Be Merciful

THE FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY

Thomas Obediah Chisholm was born in a log cabin in Franklin, Kentucky, in 1866. He received his education in a little country schoolhouse, and at age 16, began teaching at the same school. For Thomas, life was very difficult. He suffered severe poverty and health issues. In fact, his health was so fragile that there were times when he was bedridden and unable to work. Between bouts of illness, he would have to push himself to put in extra hours at various jobs just to survive.

After coming to Christ at age 27, Thomas found great comfort in Holy Scripture and in the fact that God was faithful to be his strength in time of illness and provide for his needs. In times of trial, he would find his way to one of his favorite scriptures and source of comfort and read: It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is Thy faithfulness. Lamentations 3:22-23. These verses inspired Thomas to write a poem (he was a prolific writer of poems) which one of his good friends, William Runyan, was so moved by that he decided to compose a musical score to accompany the lyrics. And so, the hymn Great Is Thy Faithfulness was published in 1923. And the rest, as they say, is history. Now, if we were to do a word count of this hymn, we wouldn't be too terribly surprised that the words great and faithfulness occur more than any other words throughout the hymn. But the next most recurring primary word is mercy.

Great is Thy faithfulness. Morning by morning, new mercies I see. Faithfulness and mercy. We might not typically connect these two words when contemplating the nature and character of the Triune God. We have a category for God's faithfulness; he never changes; he is the promise keeper; he always does what he says he will do; he's dependable, honest, and trustworthy. And we also know God to be merciful. He is compassionate, patient, and longsuffering: showing forbearance to offenders and enemies alike. He is merciful because he is love.

And yet, the relationship between faithfulness and mercy may not be something we've given much thought. The prophet Jeremiah apparently saw the relationship between God's faithfulness and his mercy as evidenced in the praise which flows from the third chapter of the book of Lamentations, It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is Thy faithfulness. Thus, even at the height of Israel's covenant infidelity, God was merciful to his people. Yes, their rebellious choices were not without consequences, but the Divine Hand of discipline was restrained: Jeremiah and the people were not, as he said, "consumed" by the almighty and merciful God. And this great favor Israel owed to the mercy of God, which though they tried, they never exhausted.

Israel was not consumed because they had not yet exhausted the fruit of Divine compassion. Mercy is the tree from which the fruit of compassion comes forth, and Divine compassion abounds because the mercy of God fails not; it renews itself every morning. Thus, my friends, the mercy of God is inexhaustible: remember His property is to always have mercy. His mercy is great because great is his faithfulness. But faithful to what? What is God faithful to? Let me answer this in two ways: God is merciful because he is faithful to his covenant, and God is merciful because he is faithful to himself. God chose to love Abraham and made a covenant with him. And God chose to love the seed of Abraham, the people of Israel.

And because the LORD loved them and kept the oath He [had] sworn to [their] fathers, He brought [them] out [of Egypt] with a mighty hand and redeemed [them] from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh. Israel was the smallest of the nations, the least among the earth's peoples, yet the Lord set his affection on them and covenanted to love them: to be their God and for them to be his people. God swore to love them with an everlasting love, to be a faithful husband even when the bride was not. The covenant-keeping God always loves his people, most notably when they are undeserving of it, even in the face of their hostility towards him, when they prove to be his enemy not his friend.

And here is where we make the connection between fidelity and mercy: faithfulness is a form of compassionate, merciful love. Faithfulness never ceases to show compassion. It is love enduring in all circumstances. Divine faithfulness endures and suffers sinners, rebels, apostates, cheaters, mockers, haters, false accusers, indifference, apathy, and every possible rejection. This is the radical and inconceivable nature of God, who loves not only the loveable but those who oppose him. God is love. Divine love seeks, finds, and embraces the unlovable and shows mercy to the undeserving and compassion to the ungrateful. This is the reason why Scripture so often connects these two things together: God's mercy and His faithfulness in fulfilling His promises.

Beloved, hear the words of our Lord Jesus Christ: Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. Jesus is setting the standard, not me. We are to be merciful as our Father is merciful. Our idea, definition, and attempts at being merciful are irrelevant if they are discordant with the Divine Pattern of mercy. Our Father defines the terms, and Jesus shows us the way. Judge not, and you will not be judged. Condemn not, and you will not be condemned. We are to be merciful, not judgmental.

