It’s Pentecost weekend. The rehearsal, worldwide, of the gift of the Spirit of God for the healing and wellbeing of the world. But we feel so terribly wounded and broken today. We are so terribly wounded and broken. The COVID19 disease and the dis-ease of racism are both pandemics that threaten life and society. This week another black man in America, George Floyd, was murdered by a Minneapolis cop, while begging for mercy. The nation is burning with rage. How can we talk of mercy in a society where mercy is denied so many people? I don’t know. But I know I must. I feel rage too. Mercy doesn’t come easy for me. And yet, Jesus calls me and us to it. I hope Jesus’ wisdom might help us forward. If it doesn’t, if we’re left to our own reactions and rage, there’s little hope for us. I pray on this weekend, that the Spirit will move among us and guide us toward a way to remake the a better world for all.
The Beatitudes of Jesus are eight wisdom sayings that stand at the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. They are not moral teachings as much as they are soulful riddles that invite the hearer into a new way of being human. They are an invitation to see, from the inside of our lives—from our souls—what it could mean to be truly human. At this time of such a massive reassessment of human life on this planet, the Beatitudes, what I call, "Novel Attitudes," could point the way to a better way of life for our communities and our world.
1.
Since April 26th, we’ve been reading essentially the same text from the Gospel of Matthew. It’s a story and a collection of wisdom sayings we call the Beatitudes of Jesus. The word, beatitude, is related to the word, beatific. Beatific is an adjective; it means to be blissfully and blessedly happy. These wisdom sayings of Jesus are called Beatitudes because each of them begin with the word, “Blessed are,” which could also be “Happy are,” or “Blissful are.”
The particular wisdom saying we’re meditating on today could read, “Beatific are those who practice mercy, for they will receive mercy.”
“Blissful.” “Happy.” “Blessed.” Words that don’t fit very well with the way most of us feel these days.
I doubt those who heard Jesus speak them long ago felt the words fit their reality either. A group of Galilean peasants, scratching out a fragile existence in the face of the many threats to their lives: any bliss they tasted, any happiness they knew was probably terribly fleeting.
Like us, they yearned to be “blessed,” “happy,” “blissful”—more than for just a moment.
Like us they longed for a world where everybody gets to eat good things, where nobody goes without a home, where no child is unable to sleep because they’re afraid, where there’s health care for everyone, where jobs provide meaning as well as income, where nobody gets run down and shot for going for a jog, where no one has to cry, “I can’t breathe” and beg to no avail for mercy, where governments work for all God’s children, where science and religion and art dance together, and where we live and work as one for the flourishing of the Earth, our common home.
We yearn for these things. So did they.
Scripture says that “nature itself waits with eager longing for the revealing of a people who will bring this about.” The biblical witness says that “the planet groans as if in labor pains, waiting for the human race to become what God dreams we can become” (Romans 8.19, 22).
There is a deep and timeless yearning for the beatific—to be blessed, happy, blissful.
But will we help bring it about? Will we help meet the yearning of the world?
2.
Jesus says, “Beatific—blessed, happy, blissful—are the merciful for they will receive mercy.”
With this wisdom saying Jesus introduces us to the rule of reciprocity—a rule that works either for the ruining or the remaking of the world.
A little later in his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus will put this rule this way:
‘Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgement you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.” Criticize someone else and you just open yourself wide for criticism. Be dismissive, intolerant, bigoted, or cruel to someone else and these things have a way of coming right back at you.
You get what you give and what you give you get back.
The rule of reciprocity. What goes around comes around. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matthew 7.12).
3.
Later in the Gospel story, Jesus—who has taught the masses to live God’s dream for the world—is confronted by a group of ruffians stirred up to no good by the government which felt threatened by Jesus’ revolutionary views; they weren’t on board with Jesus’ dream for a better world. The mob came to take Jesus to the leaders; they came to intimidate his followers.
It’s night. They’ve come with flaming torches and weapons. They’ve come expecting a fight; they know this is injustice. They know what their leaders will do with Jesus: a sham trial, a beating, maybe a lynching.
But, Jesus, doesn’t react with violence. He’s living the rule of positive reciprocity; he knows what goes around comes around; “do to others as you would have them do to you.”
But one of his disciples isn’t. He’s living by the rule of negative reciprocity: “an eye for an eye.” The rule of violence and of power. The disciple pulls out a sword and stabs one of the mob members. Jesus says, “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will die by the sword” (Matthew 26.52).
