What Can Bridge the Deep Divisions of Our Nation. Remembering this Can.

I admit.  I didn’t watch it.  I had more important things to do.   And to be honest, even if my schedule had allowed it, I still wouldn’t have watched.  People think preachers get long-winded?  What about Presidents?   All of them go on for at least an hour, usually longer.  It seems. You could let me know about the state of the union in 45 minutes or less.  Still I did hear about it.  Or at least I heard about the beginning and the end.

At the beginning the President visibly snubbed the speaker, refused her hand.   Then at the end the speaker dramatically tore up the President’s speech.  And hearing all of that, I felt sad, embarrassed even.  What has happened to us?  Has it really gotten this bad? 

But before I got myself too stirred up about the dire state of our nation, some TV commentator quoted words that gave me a little perspective.   He quoted words from a time far, far darker than this.  Back in those days, Americans didn’t just refuse handshakes or tear up speeches.  In those days, they extended their hands to kill each other by the millions.   They didn’t tear up a speech.  They ripped apart a nation.   And they did this so that some Americans could keep owning a lot of other Americans.  They did so to defend the indefensible.  And after all that awfulness, all that violence and bloodshed, the victorious President gave a speech for the ages.  It lasted less than five minutes I might add.   And he ended with these words, some of which that commentator recited.

President Lincoln said these words: 

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

With malice toward none, with charity, with love for all (that’s what charity means here), love for north, south, slave, free, Republican, Democrat, with love for all…and that after the bloodiest war in our history….wow.  It’s likely the greatest speech any American President has ever given.  And Lincoln could give it because he understood the words we are about to hear.   In these words, Jesus gives the key to not only heal the divisions of a nation, but every division, division in marriages, in families, in every relationship.  In these words, Jesus even gives the key to seeing our church grow and connect to those who have walked away from church, if not from God.  In these words, Jesus shows us the way.  Let’s listen and hear what Jesus has to say.  

Matthew 5:7 – Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy.

It’s so obvious that you almost can’t see it.   But as you think about those words, as shocking as they are.  You realize.  In those words lie the whole key to why mercy brings fulfillment, why it brings happiness in the deepest sense of that word.     Do you see what I’m seeing?   I didn’t see it at first so let me lay it out for you.   Isn’t it kind of weird how Jesus end this little sentence.   He could have said Blessed are the merciful for they shall please God.   Or Blessed are the merciful for they bring peace.   Those ending actually kind of sound good.  But no, Jesus says. Blessed are the merciful, for what?  For they shall receive mercy.  

Jesus is saying what too often all of us can miss.  Jesus is saying.  Don’t you get it.   Be merciful.  Why?  Because everyone, including you, needs mercy.    But that’s the very thing that’s hardest for people to see. 

This past week, I was catching up on an old HawaiiFive-0 episode with my wife.   She loves those kind of shows.  You know the ones, where not only do the good guys always win but the star has twenty people firing machine guns at him, and never gets a scratch.   It’s amazing!  

So, the show opened with Dan-O and McGarrett, the two stars meeting up with Dan-O’s kid’s principal.  It turned out that some kid was badly bullying Dan-O’s son, Charlie.   And get this.  The principal even invited the parents of the bully to come and meet, but they had cancelled.  And you’re thinking. Uh-oh.  These bully’s parents gotta be jerks.   They didn’t even show up!  

And you know what’s going to happen.  McGarrett and Dan O are going to chase those parents down. Because on a TV show, the cop heroes can do that.  It’s ok.    So, they track the dad’s car.  They stop it, their cop lights blazing.  And they pull that weasel right out.  Boy, does Dan-O lay into him.   Your son is bullying my kid, and you don’t even show up!  What’s up with that!  

But then the plot thickens.  Turns out the weasel isn’t a weasel.  He even apologizes for not showing up.  He admits. He didn’t realize it was that serious.  Then more comes out.  He and his wife are going through an ugly divorce.  They’ve tried to keep their son out of it, but it’s affecting him.  And hearing that stops Dan-O in his tracks.  Why?  He went through an ugly divorce too.   He knows how bad it can be, how it affected his son, how it still affects him.   And these dads start understanding each other.  Then McGarrett says.  “Hey if you guys can do this.  Maybe the boys can too.”   

Now I assume that the boys do that, and everything turns out awesome.  It always does in Hawaii Five-O.   But I don’t know for sure.  You see. We’re parents of a six-year-old and we’re old.  So, we got sleepy and went to bed.

But do you get what happens?  Dan-O is full of righteous anger until he realizes.  This bully’s dad isn’t much different from him.  They both have flaws. They both have shattered relationships that have wounded their kids   They both need mercy.   Only when Dan-O remembers that can he show the same mercy to this dad.