Mercy is the necessary governor over our innate desire to judge others too harshly and pounce on them with condemnation. Sometimes, not always, we are quick to pronounce judgment over the choices and actions of others: we believe that it is our duty and obligation to be the Judge over humanity. O', how we suffer from pride! This wicked disposition comes from vainglory, a pernicious vice that believes oneself better than everyone else. The vainglorious person heaps unwarranted glory upon him or herself devoid of any reality and always at the expense of others because vainglory breads envy.

And though we have a duty to examine ourselves, to order our lives and conduct according to God's will, the vainglorious crowd busy themselves with the affairs of others: and when they see any fault, forgetting their own frailties, they seize the opportunity to pounce on their investigative faultfinding, and savor an opportunity to harshly judge the failings of others. For they condemn them, not knowing that being equally afflicted with the same infirmities as those whom they censure, they condemn themselves. So writes the Apostle Paul, For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things (Rom 2:1-2).

Now I'm not saying that he is commanding us to never engage in evaluating other people's ethical and moral choices; he's not saying that. But, instead, the judgment our Lord has in view is an extremely censorial one that holds others down in guilt and never seeks to encourage them toward God. This is how people who think themselves superior operate: they destroy others because they wrongly view people as ruthless competitors standing in the way of worldly praise, which in their pride, are convinced they're due.

Beloved, in the words of a wise old Russian Orthodox abbess, we can so easily become "merciless torturers of each other, often asking from our fellow creatures that which we cannot even fulfill ourselves, and certainly would not have fulfilled if we had been in their place." We harshly judge in others what is present within ourselves and bring swift condemnation on that which we ourselves stand guilty of. So, my friends, First cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye (Matt. 7:5). Beloved seek any correction first of all in yourself; and when with the help of God's blessing you attain this in proportion to your strength, then surely you will see others as favorable, good, and kind.

Let us first examine our own hearts and try to free them from the passions that dwell within and their frailties by asking it of God: for He alone is the One who heals the broken in heart and frees us from the maladies of the soul. Hear the wisdom of St. Cyril of Alexandria, "deliver thyself first from thy great crimes, and thy rebellious passions, and then thou mayest set him right who is guilty of but trifling faults." Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Remember, God promises to treat us in the same way we treat others.

Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven. The remedy for vainglory and envy is forgiveness which flows from mercy. Jesus tells us to forgive because God has forgiven us: we have received Divine mercy. Extending mercy doesn't mean suspending reality and pretending that another is innocent when they are guilty; but rather, we are not to hold an action permanently against those who offend. Neither is mercy a blanket acquittal, but amnesty, it is a willingness to pardon the offense, as our Lord taught: And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Again, Jesus isn't forbidding our evaluation of others' actions but against judging them with such harshness that we become hardened by unforgiveness: less we far exceed the lesser evil of another by a greater wickedness of our own. Therefore, let us never cease to hold out hope that anyone, even the worst offender, is beyond the Divine reach of grace, mercy, and love. For the Gospel is the revelation in Jesus Christ of God's mercy to sinners. The angel announced to Joseph: "You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." The same is true of the Eucharist, the sacrament of redemption: "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins."

St. Augustine said that "God created us without us: but he did not will to save us without us." To receive his mercy, we must admit our faults, for as St. John tells us, If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. As St. Paul affirms, Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. But to do its work, grace must uncover sin so as to convert our hearts and bestow on us a righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Thus, like a physician who probes the wound before treating it, God, by his word and by his Spirit, casts a living light on sin, so that we may turn from it and live.

Conversion requires convincing of sin; it includes the interior judgment of conscience, and this, being a proof of the action of the Spirit of truth in man's inmost being, becomes at the same time the start of a new grant of grace and love: "Receive the Holy Spirit." Thus, in this "convincing concerning sin," we discover a double gift: the gift of the truth of conscience and the gift of the certainty of redemption. The Spirit of truth is the Consoler. Therefore, mercy begins with recognizing that we have received mercy, we who are most certainly undeserved of it. But God is merciful because he is faithful: great is thy faithfulness. Therefore, good Christian, know thyself: cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother's eye. Amen+