The Outsiders | Real Mercy

"Happy are people who show mercy, because they will receive mercy." 

Matthew 5:7 (Common English Bible)

"Go and learn what this means: I want mercy and not sacrifice. I didn't come to call righteous people, but sinners." 

Matthew 9:13 (Common English Bible)

Mercy isn't just feeling sorry for someone. Mercy is active compassion. It's seeing someone who's hurting and doing something about it. It's extending grace to people who've made mistakes. It's refusing to write people off just because they're different from us or because they've done things we may not approve of.

And Jesus makes it clear that mercy matters to God. God wants mercy, not sacrifice. God wants us to show compassion, not just perform religious rituals. God wants us to extend grace, not just follow rules.

But mercy is hard. Really hard. Because mercy requires us to engage with people's pain, and we'd rather keep our distance. Mercy requires us to extend grace to people who may not deserve it, and we'd rather they earn it first. Mercy requires us to refuse to write people off, and we'd rather maintain our categories of who's worthy and who's not.

So we find ways to avoid the hard work of mercy. We pray for people who are hurting instead of actually sitting with them in their pain. We donate money to organizations that help struggling people instead of getting personally involved in their lives. We talk about how important it is to show grace while still judging people for their choices.

But that's not mercy. 

Real mercy gets messy. It means sitting with someone who's grieving, even when their grief makes us uncomfortable. It means extending grace to someone who's made destructive choices, even when we want to lecture them about what they should have done differently. It means refusing to abandon people even when their lives are falling apart and helping them feels overwhelming.

Real mercy means we have to give up our need to fix people. We have to release our desire to control outcomes. We have to let go of our insistence that people earn our compassion by demonstrating they deserve it. We just have to show up, extend grace, and stay engaged even when it's hard.

And Jesus tells us that when we show mercy, we receive mercy. This isn't transactional. It's not like we earn God's mercy by showing mercy to others. But there is something profound about the connection between giving mercy and receiving mercy. When we practice extending grace to others, we become more aware of how much we need grace ourselves. When we refuse to write people off, we become less afraid of being written off. When we stay engaged with people in their mess, we're more willing to let others stay engaged with us in our mess.

We can't love mercy from a distance. We can't extend grace in theory. We can't show compassion without actually getting involved in people's lives. We have to do the hard work of actually being merciful…not just feeling sorry for people, but actively showing them compassion.

And this is what God requires from us. Not just justice. Not just humility. But also mercy. Active, engaged, costly mercy that refuses to keep people at arm's length or write them off when their lives get messy.

So who needs your mercy right now? Who needs you to extend grace instead of judgment? Who needs you to stay engaged even when it's hard? Who needs you to show them active compassion instead of just praying about their situation from a safe distance?

Because God requires mercy. Not mercy in theory. Not mercy at a comfortable distance. Real, active, costly mercy that actually shows up for people who are hurting.

Prayer:

God, we'd rather feel sorry for people than actually show them mercy. We'd rather pray about problems than get personally involved. We'd rather maintain comfortable distance than do the hard work of extending grace. Forgive us for avoiding the cost of real mercy. Help us see people who are hurting and actually do something about it. Help us extend grace even when people haven't earned it. Help us refuse to write people off even when their lives are messy. And help us understand that mercy isn't optional—it's what you require from us. Amen.