Lenten Devotion – Sat, Mar 13: MERCY
Reciprocity is once more at the heart of this blessing. We are the people who have witnessed and responded to others’ pain, hurt, and suffering. In turn, we are the ones who need — and hopefully receive — compassion and kindness.
It’s easier to be on the giving end of this blessing, than on the receiving end. It’s difficult to accept gifts of kindness, mercy, compassion, and forgiveness. After all, that puts us in the position of being vulnerable. Needing someone or something else. We don’t easily admit to being in such a position; our culture valorizes being strong and independent and coping alone, without asking for help.
These Beatitudes remind us that we’re quite human. Not nearly the towers of strength we try to be.
Remember, God is blessing a human society and our human condition. The Beatitude acknowledges that we suffer and serve each other imperfectly.
We already know that we fall short of showing mercy at all times. We simply embody it, as best we’re able, in our daily living. Along the way, we’ll hurt someone’s feelings or overlook someone’s suffering. We may fail to act when we might have alleviated trauma or advocated to mitigate injustice.
Yet the blessing, and the promise, is that we’ll keep trying. We’ll strive to do the next right thing.
In our mortal lifespan, we’ll certainly experience pain and loss ourselves. We’ll need help, support, kindness, compassion, justice and forgiveness. Often we’ll receive what is needed. Sometimes it will arrive in surprising forms and resources, or show up on a schedule other than the one we consider to be ideal.
Yet we know, because we’ve all been disappointed, that sometimes what we need doesn’t come. Not in time. What happens if we ask for help, and don’t receive it? Does that mean we’re not among the blessed?
In fact, just the opposite. The blessing remains true. In our need, we reclaim the power to offer compassion and mercy to others who apparently also need it. Sometimes that involves those who hurt and fail us. Thus, when we’re in need of kindness and compassion, and it doesn’t come to us, we may find ourselves once more in the role of giving compassion to those who ought to have extended it to us.
Please note that all of these aspirations: peace, forgiveness, and justice, are processes. They unfold over time. They may recur in cycles. And they should be done with care to mitigate self-harm. We may have to revisit them over and over, and do the work, again, to both offer them and to accept them into our lives.
Along the way, we cannot fix everything that is wrong in the world. Nor can another person address all the issues that may arise in our own lives. Yet we can support each other. We can look, with renewed clarity, and recognize the holy presence of God showing up as our family, friends or neighbors … or sometimes strangers … just when we needed tender and tenacious care. — Rev Gail
MEDITATIONS:
The power of just mercy is that it belongs to the undeserving. It’s when mercy is least expected that it’s most potent—strong enough to break the cycle of victimization and victimhood, retribution and suffering. It has the power to heal the psychic harm and injuries that lead to aggression and violence, abuse of power, mass incarceration. ― Bryan Stevenson
The beatitude suggests that we know mercy because we have been given it. And we have been given mercy because we need it. — Martha Stortz
There is a very deep connection, emphasized in scripture, between one’s relationship with God and one’s relationship with others. Closing one’s heart to a brother means automatically closing one’s heart to God and his grace, while opening one’s heart to another ss a sure way of opening one’s heart to God and his abundant blessings. — Jacques Philippe
Challenge or Question: Identify a time when you had to ask for help. What was that like? What did you learn about yourself? How did it change your ability to request and receive compassion and supportive care from others going forward?
Lenten Devotional – Fri, May 12: MERCIFUL
Now the Beatitudes take a turn. Who are the merciful? They would seem to have some power. Some agency. Some choice.
What is mercy anyway? John Stott says, ‘Mercy is compassion for people in need.’ Another scholar substituted the word kind in lieu of merciful. The Message’s contemporary wording of the Gospel reframes this Beatitude as ‘You’re blessed when you care. At the moment of being ‘care-full,’ you find yourselves cared for.’
The Barnes commentary says those who receive this Beatitude are, ‘those who are so affected by the sufferings of others as to be disposed to alleviate them.’ Jacques Philippe expands these ideas. He writes, ‘The fifth Beatitude concerns all aspects of mercy, of course, not just forgiveness. It applies to those forms of the goodness, love, benevolence, patience and mutual support to which the New Testament so often summons us.’
Are we self-less in our mercy and caring? It’s okay to feel good about caring. As humans, we’re less likely to act solely for idealistic purposes. It helps when we’re rewarded by feeling good about what we’re doing.
That experience of satisfaction — of gaining a sense of purpose — plants the seed to continue in such a direction. Martha Stortz explains it this way, ‘So often love begins in narcissism: the heart turns in on itself. But over time grace straightens your tightly coiled affection so that it reaches beyond the self to another and then through the other to God, the source and spirit of all loving.’
Of course, it is also essential, over time, for our small acts of mercy to be separated from any expectation of appreciation or acknowledgement from the one who receives our kindness. Not all people on the receiving-end of kindness and compassion are able or willing to accept it or give thanks for it. Being merciful, in conditions where people are unable to reciprocate, or even acknowledge the efforts we make, can be exhausting. Ask any care provider in difficult settings such as homeless shelters, mental health units, nursing homes, and other such places.
