Not our mercy, but the Father's

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/022618.cfm
Daniel 9:4-10
Luke 6:36-38

How many times do we need to be reminded of the admonition to be merciful? 

There’s a theory (which I just made up) that the more difficult concepts for us to not just grasp but also to apply can be ordered in their importance by the number of references noted in scripture. The more times that God repeats in scripture a concept or teaching through a word or verse or chapter, then the more weighty is the admonition. And, (as the theory is further fabricated) the more weighty the admonition then more difficult is the concept or teaching.

Putting my just made up theory into practice both difficulty and weight are at play regarding mercy. We’re in trouble both grasping what it means for us to be merciful as well as applying it. Someone counted out the number of times “mercy” comes up in scripture. 454 times. Someone also counted out how many times we are specifically asked to forgive and be merciful like the Father, in order for the Father to be merciful to us. That’s 44 times.

And, in each of the 44 verses the consequential result of how we respond — as merciful or as judgmental — comes clearly defined. One (being merciful) comes with really great rewards, beyond any wordy superlative I can come up with, and the other (being judgmental) triggers the most terrible and terrifying outcome. The incentive carrot handily surpasses the penalty stick.

The two big mercy verses for me are today’s verse in Luke, 6:36-38: Forgive and you will be forgiven. … For the measure with which you measure will in turn be measured out to you. And second, the phrase in middle of the Our Father as written by Mathew 6:9: forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

The mercy admonition compares well with the 20th Century win/win strategy that marked so many negotiations, mostly around sales activities. The determining question for win/win asks, “How do we both get what we want?” Most of us become skeptical about win/win negotiations, because we’ve been trained to believe someone always loses. The human experience teaches us that people often, and even eventually, resort to lies, cheating, manipulation, and ultimately bold and beastly threats to get what they want. We respond in kind to such maneuvers. The more we end up in win/lose conflicts the more skeptical we are about win/win. We eventually learn to respond with our own lies and threats just “to survive” as we view it. 

This sounds a bit extreme, and it certainly is. Do we all act in such awful ways? Unfortunately, more than we would like to admit.

What does this have to do with mercy? How we envision mercy, its purpose and its result, impacts how we operate in the world and how we believe that God operates with us. God repeatedly tells us that the Father’s mercy toward us depends upon our interpretation of how we believe the Father treats us. In fact, our interpretation and subsequent behavior of judgment, condemnation, and forgiveness — the stuff of mercy — defines more than what we think about mercy. How we judge, condemn and forgive — how we expect and thus offer mercy — will be how we interpret God’s mercy upon us.

No matter how much God loves us and how wonderfully he treats us, we will not be able to accept it if we measure judgment, condemnation and forgiveness according to our own calculations. This is the danger that God continually warns us about. The only way to be sure that we don’t judge and condemn improperly is to stop judging and condemning. The only way to be forgiven is to forgive. Give gifts to others, and gifts will be given to us. These are the hallmarks of mercy. Because of our God-given free will, God will not force us to be like him. We must not just agree to this, but we must allow God to intimately form us by radically excising our practiced evil natures, and then to engage us in unimaginable restorative acts. The carrot (gifts poured into our laps) is our incentive.

I believe that the established processes of conflict in our lives dictates our patterns for operating with each other. If we primarily get what we want through win/lose exchanges, then we eventually see human exchanges as win/lose. Just makes sense. So, if we enter conversations, negotiations, and interactions with other people, suspecting that somebody is going to be humiliated, disregarded, blamed, or bankrupted, then we act accordingly. 

Mercy from such a skeptical position means that if we win, we back off from destroying the other person. Our view of mercy becomes skewed. We’re intent on being the “better” man and woman. If we lose, we pray that the other will not leave any visible bruises on our psyche, bodies, reputations, finances and honor. We also hope that we can withstand, with courageous visibility, that we are the “better” man or woman for our upstanding character. We lose gracefully, and are elevated because of it.

God sees mercy differently than this. God is always win/win. Consequently, to God mercy naturally flows from the love relationship that God has with everyone and everything that he has created. God does not lie, cheat, manipulate and threaten. We cannot fully imagine such a goodness. Such goodness is the exception to the rule. It’s actually unbelievable. In all honesty, we relate to God as if he was like us, because we can’t truly believe that he hasn’t become disgusted with us, jaded over our unrelenting sinfulness. Children often believe their parents feel this way about them. There are times when this is true. God does not look at us this way.

Because of our doubts about true goodness in the face of tragedies and sin, a litany of weariness from our daily dose of dreary news, God gets measured by our win/lose analysis. We translate Jesus’ life as being at the losing end of the win/lose battles in his birth, his ministry, his avoidance of public recognition, and his eventual death. Given our balancing of life on a scale of winners and losers, we highlight Jesus’ behavior as courageous and patient rather than loving and Spirit-filled. We see him as the “better” person in conflicts rather than the forgiving brother, the humble rabbi, and the obedient son. In his verbal debates, where he chastises the Pharisees, the apostles, the sinner, and the wealthy, we see a conquerer, a master philosopher, rather than an exemplary teacher, divinity on view, undaunted by evil. 

The two extremes of win/lose behavior are to avoid conflicts altogether, or to race about with our swords sharpened and rattling. Mercy, when viewed with a win/lose attitude about life’s exchanges means we either strike out to crush our opponents, or we sacrifice ourselves to save others. As John Sorensen told me another extreme takes place. In the face of conflicts, many of us freeze, unable to act at all. We are shaken into inaction by our history of disturbing wins and painful loses.

In the case of emulating the Father’s mercy we’re talking about intimacy at the deepest of levels. Creator to creature, where the creator sets up the exchange between us by saying that we should be merciful because he’s going to reward us beyond our wildest dreams. 

Perhaps we’re looking for a higher reason for being like the Father. We should emulate Mother Teresa or Gandhi or Buddha, and so on. We should be philosophers or saviors or martyrs. We may imagine ourselves unworthy to be like these great ones. 

These people are fine, but Jesus told us to be like the Father. The Father told us to listen to Jesus. The Spirit whispers the ways that we should go. God is with us now. We have a living, loving Father walking with us.

We are each saints in the making. Compassion, peace, and contemplation come through our relationship to God. If we let him, he’ll fashion us into what we always wanted anyway. God teaches us when we forgive and give gifts. These behaviors have no place for the time-consuming processes of judgment and condemnation. The most difficult of concepts, like mercy, are like that. They are reformative, transparent, and even foolish looking. They come with simple sounding expectations — forgive and give gifts. 

God's truths in concept and word come to us as admonitions that may seem offensive and paternal. Well, they are. This is the eternal Father we're listening to, through the brother we have in Jesus. The Holy Spirit will not let go of the Father's admonition. Our hearts and minds have this written out as many times as God knows is necessary for our understanding.

Forgive and you will be forgiven.
Give and gifts will be given to you;
a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing,
will be poured into your lap.
For the measure with which you measure
will in return be measured out to you.