Mahatma Gandhi once said, “An eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind.”
The rule of reciprocity: your actions can be negative or positive, they can ruin the world or help remake it. So, if you get what you give, and what you give, you get back—if what goes around comes around—why not give something that makes the world better, not worse?
4.
“Blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy.”
What kind of world could be make if mercy is what we give out, and mercy is what we get back, if we weave mercy not hostility into this tapestry of our human connection?
We’d have the world we long for, the world of God’s dreams—where everybody gets to eat good things, where everybody has a home, where all children can sleep because there’s nothing to fear, where everyone has health care, where jobs provide meaning and income, where everybody, no matter who they are or where they’re from or what they look like or who they love can take a jog or walk the street or go bird-watching anywhere they want without fear. We’d help make a world where there’s no one at the top because there’s nobody at the bottom, where we live and work as one for the flourishing of the Earth, because the Earth is our common home.
“Blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy.”
5.
Without mercy we’ll stay stuck inside a dog eat dog world, where “an eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind.”
I confess that it often feels easier to live inside that harsh world. Maybe it’s not easier; maybe it’s just more common. Maybe it’s a deep rut so well-worn it’s hard for any of us to climb out of it.
When someone offends me or hurts me or threatens someone I love, my first response isn’t merciful. When someone is minimized or illegitimized or dehumanized my anger flares, I can get my fight up and enter the battle as quickly as anyone else. And that battle may be one that needs to be entered. Anger at injustice is legitimate. Boundaries against abusers are appropriate. Demands for justice are a human right.
It’s what we do with our anger that matters. It’s what we do with our boundaries that makes the difference. It’s how we achieve justice that determines our fate. If we draw swords, we perpetuate the cycle of violence; and that makes us dangerous. If we turn our boundaries into walls we get stuck inside our fortressed lives; and that only makes us small. If we work for justice in the same way justice was denied us we become tyrants.
Those who learn to practice mercy are not people who don’t get angry; merciful people are not people who don’t set boundaries. No. Merciful people have come to know that in every human heart there’s a battle raging; inside every human mind there’s often a debilitating fear and shame; inside every human being there’s a soul that yearns and needs to be loved.
Mercy is the road we must take to make a better world. But mercy isn’t easy, mercy isn’t soft.
6.
One of you wrote me this week and allowed me to share part of our interaction. “Pastor,” you wrote, “the killing of George Floyd on Monday is wrecking me. The assaults on black and brown people in this country has got to stop. The vitriol and violence is epidemic. I don’t know what to do about it. I feel so puny. So powerless. And then there’s my concern for everybody who’s suffering because of this virus. I’m so angry. So afraid. What do I do? What do we do?”
I read that and took a big breath. I feel that too. I’m asking those things too. What do we do?
First, we feel these things. To ignore them, no matter how messy or unpleasant the feelings are, is unhelpful. What we feel is real. What we feel tells us something. Feelings of anger, hatred, fear, and powerlessness all tell us something is not right. And those feelings have enormous power, either for harm or for good. Feeling them doesn’t mean we have to act on them. Feeling them just makes us honest about what we’re experiencing in the world.
Second, we allow our feelings to be an act of prayer. The Bible teaches that “the Spirit helps us in our weakness.” When we do not know how to pray, when we do not know what to do, when we are overwhelmed by our feelings, we are actually connecting with God through those feelings. This is what the Holy Spirit does. When we are feeling things deeply we are intertwined with the divine Spirit. Saint Paul says, “in this way the Spirit of God is praying in and through us with groans too deep for words” (Romans 8.26). Our feelings are wordless ways the Spirit prays in us.
Third, we hold hard to Jesus’ rule of reciprocity. What goes around, comes around. Negatively or positively. What we do can ruin us or remake us. And so, we choose to “do to others as we would have them do to us.” We choose not to perpetuate violence and vitriol. We choose to set boundaries that protect us and others from the haters and abusers. We recognize our anger and notice not only what causes it but what energy it awakens in us. We acknowledge our fear and where it comes from and what it can do to us. We realize when we are getting triggered and drawn into the patterns and habits and assumptions about others that will only perpetuate the problems. And then we decide to live the rule of positive reciprocity: mercy generates mercy.
And when we practice mercy we’re making a better world.