...are the Merciful... [5]- Neil Ryan
Date: September 24, 2006
Passage: Matthew 5:7; Luke 1025-37
Message: Blessed are the Merciful
Series: The Be-Attitudes [5]
At first glance this 5th beatitude of Jesus almost seems the wrong way around.
It should read …..blessed are those who are the recipients of mercy
It’s one of life’s great blessings when someone shows mercy on us.
But it’s not seen so much as a blessing to the one who has to show mercy!
I had a lady run into back my car this week.
We pulled over. It was not serious but I wanted to check for damage.
I jumped out ready to show mercy to the lady when the passenger opened the door and said in abrupt manner.
“There won’t be any damage”
“I’ll just have a little look”
“My car will have more damage. Why don’t you look at that!!”
“Lady, I’m not that interested in the damage to your car”
By this time, thoughts of mercy were draining out of me.
Then, as I went to look at my bumper bar, she said,
“Hurry up will you, we’ve got things to do.”
At that point I decided I would do a thorough inspection of the whole boot, bumper, under-carriage and anything else I could think of!!!
As I’ve thought about that, I have realised that being merciful has a subtle twist to it.
We often show mercy from a position of power!
Our offering of mercy can be laced with pride.
We do it from a position of superiority.
When someone doesn’t honour our big heartedness, like the lady in the car, our desire to show mercy waned very quickly!!
……blessed are the merciful
What is this thing called mercy?
Some words are better understood by DEMONSTRATION than by DEFINITION.
Love = I have been listening to sermons for 53 years and I know all the Greek words for love.
Eros, Philia, Storge and Agape but I would trade all those definitions for one demonstration of love!
Mercy = eleemon ….the Hebrew and Aramaic term, chesed
We get an understanding of mercy from Hebrews 13:2-3, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured as though you, yourselves were being tortured.”
The literal translation of the last part of that verse reads more like this, “remember those who are being tortured as though you were in their body”.
That’s different!
We talk about walking in people’s shoes.
But this goes beyond that.
Mercy climbs into someone else’s body!
Gone is our superiority.
We show mercy because we feel someone’s pain as though it were our own!
Gone is the need for us to feel like the good guy – for our first concern is the help alleviate the pain!
Jesus told this story that has become proverbial even in our society.
Somebody shows unexpected kindness they are dubbed as ‘the Good Samaritan’.
The key to the story is found in Luke 10: 36-37
In this story we discover some things about mercy.
1. Mercy SEES
It is interesting that Luke tells us that all 3 men SAW the man who had been beaten and left for dead.
See v31, 32, 33
Have you ever seen someone you didn’t want to see?
Own up now!!!
What do you do?
Run and hide so they don’t see you, or you don’t make any eye contact with them and hope they don’t see you!!
First two didn’t want to see what they saw right there on the road!
Interesting, because both of them had just come from the Temple.
Clearly their worship did impact their world.
The Word of God was clear to Priest and Levite alike…..
Hosea 6:6 says, “For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God [in day to day life] rather than burnt offerings.”
Micah 6:8 says, “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
Reality is – we prefer to see what we want to see.
We prefer to offer mercy if and when it suits us.
We prefer to offer mercy from a position of superiority.
Even with mercy, we like to exercise control!
Erma Bombeck shares an interesting story about a time that she was waiting for a flight in an airport. She was reading a book in an effort to shut out the commotion around her .
“A voice next to me belonging to an elderly woman said, ‘I’ll bet it’s cold in Chicago.’ Stone-faced I replied, ‘It’s likely.’ ‘I haven’t been to Chicago in three years.’ the elderly woman persisted. ‘My son lives there.’ ‘That’s nice,’ I said, my eyes intent on my book. After a few quiet moments, the woman said, ‘My husband’s body is on this plane. We’ve been married 53 years..’
Bombeck continues: ‘I don’t think I ever detested myself more than I did at that moment. Another human being was screaming to be heard, and in desperation had turned to a cold stranger who was more interested in a novel than in the real-life drama at her elbow. She talked numbly and steadily until we boarded the plane, then found her seat in another section.
As I hung up my coat, I heard her plaintive voice say to her seat companion, ‘I’ll bet its cold in Chicago.’”
In our compartmentalised lives, in our jealously guarded schedules, in our well deserved leisure time, in our highly competitive work lives….can we still see what God sees?
Remember when Jesus was in the crowd.
…..who touched me
Even in hurly burly and the crush of crowd, Jesus still touched by the plight of a desperate woman.
He saw a lady that noone else saw!
