MINISTERS OF MERCY

“And he said, “He who showed MERCY on him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise” – Luke 10:37

Today, as we meditate on the Ministry of Mercy and MINISTERS of MERCY, I borrow an extract from the sermon Pastor Glenn Pease of the New Beginning Community Church, Blaine, Minnesota, titled “The Mercy of God”:

“Dr. A. J. Cronin was raised in the strict tradition that if one did wrong they were to be punished. Justice demanded it. In 1921 he took the post of medical officer in an isolated district in Northumberland, England. He was young and inexperienced, but though trembling, he one night performed a tracheotomy on the throat of a small boy choking with diphtheria. He inserted the tube and gave a sigh of relief as the boy's lungs filled with air. He then went to bed leaving the sick boy in the care of a nurse.

Sometime in the night the tube filled with mucus and the boy began to choke. Instead of cleaning the tube, as any good nurse should have done, the boy girl fled in panic to get the doctor. When Dr. Cronin arrived the patient was dead. His anger blazed at such blundering negligence, and he decided right there he would ruin her career. He wrote a bitter letter to the County Health Board and read it to her with burning indignation. The 19 year old Welsh girl listened in silence half fainting with shame and misery. But finally she stammered, "Give me another chance." He shook his head and sealed the envelope as she slipped away.

That night he could not sleep. Give me another chance kept echoing through his mind. Deep inside he knew he wanted to send that letter for revenge, and not because of his love for justice. When morning came the light of mercy came as well, and he tore up the letter. Twenty years later he wrote, "Today the nurse who erred so fatally is matron of the largest children's home in Wales. Her career has been a model of service and devotion."

Mercy, even on the human level, has saved many lives from being tragically wasted because of some sin, error, failure, or folly. None are so godlike as those who can exercise the virtue of mercy. In Shakespeare's Merchant Of Venice old Shylock wants revenge through justice, but Portia disguised as a young lawyer pays her tribute to mercy and says, “It is an attribute of God Himself; and earthly power doth then show likest God's when mercy seasons justice.” And then she says again, “Consider this-that in the course of justice, none of us should see salvation; we do pray for mercy; and that same prayer doth teach us all to render the deeds of mercy.”

Shakespeare not only understood the teaching of Christ that the merciful are blest, but he understood the truth that David learned as well; that mercy is the only hope for the guilty. There is no salvation for anyone in justice. Justice leaves us all condemned, but mercy opens the door of hope and gives us another chance. That is why David begins Psalm 51 with a cry for God's mercy. There is nowhere else to begin. God's mercy is the only hope for the salvation of the sinner and the sanctification of the saint…. Andrew Murray called it the greatest wonder of God's nature. He wrote, "The omniscience of God is a wonder. The omnipotence of God is a wonder. God's spotless holiness is a wonder. None of these things can we understand. But the greatest wonder of it all is the mercy of God.

Like the merciful Samaritan in Luke 10, God desires us to be selfless Ministers of Mercy, not selfish professors of religion. He sends us to perpetuate His Ministry of Mercy: “…to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed” (Lk.4:18). He sends us to practise “pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father…to visit orphans and widows in their trouble…” (Jam.1:27). Beloved, how faithful are you as a Minister of Mercy?