At such times, we must lean on the ethical choice we’ve made, and find our strength and resilience outside the compassionate exchange. For Christians, this comes from leaning on Godself. Jacques Philippe says, ‘Thus, to be free and happy, we must have the courage to tell ourselves “No one owes me anything.” Not those who harmed me, because I’ve forgiven them, and not those to whom I’ve done good, because I want to love them freely.’
This cultivation of resilience, of being able to offer mercy even when none can be returned to you, mirrors the blessing itself. We have been given this blessing, without any way to earn it or deserve it. It is given out of a deep and holy love.
Our first choice is to open ourselves to this blessing. Accept it as the gift it is. We didn’t ask for it. We didn’t expect it. Some of us may continue to think we don’t deserve it. By now, during Lent, hopefully you’ve been honest enough with yourself to realize that each of us — you and me — urgently needs mercy. Here it is, being offered. — Rev Gail
MEDITATIONS:
There is a strength, a power even, in understanding brokenness, because embracing our brokenness creates a need and desire for mercy, and perhaps a corresponding need to show mercy. When you experience mercy, you learn things that are hard to learn otherwise. You see things you can’t otherwise see; you hear things you can’t otherwise hear. You begin to recognize the humanity that resides in each of us. ― Bryan Stevenson
A rabbi should not despair if people do not do as much as they should. Every parent has that with children. God is merciful. — Louis Finkelstein
Every merciful act to the needy, the suffering, is as though done to Jesus. — Ellen G. White
Mercy manifests itself as forgiveness, and forgiveness is the glue of human community. — Martha Stortz
He was so benevolent, so merciful a man that, in his mistaken passion, he would have held an umbrella over a duck in a shower of rain. — Douglas William Jerrold
One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest. — Maya Angelou
Challenge or Question: When do you experience opportunities for daily acts of kindness or compassion? Pay attention to chances to extend this grace to others throughout this season, so that it becomes a habit. If you’re living remotely, can you find ways to show compassion anyway, through different forms of communication?
Mar 7 Worship with Communion – Lenten Season
Worship
Message
Feb 28, 2021 – Second Sunday in Lent
Worship Service
Message: Comfort & Inheritance
Lenten Devotional: Sat, Feb 27: IS
In these Beatitude statements, the ‘to be’ verb is open-ended. It is not past tense. It is not even present-tense. Nor is it conditional. It creates the world by declaring it as accomplished.
In fact, as Maxie Dunnan and Kimberly Dunnan Reisman write, “Originally there was no verb in the Beatitudes … ‘are’ … did not appear in the original Greek or Hebrew text. That word was added to bring out the meaning of each sentence.” William Barclay explains, “Jesus did not speak the beatitudes in Greek; he spoke them in Aramaic … The Beatitudes are not simple statements; they are exclamations.”
To retain that meaning across different languages, the verbs used to translate this Beatitude from Aramaic into Greek, shape a statement that presumes that what it declares will become true. It emphatically pronounces it and renders it real. The scholar Boring says, “The beatitudes are written in unconditional performative language. They do not merely describe something that already is, but bring into being the reality they declare.”
Within this verb, we do not find a promise for the future. Rather this is a spiritual wealth, rooted in belonging to each other and to God’s kingdom, that is already ours. Dunnan and Dunnan Reisman add, “This means that the Beatitudes are not an explanation for what might be—could be; they are exclamations of what is. … And it is ours now, not in some future time.” It’s the first of several paradoxes.
When Christ says it, this blessedness unfolds. The Word creates. Again and again, over and over, then and now.
Perhaps the people described within each Beatitude statement don’t feel blessed or special. The circumstances described in each Beatitude aren’t ones that we, as humans, aspire to attain. We don’t want to be poor, hungry, or sorrowful.
Yet these states of being are part of the human condition. And Christ confers a blessing on these least likely of humans. Yes, we can admit, that we may continue to wonder, where is the blessing that comes with this circumstance in which I find myself? Maybe we even think: I’d rather return the blessing so that I do not need to live in these undesirable, unwanted conditions.
Our perspective about these worrisome, painful, underdog conditions — these difficult states of being now labeled as blessings — are forever changed by Christ’s attention. Martha Storz tells us, “Jesus blesses us by sharing our lot and reversing it … A philosopher calls this sort of speech performativespeech because the words themselves deliver the goods. A Christian calls this incarnation.” Back in Jesus’ time, and now in ours, perhaps the blessing begins by being seen and acknowledged as one who matters in the eyes of God. — Rev Gail
Meditations:
I was born the day I thought: What is? What was? And what if? — Suzy Kassem
Be yourself; everyone else is already taken. ― Oscar Wilde
You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. ― Maya Angelou
Make the most of yourself … for that is all there is of you. ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
Don’t you ever let a soul in the world tell you that you can’t be exactly who you are. ― Lady Gaga
Challenge or Question: What is possible for you? What limits have you put on yourself? What limits have been placed on you? When have you been seen and valued for yourself?