People often think they have a low view of mercy because they are being realistic. What they’re being is pessimistic.
Episode 16 of the Make Saints podcast: “Mercy”
Last week I said “Lent is the season of mercy.” Which I know defies expectations. We talk about Lent as a time of sacrifice and discipline rather than mercy.
But mercy is at the heart of the invitation to a holy Lent we are compelled to seek on Ash Wednesday. Mercy, forgiveness, and sacrifice.
Because mercy is perhaps the most righteous version of sacrifice there is.
Mercy as Sin’s Equal
In the previous episode of the podcast, we explored the nature of sin—how we define it and how we’re supposed to understand it. And one of the most transformative things in my life was coming to understand that mercy is at least sin’s equal.
Why this blew me away is that, while I could see this conceptually, I couldn’t see this in the way anyone talks about sin.
Sin, like evil, is treated as all-powerful and consuming. Whereas mercy was something to strive for, maybe, if you’re good enough.
And I say this growing up in the Mainline Church! Even in a space in which we can be allergic to any conversation about sin at all, we treat sin as potentially irredeemable. A concept that is truly alien to Jesus’s Way of Love.
We have too high a view of sin and low a view of mercy. So at the very least, mercy must be at least equal to sin.
If you don’t mind mixing the cultural/spiritual references, mercy is yang to sin’s yin.
The Power of Mercy
Once we accept the place of mercy as not below sin, we must tangle with a second idea: that mercy is greater than sin.
For mercy to overcome sin, it must have some kind of power over sin. For the mercy of God removes sin and restores our humanity.
Mercy and sin aren’t equals. Mercy is better.
One of the problems with the western mind is that we perceive the world as dictating a natural balance. Because we can perceive in nature a sort of self-sustaining character. But we do this through a binary lens. So there is all good and all evil. West and East. Liberal and Conservative. Right and Left. Everything is one or the other. So to maintain that balance, we believe it is always split 50/50. All is equal.
Which is totally made up.
And we impose this on our faith. Even where it isn’t actually present in scripture or theology.
Sin doesn’t have to be mercy’s equal. Nor does evil have to be good’s equal.
We are oriented toward good, not neutrality. And we are so called to mercy.
We aren’t just called to not sin, but to show mercy. Which means we’re called to put our own thumbs on the scale on behalf of mercy!
Mercy and Forgiveness
It is easy to wander into the limits of mercy by quickly naming all the what if scenarios and extreme cases.
I find this happens all the time when I talk about pacifism, for instance. Rather than engage in the normal 99% of the likeliest scenarios in which we all live in the world, someone imagines the cruelest test case with the intention of invalidating a worldview with a single hypothetical. As opposed to, I don’t know, looking at the evidence that guns everywhere legislation doesn’t make us safer.
The point isn’t the extreme scenarios. It’s the junk right in front of us day after day.
Holding onto other people’s sin and condemning them every minute of the day: how’s that working out? Feeling good? Like a vibrant human being living your best life? Probably not. We all think you look a bit bonkers from over here. Obsessed. Like, there’s a reason people keep telling you to let it go.
AND there’s a reason we don’t just tell people to run to forgiveness right away. We’ve seen the damage we’ve done to the black church, for instance, which has been pushed to performatively forgive those white people who kill their members or burn their property when white churches never do the same.
While I think we have too low a view of mercy, there are times we think it is pure magic. That if we show mercy, the mercy will do all the work for us. So we forgive and suddenly rainbows appear and flowers bloom.
Mercy takes work.
In my tradition, this kind of mercy comes after repentance.
When someone screws up, they try to make amends. Then we forgive.
Of course, there is value in forgiving before an apology. Because often the apology never comes. And we are better off not holding onto the anger, bitterness, and sorrow that resides in our not doing the internal work of forgiveness.
In this way, the relationship of sin and mercy reveal the internal work that both parties need to do to work toward reconciliation. The sinner does the work of seeking the forgiveness and the merciful does the work of forgiving.
What makes this beautiful is that we don’t get a say in what they do. We only get a say in what we do. So true reconciliation involves both parties doing their part.
This causes some genuine anxiety for some, and not just because we want to control the situation. But because of how little control we actually have over the situation itself. We are dependent on them. And most of us have plenty of experience being let down.
So we treat reconciliation like the group project in school: we don’t want to get stuck doing all the work; or getting pulled down by a classmate unwilling to do their part. But this is less a realistic response than it is a pessimistic one.
Because, if you’re striving for mercy, you can’t get a failing grade. This is literally the work.
Mercy as Posture
This brings up the last idea I want to talk about with mercy: mercy as posture. Now, I don’t mean posture as in posing, which has its own context that makes it sound inauthentic. I mean posture as a way we carry ourselves or relate to our environment.
A posture of mercy is really a posture of openness. So, of course, it is a willingness to forgive someone. It is also a willingness to accept the difference of others. And a willingness to be changed by an experience. To risk and to see things in a new way. Even to learn something new.
Unlike the concept of sin, which speaks to dysfunction in our relationships, mercy expands the capacity of our relationships. To accept the way we can be moved by people not like us and to become more generous than we were before. Showing mercy can be the generosity another needs to do the work of reconciling themselves!
This is why mercy is at the heart of Jesus’s teachings. And why Christians struggle with actually doing it.
Mercy is so deeply countercultural because, at its core, is a willingness to be vulnerable. To show a kind of radical strength to be vulnerable in the face of someone else’s power.
This is why Peter wants to put a limit on the number of times we forgive. He’s like, seven seems like a lot of times. And yet seven is way more generous than we’d be. We go, eh! I can forgive him this time. And then, Fine, Jesus says I have to forgive you again, but I’m putting my foot down at twice!
For Jesus to say we forgive 7 times 7 is beyond comprehension.And yet…that, that is at the heart of everything. Being generous enough to give people enough chances to actually change.