2. Mercy FEELS
…..he took pity on him [v33]
Now, this word that we translate as “pity” literally means, “to have intensity in the intestines.”
Once again the definition doesn’t really give us the heart of this does it!
If you were doing it tough and I came to you and said,
“I just want you to know I have an intensity in my intestines!”
I’m not sure it would make you feel any better!!
The people of Jesus’ day believed the seat of the emotions was not in the heart but in the digestive area of the body. The idea is also captured in Matthew 14:14 where it says, “When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, He had compassion on them and healed their sick.”
The word “compassion” means that Jesus was so moved that His stomach churned or literally, “His bowels yearned for the crowd.”
We still talk this way. When we are nervous we say we have, “butterflies in the stomach.” We say things like, “She hates my guts” or, “I’ve got a gut feeling about this.”
Whatever “body-part-word-picture” you use, Jesus was saying that this Samaritan was moved emotionally, internally, moved deep inside, by the needs of the wounded Jewish man.
Mercy that has not first moved us is mere patronising!
We are funny people – very few of us are good at admitting we need help.
You know why?
We are not sure what someone will do with our helplessness!
What they will think?
How they will deal with us?
But as soon as we know that someone feels what we feel.
As soon as we know that they feel it like it is their own pain …. We will become as vulnerable as a new born baby!
3. Mercy ACTS
Read v34-35
In the Broadway play, My Fair Lady, Eliza Dolittle is courted by a man named Freddy. Freddy writes her love letters every day. Eliza’s response to all of his love letters was to cry out in frustration,
“Words! Words! I’m so sick of words! Don’t talk to me of stars burning above! If you’re in love, show me! Don’t talk of love lasting through time! Make no undying vow. If you love me show me now!”
We live in a time when we think twice about showing mercy, especially to people we don’t know well.
We can no longer help people on side of the road like the Good Samaritan less we get sued.
We are not sure who to open our door to, or our country to, lest they mean us harm. Doors are bolted shut and our hearts are just as closed to the possibility of being merciful.
Maybe that what this lady expected.
Sue Westfall, a Presbyterian minister, serving as an associate pastor in Buffalo, NY. She woke up one morning to realize that she had slept right through church. You have to know this is every pastor’s nightmare. I can’t tell you how many times I have dreamed of this happening.
She woke up and rolled over and realized that she had actually slept through church and not just on any day either. It was the day on which she was supposed to give her first sermon at the 1800 member church to which she had recently been called. She had written and rewritten late into the night, which was probably what led to her unfortunate error in hitting the “Off” button instead of the “snooze” button.
She might have expected a less than merciful response from the Senior pastor on staff. She was more than a little bit intimidated by him anyway. He was a big man who had played football. His size, his voice, everything about him was imposing. She had seen him reduce a young candidate to tears on the floor of presbytery and she wasn’t anxious to see his reaction to her failure to show up for her homiletic debut.
She describes what did happen in this way.
“I lay there for a long moment, staring at the ceiling as a condemned man might spend the night before his execution – suspended between complete paralysis and the impulse to get in my car and not stop driving till I was so far away that no one could ever find me. Then I got up and called the church office. In the time it took for me to dial and for the phone to ring on the other end my racing mind rehearsed the possible scenarios that could make this in any way ok. I was in the emergency room and, thank God, the doctors thought that now that I had regained consciousness I would probably live. I’d been kidnapped, hands and feet bound and I’d just now worked the duct tape off my mouth…”
“The Senior pastor himself answered the phone in the middle of the first ring as if he had been crouched by the phone all this time, waiting to pounce. “I overslept,” is what I said. Just that! I overslept. My voice was flat and dry. There was a silence on the other end of the phone which lasted exactly one thousand years. When the one thousand years were over, the sound I heard next was laughing. Not a sneer-laugh but more like a chuckle – low and warm and knowing.
“I missed a funeral once,” he said. “First and last time that ever happened. Listen, my wife and I were just leaving to go to lunch. Why don’t you join us at the restaurant and I’ll tell you about it.” “And, hey,” he added, “We covered this morning. Something came up. Change of plans. Moved your sermon to next Sunday. No big deal. Ok?1
We live at an amazing time in history.
History could not have seen the Technological revolution coming like we have today.
But there has been a cost that is almost greater than our modern society can bear!
That is the gradual dehumanizing of our world in which, instead of doing what we were created to, that is to love people and use things, the general drift is toward loving things and using people.
This call of Jesus is a call to the heart of our humanity!
It is a call to the heights of our spirituality!
Mercy is at the very heart of God.
Read Ephesians 2:1-10
……blessed are the merciful for they shall be shown mercy