Mercy is measured out as a gift

To give means a whole lot of things. To give is to grant, to accord, and to allow. We grant mercy to another. We accord another with the benefit of the doubt. We allow another to make mistakes and learn from them. The traditional notion of giving, giving people things, is still in there. We supply and furnish our family and friends with the things that they need through how we grant, accord, and allow. 

We go beyond the things that they might ask for. In fact, those thing requests are expected from us. Jesus is talking about us seeing what people need to be holy. The way to discover their path to holiness, and ours, is to measure how mercy should be granted, accorded and allowed to the people we’re related to and the people we call our friends. 

What do we grant people, accord to them, and allow them? Sure, we should give them things too, like muffins, but that’s not the full description. How do we grace people with mercy? The same mercy that God gives us. That means, of course, that we must be experienced in God’s mercy to know this.

Is our God merciful or judgmental?


http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/031819.cfm
Daniel 9:4B-10
Luke 6:36-38


We measure all sorts of things. Measurement may well be the most comprehensive analysis we engage in. We figure out the time things take or the gaps between things across the full spectrum of life. We count, weigh, and gauge the stuff we have and even the ideas we come up with. Determining distance, size, quantities and averages takes place in our thoughts, our inventories, and our plans. 

Consequently, our life is full of measuring tools, from computational gadgets stuck in our office drawer that we haven’t used in years, like a slide rule or a protractor, to futuristic laser devices that attach to our phone and will end up in that same drawer next month, and show up ten years from now as an archaic memory.  

We measure in order to make comparisons in a general sense, like figuring out the temperature, so we know what to wear. Measurements are also critical for how much money we should spend or earn, how far we should go to buy important items like gas and education for our kids, and more intricate things like the adjustments we make when we change octaves in a song, and the pros and cons of one computer application over another. 

We are constantly determining the most important of calculations, and the most mundane. Measurements help us to figure out the value of things, and then what to do with that information. Measuring stuff is inescapable.

Tax season presses hard at this very moment. Expenses, income, deductions, asset depreciation, and balance sheets identify our status within the broad range of all other taxpayers. Different rules apply to the amounts of money we either make or spend in all kinds of areas. It’s not just our income that regulates what we owe the IRS. Our age, our housing, our family size and our dependencies dictate specific percentages regarding hundreds of taxable moments. These must be properly measured on every 1040 and 1065.

What we practice in gauging things spills over quite often into our appraisal of each other. We adopt standards of behavior and composure that helps us to get along. This can go too far, though. If we count the number of people we know, and how old they are, and how long we’ve know them, that’s one thing; but if we organize and order our friends and family into categories of good and bad, ranking them by either their usefulness or their intelligence or their holiness, we go too far. 

We all know this. And yet, we find ourselves sometimes wishing everyone would act like we expect, and not be so difficult. Just like the ominous worry of taxes, we undergo the frustrating weight of people. Most people are just too much trouble. They’re not doing the things we think they should be doing. We can’t help ourselves to be judgmental.

We treat each other like muffins. Evaluating the different kinds of flour to use in making muffins, for instance, requires a knowledge of the intricacies of grains, how protein binds, how yeast ferments, and how cooking at different temperatures affects the ultimate outcome. People, though, are not really like muffins. If we apply the same principles about each other as we do the makeup of muffins we might make life easier. We could assess the value of people much easier. Which muffins are good, and which are bad. Knowing the intricacies of a person’s heart, mind, and soul, and their life’s traumas and joys, however, is way beyond our capabilities.

In fact, we’re not the final judge on muffins any more than we’re the final judge on people. Opinions and personalities of people, and how they are made up, do not rank in the same way as the recipes, manufacturing, and flavor of baked goods. We’re pretty awful at taste tests. So, how do we think we’re capable of ranking people? 

We’re arrogant. We’re lazy. Not many of us are true muffin aficionados. We just randomly decide not to eat blueberry muffins anymore. We say we’re tired of them, or they don’t taste the same as they used to. We treat people the same way, but people don’t deserve the muffin treatment. God sends us people differently that he sends us muffins. 

People are the most varied and unique beings in God’s creation. Our filters for annoyance with people should operate on a different plane than everything else that we measure. So says Jesus, though the muffin analogy is all mine.

Our scripture for today catches us a bit off guard because Jesus highlights the importance of not taking measurement to a place of condemnation, and the way to do that is to not measure people at all. That’s an absurdity, of course, because we measure people all the time. The distinction, however, comes down to measuring people by the ruthless and hard-hearted part of our assessments of each other through judgment and condemnation, as if people were just muffins.

Deciding that we won’t eat another blueberry muffin for the rest of our lives is probably extreme, but it’s not that important. Deciding that a person we know is no longer lovable, and in fact must be condemned to everyone we know, is not only extreme. It is unmerciful. Who do we think we are? “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. … forgive and you will be forgiven.” We are not God, but we act like we think he is. 

Somehow our measurements of each other, our assessments of each other’s faults and failures, reflect exactly how we measure ourselves. We might misread the scriptures when Jesus say, “For the measure with which you measure will in returned be measured out to you.” We might think Jesus is saying that God is going to turn the tables on us and evaluate, judge our existence by the same ruler that we use.

Well, Jesus does seem say that, but the previous verse, Luke 6:37, gives us how God actually measures things. God will not cruelly judge and condemn us. He’s not like us. We are supposed to be like God, because being merciful like God takes us, and those people he gives us, in a completely different direction. “Give, and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing will be poured into your lap.” God’s measurements do not concentrate on judgment, but on forgiveness. Not condemnation, but mercy. He acts with over-abundant giving. 

“Give, and gifts will be given to you.” He’s not just telling us what not to do, but what to actually do. Give.

To give means a whole lot of things. To give is to grant, to accord, and to allow. We grant mercy to another. We accord another with the benefit of the doubt. We allow another to make mistakes and learn from them. The traditional notion of giving, giving people things, is still in there. We supply and furnish our family and friends with the things that they need through how we grant, accord, and allow. We go beyond the things that they might ask for. In fact, those thing requests are expected from us. Jesus is talking about us seeing what people need to be holy. The way to discover their path to holiness, and ours, is to measure how mercy should be granted, accorded and allowed to the people we’re related to and the people we call our friends. 

What do we grant people, accord to them, and allow them? Sure, we should give them things too, like muffins, but that’s not the full description. How do we grace people with mercy? The same mercy that God gives us. That means, of course, that we must be experienced in God’s mercy to know this.

If we do not give in the way Jesus explains we will be left with judgement, condemnation, and restraint. We will refrain from mercy. Our measuring tools for dealing with each other come down to implements of mercy or implements of judgment. 

In this way, we also mete out mercy or judgement to ourselves, measuring ourselves for condemnation or for mercy. We do this because that’s the way we view God. We judge ourselves like we judge others, in respect for the way we believe God judges us. 

How do we think God acts? We refuse mercy upon ourselves just like we would refrain to be merciful to others. God measures according to mercy, which comes from forgiveness. Everything about God has to do with granting us mercy, a gift in the three ways of giving — granting, according, and allowing. God gifts us in overwhelming abundance. He grants mercy, accords us the wisdom to know him, and allows us to learn and grow as we do.  

We will do the same for each other as we understand how God treats us. We will be like God. Is our God merciful? 

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