Years ago, a great preacher named Bill Coffin said wise words.  He said: 

God knows it is emotionally satisfying to be righteous with that righteousness that nourishes itself in the blood of sinners.  But God also knows.  What is emotionally satisfying can also be spiritually devastating.

I’m no different than anyone else. Something morally outrages me, and righteous anger rises up.  But even as I savor that righteous anger surging through me, I sense it.  My heart is growing harder.  My spirit is getting smaller.  I realize.  This righteous anger isn’t helping me.  It’s destroying me. 

And what saves me?  Realizing what Jesus says here.  I need mercy, as much, if not more, as whatever person has turned my moral outrage machine on.    Now, let’s make it clear.   Being merciful doesn’t mean you don’t stand up for what is right or speak truth as you see it. 

Lincoln, who said with malice for none, with charity for all, had been willing to sacrifice millions of lives to defend the nation, to stop slavery.  But he knew, and in that speech, he made it clear.   He and everyone in the victorious North needed mercy too. Both the South and the north had profited from slavery.   Everyone had awful moral failings to face.

Why?  Because everyone, everyone needs mercy, including you.   And the more you realize that, the more your own mercy grows, and with it, peace, fulfillment, happiness in that word’s deepest sense.   And not realizing that not only devastates nations, it devastates everything.  You know I used to think.  I was pretty close to perfect.   Then I got married.   I jest, but only a little. 

Because since getting married, I’ve faced flaws I didn’t even realize I had.    And painfully it usually took a while for me to see them.   But you know what?   I’ve always been able to see my partner’s failures so much more clearly.   Go figure.  And more than a few times, my blindness to my failings, and my clear perception of my wife’s has nearly wrecked our marriage.   Only as I saw my need for mercy could I do my part to turn that ship around. 

The Christian Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said this about marriage. He said:  “In a word, live together in the forgiveness of your sins, for without it no human fellowship, least of all a marriage, can survive.”    Did you get those last words?  “Without this, without mercy, no human fellowship, no human relationship can survive.”  And the man who wrote those words was no wilting violet.  He gave his life fighting against the horrors of Nazi Germany.  But even there, he knew this.   Everyone needs mercy.  And only as everyone realizes that, as I realize that, as you realize that, does true mercy come. 

It bothers me.  No, it grieves me.  So many people have walked away from churches.   Thoughtful minds have even argued that such walking away has made our nation’s divisions worse.   After all.  Churches don’t protect you from those with whom you disagree.   Here, you gotta sit beside them.  You’ve gotta sing the same songs, work in the same ministries, believe in a lot of the same things.   Here, you’ve gotta even admit every week that you need as much mercy as they do, if not more. 

But you know if we get so frustrated, so vexed by those who don’t see the value, the beauty of experiencing God’s love here then we will have forgotten these very words on mercy.  After all, churches have not always shown the beauty of God’s love. And that includes ours.   We’ve failed.  We’ve failed, just like every other church that has ever existed has failed. 

And only as you and I realize that, as we realize our deep need for mercy as a church will we be able to really invite and welcome and love those who see little or no reason to enter our doors.   In that mercy, we’ll become more ready to listen rather than maybe lecture.  We’ll get better at befriending and less driven toward recruiting.  And we’ll grow into a place where everyone, everyone always feels invited, always feels welcomed, always feels loved no matter what.  And in that, Jesus will work.   For, in a world where so little mercy seems to live, a place that overflows with it becomes a pretty amazing place to be.   

In fact, that very mercy has saved us.   When God came to us in Jesus, he came carrying mercy.   He came on a mission of mercy.  Jesus came to show us what the Bible tells us again and again.   God mercy endures forever.  God’s mercies never come to an end.

Yet when Jesus came, the only human being that needed no mercy, what did we do?  We showed him no mercy.  We tortured him.  We rejected him.  We killed him.  Yet even there, God’s mercies never came to an end.   Even there on the cross, Jesus said.  Father forgive them for they know not what they do.   And there Jesus showed us how far God’s mercy goes, a mercy so great that not death can defeat it.   

In this time of deep division, remember the mercy that saved you.   And when someone morally outrages you, pray for them, and if God calls you to, stand up to them too.  But never forget your need for mercy.   Never forget your own flaws and frailties.  Always remember that you, like them, still fall so short of who God dreams for you to be.   And in that merciful light, you may even see them differently, see their own brokenness and pain, even come to love them as Jesus loves you, even as you stand against what they might believe or choose to do.    

And as a church, may we be known as a place that overflows with that mercy, as a family that loves each person no matter what, a community where everyone is invited and welcomed and loved.   For blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.