3/22 Lenten Midweek Meditation

"Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy." (Matthew 5:7)

In the 1983 film Tender Mercies, there are two main female characters who live vastly different lives. Dixie is a successful country music star who performs in glittering outfits to crowded rooms full of adoring fans. Rosa Lee, on the other hand, lives a modest life as the proprietor of a gas station and motel in the middle of the Texas prairie. Tying these two women together is Mac Sledge, a former country singer battling his addiction to alcohol.

Dixie was deeply hurt by her early marriage to Mac. He was an angry drunk who beat her in front of their only daughter. Unable to forgive Mac or herself, she ends the film confined to her luxurious bed with sorrow, when their daughter marries an alcoholic and then dies for her choice in a car accident. However, Rosa Lee encounters Mac later in his life when he's at his lowest point. As he climbs toward sobriety, and even baptism, the two grow closer, marry and heal as Mac begins writing songs again and becomes a father to Rosa Lee's boy, Sonny.

As the title indicates, Tender Mercies has much to do with the nature and practice of mercy, and the story is useful for exploring tonight's beatitude: "Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy."

Let's start with what mercy is not. In the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant, a master begins calling in debts from his slaves. When one slave who owes a large sum is unable to pay, the master determines that the slave and his family and his possessions should be sold into in order to recover the debt. However, the debtor begs the master to be patient, and the master not only consents, but forgives the debt entirely. Immensely relieved, the slave leaves the master's presence only to encounter another slave who owes him a small sum, and he chokes and threatens his debtor. The other slave begs for his lender's patience, but the first slave, rather than show the mercy he's been shown, has the debtor thrown into prison until he can pay. Hearing of this, the master sends the forgiven slave to be torture until he too can pay off his debt.

This story reveals that mercy is not the same as fair judgment. The master would have been well within his rights to sell the slave with his family and possessions; even agreeing to be patient while the slave paid off the debt would have represented a compassionate response. Likewise, the slave was within his rights to send his debtor to prison; he had no legal obligation to be patient. However, mercy is not legal "fairness." It is not even a simple kind of forgiveness that calls it even and lets it go. Rather, mercy is extravagant compassion that overflows out of the recognition that we ourselves have received mercy. And when the mercy stops with us, we condemn ourselves to the torture of isolation and greed.

The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant also reveals that receiving mercy is not relative to what we do or don't do. The slave doesn't receive his master's mercy for being an exceptionally hard worker, just as Jesus doesn't heal the lepers because of their generosity, or cause the blind man to see because he observes the law of Moses to the letter. Mercy is also forgiveness in the sense that it forsakes blame. In recent months, Rick and Kay Warren of Saddleback Church in California, have begun emphasizing not just the renewal of the Church in the U.S. through their "purpose-driven" series, but also through the Church's obligation to address the AIDS crisis in Africa. At a recent conference at their church, Kay observed, "Jesus never asked anyone how he or she got sick—only the Pharisees did...If your compassion level goes up when you know it wasn't someone's fault, then there is something wrong." She speaks to the fact that we all know AIDS is often transmitted through consensual sexual activity. While our instinct may be to blame those who become sick as a result of careless sex, a merciful response forgets to place blame while remembering to show boundless compassion in meeting a person's deepest immediate needs. Again, mercy defies our demands for fair judgment and emerges regardless of a person's responsibility for his or her situation.

Mercy is not fair judgment and neither is it sacrifice. Twice in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus reminds his hearers of Hosea 6:6: "I desire mercy, not sacrifice." Where sacrifice motivates us out of a quantifiable obligation, mercy emerges from a love that burns like an eternal flame in the core of our beings and motivates us to conduct that warmth to others. With an attitude of sacrifice, we give to others only to see the hole left in our lives by the sacrifice of time or money or possessions. With an attitude of mercy, we give to others out of an infinitely replenishable love that empowers us to give more and more mercy.

But where does this mercy, come from? I think that perhaps that question is a little like the one most of us have heard or asked: Where do babies come from? Before you think this is going to turn into a sex education session, bear with me. Neil Douglas-Klotz, in his book Prayers of the Cosmos, explains that

the key [Aramaic] words lamrahmane and rahme both come from a root later translated as "mercy" from the Greek. The ancient root meant "womb" or an inner motion extending from the center or depths of the body and radiating heat and ardor…. The association of the womb and compassion leads to the image of "birthing mercy."

The relationship of the word "mercy" with the image of a womb ties in nicely with the image we have of the Church as the Bride of Christ. Mercy originates with God, revealed in Jesus Christ. Christ, in a sense, "impregnates" the Church with the experience of mercy and the charge to make that experience fruitful. In this sense, mercy is an act of creation that begets mercy.

Just as there is an element of mystery to the process of conception and birth, there is also an element of mystery to the creation of mercy. Simplistically interpreted, our beatitude for this evening could lead us to believe that works of mercy occur in a one-to-one ratio. If I show you mercy, then you will show me mercy some day. If I show enough mercy to others, I will become worthy of God's mercy. But however much we desire a mathematically accurate path to salvation, the balance of mercy is infinitely more complex than this. Just as we create children who eventually become independent of us, works of mercy create a culture of blessing that has effects beyond what we can control or see. When we are merciful, we change the world and create life against the forces that exist even within our very own hearts that seek to create death. And it is in the merciful transformation of the culture around us, motivated by our experience of God's perfect mercy, that mercy comes to be received by us, less like an even trade, but more like the air we breathe.

In closing, let's return to Tender Mercies. At the beginning of this meditation, I set up a contrast between Dixie, a successful woman who was unable to create a culture of mercy around her, and Rosa Lee, a humble woman who birthed mercy to the extent that it changed her world and the world of those around her. Where Dixie is left asking, "Why has God done this to me?", Rosa Lee is left thanking God for all of the tender mercies that she has received, in spite of the pain of losing her husband at the age of 18. Though their life situations are vastly different, Rosa Lee embodies an ability to desire mercy, not sacrifice. When Mac Sledge lands in her hotel, hung over and penniless, she lets him work off his bill and stay on to grow into a good husband, good father and good mentor. Mac, in turn, learns how to show mercy through his relationship with a young, struggling band. Motivated by the mercy she has received, Rosa Lee changes the world and sets into motion a movement of mercy that goes rippling right over the edges of the film.

"Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy" is not a tit-for-tat prescription for good spiritual health, but a description of God's Kingdom coming into being here and now. Rather than creating a reward system whereby one earns mercy from God and others by being merciful, this beatitude refers to the creation of a culture of mercy, in which the giving and the receiving of mercy are as ubiquitous as air and as natural as breathing. God—Ultimate Reality—is merciful and we welcome that reality when we embody it as a nurturing mother produces new life. In doing so, mercy becomes and lives to transform people and communities. When we are "fruitful and multiply" mercy, the reality in the Kingdom is that we will experience it ourselves, for "blessed are those who, from their inner wombs, birth mercy; they shall feel its warm arms embrace them."