Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy (Matthew 5:7).
In my last post, “My Friendly Quarrel with Buddhism,” I acknowledged helpful guidance in developing a mindful and compassionate approach to alleviating suffering. But I argued that the biblical tradition offers something more, an approach that moves us through suffering to wholeness. In this post, I explore this “something more” through powerful imagery from the Hebrew prophets.
“My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are my ways your ways,” God said through the prophet, Isaiah (55:8). Who can deny that? Who can fathom God’s reach? Can anyone imagine the thoughts of the all-knowing?
We can rightly speak of God’s incomprehensibility in countless aspects of reality, like space, time, knowledge, power, and so forth. Yet, the preceding verse reads, “Let them return to the LORD, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon” (v. 7). So more than any other aspect of God, divine mercy renders us speechless, swept away by mystery.
Old Testament texts notoriously vex us with images of God’s anger, and I will not try to resolve the theological and hermeneutic debates about that here. But the image extends from a vision of God as one who suffers in love as we do. God’s wounds bleed not only anger, but compassion. Thus, the prophet Hosea offers a touching image of compassion spilling from God’s broken heart. God speaks as a loving mother:
When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them (Hosea 11:1-4).
Wounded by her ungrateful child, God’s anger rises:
They shall return to the land of Egypt, and Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me. The sword rages in their cities…and devours because of their schemes. My people are bent on turning away from me…(vv.5-7)
Then the heart breaks, and compassion flows.
How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel?… My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath (vv. 8-9).
So what will God do with the energy of anger? Herd the children home.
They shall go after the Lord, who roars like a lion; when he roars, his children shall come trembling from the west. They shall come trembling like birds from Egypt, and like doves from the land of Assyria; and I will return them to their homes, says the Lord (vv. 10-11).
We Christians know of God’s love through Jesus Christ. But I write this week’s posts to invite Christians to reclaim faith in the God to whom Jesus prayed, the One Jesus revealed, the God of the Hebrew prophets. We need this God undomesticated.
For in the dark strangeness of our cultural/political polarization, many people seeking to mobilize political power in the name of Christ denounce the things that make for mercy. They argue that compassionate perspectives on people must be wrong because merciful perspectives contradict conclusions that they deem mandated by an angry God. In their eagerness to press an authoritarian and austere agenda, they conveniently overlook the mercy at the heart of God’s passion. Moreover, they forget that they forget that they owe their life, not to mention their faith, to God’s merciful forgiveness.
Such mercy exceeds our grasp. Mortals cannot match the mercy of the incomprehensible God, but through the prophets and Christ in their line, God calls us to live lives that bear witness to God’s mercy. That entails cultivating mercy, making it our way of life. Compassion is crucial to mercy; indeed, mercy is compassion in action.
Where to begin? Start with examination of your own suffering, if you dare. God stands in solidarity with you. And it is not just that God is feeling your pain. You are feeling God’s. Knowing that you are held in God’s compassion and in fellowship with the suffering Christ, you will experience in your heart the truth of the fifth Beatitude: “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy” (Matthew 5:7).
Related Posts
Mercy Lies at the Heart of Things
My Friendly Quarrel with Buddhism
This post was revised to address our current predicament more directly. It was originally published on August 13, 2015.
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