Blessed are the Merciful

There are two forms of mercy: what we might call “active” and “passive”.

Active mercy involves giving help to someone who has no claim on your help. The parable of the Good Samaritan illustrates this kind of mercy: the Samaritan helps someone who is not only a stranger but even from a different ethnic group.

Passive mercy, on the other hand, is when you do not destroy your enemy when you are able, when he is “at your mercy.” A good example of this is the two instances where David could have killed Saul but spared him.

Of course there is really nothing passive about this kind of mercy. It involves an active desire for good and, in David’s case, a willingness to trust God to keep his promises.

There is an old parody of a passage from the 23rd psalm that goes like this:

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil: for I am the meanest b*****d in the valley.

This quotation embodies the idea that the best way to go through life is to be so strong that nobody will be able to beat you. You cannot afford to depend on anyone but yourself.

Ironically, a sense of weakness emerges from this view: you cannot afford to spare your enemy, because he can rise up and destroy you. Mercy can only arise from confidence that it will not lead to your own destruction.

There is a Jet Li movie called The One. In the final scene of the movie, Yulaw, the antagonist, is confined in a prison. He wants to be “the One”, and ends up fighting with literally everyone else in the prison. They all keep coming, swarming him as they attempt to displace him from his position at the top of a pyramid.

In this scene we see that the attempt to control your destiny with strength and violence engenders unceasing violence and constant danger.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

The source of strength from which mercy springs, in this beatitude, is the confidence that you will obtain mercy when you need it. As a result, you do not have to be “the meanest b*****d in the valley.” You do not have to win every battle and take every step you can to prevent your enemies from destroying you.

Even more, this blessing is conditioned by the realization that I may at some point need mercy. In other words, in extending mercy to an enemy or to someone who has no claim on me for help, I identify with him. I bridge the gap between strength and weakness, and I acknowledge that I may one day be as weak as I am now strong. I see myself in the other person, and I thereby become capable of loving my neighbor as myself.

A merciful person can relax and abandon violence. Mercy opens up the possibility of relational redemption. An enemy to whom you show mercy may — though this is not certain — become a friend. But violence never even offers the possibility of this kind of redemption.

An example of the way this can happen can be seen in an account I read some years ago.

Women working at a Crisis Pregnancy Center were surprised one day to find that people from an abortion clinic had come to picket their center. The picketers said they were tired of being picketed all the time and wanted the other side to experience how they felt.

The people in the Crisis Pregnancy Center were in a bit of a panic, since this kind of thing had never happened to them. But one of the older women there said, “It’s cold outside. Why don’t we bring hot coffee and donuts and go offer it to the picketers.” They did so and were able to strike up fruitful conversations with the picketers.

From this account we can see the way mercy brings blessing. Instead of creating anxiety and conflict, the response of the women in the Center allowed for building relational bridges. It even created possibilities that did not previously exist.

God’s word is creative. When God speaks into a situation, he “… calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Romans 4:17). God’s word brings life to dead situations.

Thus when we hear a word of God, the more radical and unrealistic it is, the more it embodies God’s creative power. To love your enemies, to pray for those who persecute you — this seems like an unrealistic way to deal with conflict. And yet only in this way can life enter into a situation that is ruled by death. God’s word opens up the possibility — not the certainty; God does not take away our freedom — of redemption.

All of the beatitudes are like this. God brings counter-intuitive, counter-cultural words that show the way out of the vicious cycles in which we trap ourselves. Mercy is one powerful way that God does this.

In fact, God considers mercy such a powerful idea that he himself stakes the entire plan of salvation on mercy. Romans 11:28-32 outlines this; Paul concludes by saying, “For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.” Mercy is God’s chosen way to interact with humanity, and he blesses those who follow suit.