered it with some solid convictions. I am not in agreement with Dr. Fifield in all matters, but I do admire his ability to inspire financial integrity. When the nervous and apprehensive and burdened chairman of the trustees of that church would bring up, during the next few months, the question that bothered him most sorely, Jim Fifield had one short, pointed answer. Asked, “What are we going to do about this debt?” Fifield invariably and unhesitatingly answered, “Pay it!” And the people of the congregation quit wringing their hands, settled themselves to a steward’s program of giving, and a workable plan of debt retirement, and did pay it, did save their church property, did save their self respect, and did satisfy their contract with those who in confidence in the church’s integrity had made the loan in the first place. Any lesser form of mercy on them would have been ethically demoralizing.
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Justice requires insight and understanding. And wise mercy is becoming to any judge.
Here let me comment briefly on a plea for “legal mercy” that now appears before our legislature in the form of a bill for relaxing the state laws on gambling. Enough of the state’s citizens believe that gambling has a demoralizing effect on people so that they have backed the legislation, during the past, which forbids gambling in certain specified forms.
Now there are interests which ask for relaxation of the law, to permit one form of gambling, that is, bingo games involving money, for the “benefit” of certain so-called charities, and for churches. How can any church accept such a relaxation of the law -- such a “mercy for fund raising” -- and still retain the right to pass ethical judgment on gambling? There are officials in some churches who apparently maintain that no ethical issue is involved. I dissent from that idea, as I think that most Protestant leaders do. I hope that the churches will have none of it. Nor do I think that any civic or patriotic groups or charitable organizations ought to have that kind of special privilege, exemption, “mercy” if you will, from the general provisions of the law.
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True mercy is related to justice.
Further, when we set out to “do justly and to love mercy” we very soon come up against the question of forgiveness. Just before the close of World War II, an Englishman, C. S. Lewis of Oxford, broadcast a talk part of which went like this: “Every one says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive, as we have in war time. And then to mention the subject at all is to be greeted with howls of anger --- ‘That sort of talk makes me sick!’ they say. And half of you already want to ask me, ‘I wonder how you’d feel about forgiving the Gestapo if you were a Pole or a Jew?’ So do I. I wonder very much --- I am not trying to tell you in these talks what I could do. I can do precious little. I am telling you what Christianity is. I didn’t invent it. And there, right in the middle of it, I find, ‘Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.’ There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made perfectly clear that if we don’t forgive, we shall not be forgiven.” So said C. S. Lewis.
The more we study what it involves, the deeper becomes the difficulty of forgiving. Does it not involve first, the foregoing of all private revenge? -- a willingness to remit the right to retaliate? Forgiveness is different from excusing, is it not? I may forgive a person for behavior which I cannot excuse because I still believe it blameworthy. Nevertheless, in forgiving I shall not hold his action in resentment. Perhaps I shall have enough of what Langeman called empathy to assess the situation rightly without getting involved in sympathy with it. Forgiveness is also different from pardon. Pardon can come only from one who has a right to sit in judgment. A judge, or the governor, may pardon a prisoner for his crime. I cannot pardon him even though I were the one he had wronged.
Legally, only the authorized government can pardon a crime; morally God alone can pardon a sin. Nevertheless, though I cannot pardon, I can forgive one who has done me harm or wrong. For forgiveness is a change of attitude within the wronged. Probably I must go one and pray to God for the pardon if I am really to forgive in the spirit of Jesus’ teaching. I may abhor the wrong; I will not excuse the evil; but if I be a follower of Christ do I not pray for the soul of the wrongdoer?
Christian forgiveness, so intimately connected with mercy, calls for that which overrides vindictiveness. That soul is too small which does not rise above injury. It is crippling to remember insults and harbor grudges.
Mercy faces its hardest task in overcoming the sin of being small.
Also, though mercy and forgiveness are just about the loveliest notes in the harmony of living, we spoil their appeal when we keep harping on them.
“The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed;
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes.”
So goes the insight of the poet, William Shakespeare, in “The Merchant of Venice.”
Who can be merciful? Those who can receive the teaching of Jesus to “Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you.” [Luke 6: 27, 28]. -- Those who will forgive without “contracting” that they must be forgiven in return. -- Those who know that pardon is for God and constituted authority; -- that right is still right and wrong is still wrong, though the evil-doer be forgiven --- that mercilessness begets mercilessness and that mercy begets mercy.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”
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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, April 17, 1955.
Also at an Infirmary service, October 9, 1963.
Also in Wisconsin Rapids, August 21, 1966.