Have Mercy

"Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy."

Mercy is a word I'm going to focus on in 2018. I'm going to look for it in my daily Bible reading, and I'm  going seek to grow in understanding it. What does God say about mercy? How important is mercy to God?

O course it goes without saying (but I'll say it) that mercy is very important to God.

"He has told you, I man, what is goodl and what does the Lord require but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God." Micach 6:8

That word translated "kindness" (ESV) is "mercy" in the King James ad many others. "Kindness" is perhaps a more down-to-earth word for mercy. And kindness, you may recall is one of the fruits of the Spirt (Gal. 5:22).

In fact, that passage, Paul's list of the fruits of the Spirit, provides me with all my keywords for 2018. These are the concepts I'm going to focus on in my Bible reading this year.

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

As I said in the last post, all virtues are foretastes of the Kingdom of God. Their "down-payments" of the Kingdom. But (to take today's example) what is mercy? I'm not going to rest on what I think I know about it. I'm going to ask the Bible to refine my knowledge of mercy, and all those other virtues listed by Paul.

That's the idea, anyway. The Spirit wants to raise up a crop of kindness/mercy in the children of God. May all of us grow in mercy in the coming year.

More thoughts on Matthew 12:7

I'm still thinking about Jesus' words, "And if you had known what this means, 'I desire mercy, and not acrifice,' you would not have condemned the guiltless." [Matthew 12:7]

Jesus is quoting Hosea 6:6. It is God speaking through the prophet to his people. He says of them, "Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes away early." Their love was not "steadfast." It was passing. It was probably "situational." You have to figure h[out whether the love is deserved. Whether it is "worth it." Whether the cost is too high or not. O whether, perhaps, it'll just get boring after a while.

But getting back to Jesus. When Jesus questions or even rebukes these Pharisees, I have a feeling that we modern readers tend to fall back on what we've learned about Pharisees back in Sunday School, about how they were legalists and all that (supposedly), and then we feel a pleasant glow of satisfaction in watching Jesus put them in their place. All this, of course, is so as not to let the rebuke fall on us.

So I want to ask myself this question: do I know, do I really know, what it should mean to me that God desires mercy and not sacrifice?

This is the question that the text should force us toward. Have I understood the love of God at all? Do I rest on the mercy of God when mercy is what I most need, but require sacrifices of others when they sin against me (or maybe just bother me a little)? God loves me as I am, or so I like to say. But as for you, I certainly wish you'd change your ways (sacrifice) and then maybe I can start to show you some love.

I have this feeling that when Jesus talks about love and mercy, that's always a key passage. That's always a case of Jesus getting right down to the nitty-gritty. We're following Jesus, day after day, sitting at his feet,  hearing his teaching. Again and again, he comes back to this. Did you hear that? It reminds me of what he said about loving your enemy. Your enemy!

And if you think, dear Christian, that you can sus out how and when to apply this teaching, and when not to, then you have not understood it at all. The first need is honest self-assessment. No, I don't believe I have understood what it really means that God desires mercy and not sacrifice. One reason I know that I haven't understood it: I haven't lived it. My mercy is like the morning dew.

 I believe, though, that if I am to grow in understanding on this matter . . . understanding what it means for me, and how to live it out . . . I am going to need to keep following Jesus, keep sitting at his feet and drinking in his teaching. There is no other way.

Some thoughts on Matthew 12:1-8

It's chapter 12. Jesus and the disciples go through the grainfields on the Sabbath. Some Pharisees pose their "biblical" objection. This is not the first encounter with objectionists. Back in chapter 9, when Jesus told a paralyzed man, "Your sins are forgiven." "Wait, What?" was the reaction of some Scribes who were there.

Jesus' answer for these people always has something to do with his own identity. The objectionists need to deal with the question of who Jesus actually is. The answer to that question is not exactly stated directly, although Jesus keeps calling himself the Son of Man, whatever that might mean. Here, when Pharisees object to Jesus and his disciples "doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath," Jesus once again answers with a clue, a hint, as to his own identity. First, he puts himself on a par at least with David (12:3-4). Then, with the priests in the temple (12:5). Then comes the statement that really makes me sit up and take notice.

I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. And if you had known what this means, 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the guiltless. For th Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath. (12:6-8)

 I suppose this is blasphemous stuff. If I'm a disciple following Jesus, a good and observant Jew all my life, I might be having some doubts about this man. I might be wondering if I've chosen the right teacher. But of course there is this to keep in mind: the man himself. If anyone else had said these words, ok then. But it's Jesus. Who in his mercy has healed so very many. And whose teaching is something I simply can't pass by with a shrug of my shoulders or a cynical eye-roll.

And even here, in this encounter with the Pharisees, there is this: "And if you had known what this means, 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice.'"

And do I know what it means? Do I, me, this non-Jew who never set foot in the Temple, never had anything to do with sacrificial systems . . . or have I? . . . do I too need to learn what mercy really means. When I hear the words of God, 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice," do I simply smile and say, "You tell them nasty Pharisees, Jesus!" Or do I, perhaps, wonder if this is something I too have never really understood? And if not, who then will teach me?

I think I'll follow along with the Teacher a little longer. But I get the feeling that this matter of mercy, mercy and not sacrifice, is something that, if truly understood, may just undermine everything I've ever learned, and maybe even the very systems on which human society sustains itself.

More thoughts of this "Evangelical" Christian in the aftermath of 11/8

First, a few links:

• The Evangelical Immigration Table. Boy, are they swimming upstream! May their like prosper.

• I have thought fleetingly of dropping the term "Evangelical" as my own self-description as a Christian. Just because, especially since 81% of us just voted for Trump, the term has come to have associations that actually impede the progress of the Gospel. To put it another way, because of these associations, the term becomes a barrier between me and others when I may have an opportunity to share my own testimony. But here is one who says no, despite everything, he's sticking with the term.

• Then there's this author, who says, "If only Jesus were the stumbling block and scandal to the Evangel, not White Evangelicals’ political uniformity."

My take: As a Christian, I'm going to lean toward mercy, and that must be reflected in my voting as in everything else. As Hauerwas says, "the Gospel is not information, it is a way of life." In other words, there should be no separation, no conflict, between faith and doing. And that includes voting. We like to rail against legalists in our theological conversations, but when it comes to the real world we are often the stiff-backed legalists. Like secular Pharisees we keep on supporting new and more stringent laws and see no reason not to fill our jails with yet more people, always under the guise of love-of-country. Since when, though, does patriotism trump mercy in the Christian conscience. In the name of patriotism some of us now want to throw people in jail for burning the flag. 

But as I was saying, I'm going to lean toward mercy. I tell you, something greater than the legal code is here. Something greater than ICE is here. Something greater than Republican lock-step is here. Something greater than fear of being associated with the liberals is on the scene. Something greater than border walls and KEEP OUT signs. Something greater not only than Make America Great Again hats, but greater even than America. Greater than identity politics. The love of God, when it once enters our hearts, makes us strangers and aliens ourselves. Our stake in this country is not as rooted as our stake in the Kingdom. In the Kingdom we are rooted, in this world we are wayfaring strangers. And it is because we are strangers that we welcome the stranger.