Beatitudes: Blessed Are the Merciful

Grace is loving someone when there is no reason to do so.
Mercy is loving someone when there are reasons not to do so.
I am thankful for the grace God has shown toward me.
I am even more grateful for the mercy I have received.

Jesus was a person of both grace and mercy and paid a price for both. One of the major sources for the criticism he faced and the hatred that ultimately led to His death was the people He loved and befriended. The late John Claypool, one of the most brilliant ministers I have known, used to say that “Jesus died for sinners historically as well as theologically. They hated him because of the folks he ran around with.”

There came a day when a woman of ill repute began to wash His feet with her tears, dry them with her hair, then anoint his feet with perfume while the religious leaders stood with their noses in the air saying, “He can’t be from God or He would know what this woman was and would not let her touch him. He is a fake.”

Or the time they brought a woman caught in the act of adultery and threw her at His feet demanding to know what He thought they should do. He wrote in the sand and I hope He wrote, “Where is the man who was also caught?” I envision them standing there and of tossing their stones up and catching them ready to start the stoning, and Jesus grabbed one out of the air and held it under one guys nose while saying, “He who has no sin let him cast the first stone.” The stones began to drop and they stalked away in anger. He made no friends that day. Mercy is costly.

The church world of today is not comfortable with mercy. I am not sure they even like grace all that much if it is bestowed on folks they do not like. We want folks to suffer for their sins. We live in a world of the caught being judged by the uncaught.

Even if we are never criticized, much less crucified, for showing mercy there is still the struggle over when is it right to show mercy and when is it just being cowardly and soft on sin? I was raised in a world of If I did not condemn a wrong then I was condoning it. As a result I have spent a lot of my life in conflict over showing mercy.

If you will pardon the personal story, I never intended to become what some folks call a counselor. I don’t claim that title at all. I am more of a companion to people who are hurting, but I did not intend to even be that. Somehow people have always just told me their troubles. I do not know why but it has always been that way. All I have ever known to do was just listen and I have found myself listening to some unbelievable stories and companioning some very guilty and even mean people. Murderers, thieves, drug users, people who hate almost everyone, and enough adultery to write a soap opera.

Confidentiality meant I could not expose them nor take action. Being willing to listen and try to help them change meant I was giving mercy and feeling guilty for doing so. I began to wonder if I stood for anything, or against anything. I was even accused of that in a deacons meeting. It was an inner struggle I never shared and it ate at my insides. Then I had an epiphany.

I was speaking at a mental health conference on teen suicide and had a break out session after the speech. At that session I placed a red bucket on a table and told them that I was a fifteen-year-old boy and the bucket represented my thoughts, my feelings and my fears. I asked them to share what thoughts would be in a fifteen-year-old’s bucket. The majority said sex.

The fears were the same, fear of not being built like other boys and guilt about sexual thoughts and actions. We more than filled the bucket with thoughts fears and feelings.

Then I asked them where I could find safe people to talk to about those thoughts, feelings and fears. It became evident that safe people and safe places were far too rare and that no doubt had an impact on teen suicide.

Then I said, “Let me change the scene. I am a fifteen-year-old boy who is afraid that he is a homosexual. Now what is in my bucket and where are the safe people for me?”

Almost immediately a hand went up in the back of the room and a man said, “I am a youth director in a church. What if what that young man is doing is wrong?”

Then came the epiphany that cleared up a life time of wondering and guilt. I said, “You know I don’t have to worry about telling that young man he is wrong, even if I believed that he is. There is no shortage of people willing and ready to do that. So if I don’t tell him someone certainly will do so. The shortage is of folks who are safe enough for him to talk to and who see no need to judge. My job is to love. God’s job is to judge.

Now if everyone was like me the world might go to Hell in a hand basket but I think my place and calling is to be a safe person and I intend to spend my life doing that. In the Old Testament there were cities of refuge where people could go even if they were guilty and be safe. I want to be like that as long as I live.”

Jesus said Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy. I do not think that was a quid pro quo sort of a deal that claims if we show mercy then others will show it back to us. I think it is when we show mercy we become merciful people. Like I often say, “When we go out and act like God acts we come back feeling like God feels,”

When I look back on my almost 86 years and the thousands and thousands of hours I have spent companioning folks I have to say that most of the things I treasure about my life and most of who I am today and most of how I feel about people today is the direct result of the times I dared to show mercy.

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EIGHT ATTITUDES OF SOME SALTY CHRISTIANS

Attitude one: Keep an open mind.
Attitude two: Be open to the comfort of others
Attitude three: Trust the power of love
Attitude four: Know the goal and thirst for it
Attitude five: Dare to show mercy