What Does Mercy Look Like in Us and in the Actions of Our Government?

In the Beatitudes, Jesus said, “Blessed are the merciful.”  Mercy is compassion in action.  How can we show mercy to others?  How can our government treat people with mercy, and in what ways is it failing?  (Part 1 of a 2-part series on mercy)

Image by Sreemadhav, provided by Unsplash via Wix.

I was driving down a country road in rural Virginia when suddenly there was a pop in the engine compartment.  A minute later, a light on the dashboard told me the engine was overheating, just as thick steam began streaming from the hood.

It was July 4^th, just before 9:00 p.m. and nearly dark.  My wife was in the passenger seat, and our 3 young children were in the back (this was more than 20 years ago).  I pulled over, opened the hood, and concluded that something had gone wrong with the cooling system (we later learned that the water pump had broken).

We were on our way from a secluded campground to a small town 5 or 10 miles away where a fireworks display was going to begin shortly.  Now what?

We walked perhaps 200-300 yards to the nearest house and knocked on the door, dressed in camp-casual clothes with 3 scruffily dressed children.  Fortunately, someone was home.  I asked if I could use their phone, and they graciously let us in, suggested a car repair service I could call that might have a tow truck in operation even on the Fourth of July, offered us drinks, and let us use their bathroom.

I learned that a tow truck could come within an hour or two.  But after they drove off with the car, how would we get back to the campground?  Before I could figure that out, our gracious hosts offered to give us a ride.

What a generous act of mercy this was!

To whom do we show mercy?

Two questions have haunted me ever since this event:

• Would I be so helpful if a young couple ever knocked on my door with 3 young, casually dressed children?

• And would I have been so well treated if we were Black (our gracious hosts were White), or was this one of those unnoticed examples where being White had invisible benefits (what is sometimes called “White privilege”)?

Mercy as an act of personal compassion

In the portion of the Sermon on the Mount known as the Beatitudes, Jesus said, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy” (Matt. 5:7).  But what does mercy look like?

Jesus said, “Be merciful just as [i.e., in the same manner as] your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36).  God, who is merciful, is our model for showing mercy.

Perhaps the greatest example of mercy that Jesus gave us, other than the sacrifice of his own life, was the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), where Jesus told us that loving our neighbor as ourselves means helping the person right in front of us who needs help.  My family and I weren’t beaten up as the man in the Good Samaritan story was, but were surely stuck on the side of a road.  Our Virginia helpers showed us mercy by opening their door to us, letting us use their phone, and giving us a ride. 

There are many ways to show mercy.  Mercy is helping at a local soup kitchen or pantry.  Mercy is assisting a friend or neighbor in need.  Mercy is responding to an appeal to help a child in a far-off land have food to eat.  Mercy is standing up for a fairer criminal justice system.  Mercy is choosing to be a voice for marginalized people who have no voice. Any time an act of compassion could help to ease the burden faced by another person, we have an opportunity to show mercy.

Mercy as an act of government compassion

Mercy also shows up in the way a nation acts.  I saw a description of Franklin Roosevelt’s leadership recently that called to mind the quality of mercy:

“Never before Roosevelt had Americans felt that government would take care of them, protect their homes and their farms, guarantee their savings accounts, promise them security in sickness and old age.” (“FDR,” American Experience, 1994)

FDR injected mercy into the work of the national government.  People were no longer on their own when adversity arrived.  They had help.  They found mercy.

Mercy sometimes seems crimped in our nation today:

• People who have fled violence in other countries and have come to the United States seeking refugee status, which they have a right to request under U.S. law, have been mercilessly turned away.

• People whose only “crime” is to have entered the United States without documentation to try to find safety for themselves and their families – something that I would surely consider doing in similar circumstances – are treated the same as dangerous criminals: tracked down and mercilessly deported with no consideration of the life they have built here as law-abiding contributors to the well-being of our communities.

• Programs that provide humanitarian aid to the poorest of the poor in our world have been abruptly and arbitrarily terminated, despite the fact that people are suffering and dying as a result.  In the name of “efficiency,” programs have been mercilessly axed without any attempt to evaluate them before cutting people off from life-saving assistance.

Mercy is compassion in action

What does mercy look like?  It has two parts: it cares, and it acts:

• The Good Samaritan didn’t ask why the man he helped had decided to journey on such a dangerous road, or what kind of business the man was engaged in.  He had compassion for the injured man, so he helped him.

• The Virginia couple who helped my family didn’t ask why we were driving on their road, hours away from home.  They saw a family in need, and that was enough to spur them to action.

• God doesn’t condition his care for us on whether we have always made good choices; he keeps caring for us even when our predicaments are of our own making.  As Jesus put it, God “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt. 5:45).

You can know mercy by its actions. Mercy is compassion in action.

Jesus says that those who show mercy will receive mercy.  But there is also a bigger picture.  Jesus told us to love one another as he has loved us (John 13:34).  When we show mercy, we are acting like Christ, sharing his love with others.

When our government acts with compassion, it reveals our compassionate mercy as a people.  When we as individuals act with compassion, we reveal the mercy of God.  Jesus says: Blessed are we when we do so.

You can explore more about what Jesus said in the Beatitudes here:

• Matthew 5:6-12: Blessed are those who are focused on what God cares about.