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TEXT: Matthew 5:7; 23:23; Psalm 145:8-12,17-18 My first year of college my brother, who was in 10th grade, came to visit me. I had class or something and he asked if he could take my lime-green VW Rabbit out to go somewhere. When we met back up in my room later he looked devastated and said, “Something happened.” As an aside, and as something we both laugh about now, my first response was, “Is it my keyboard?!” (I had just purchased a new keyboard – the musical kind.) And he said, “No, it’s your car.” Apparently while driving (very fast) the wind caught the hood and it slammed it up against the windshield, breaking it. He drove all the way back to campus with it up and his head out the window. Anyway, he was waiting for the hammer to fall… which it totally could have. I could have made him pay for it – emotionally or financially. I had the right to do that, but I showed mercy. I know that if it had happened to me, I would have longed for mercy! Today we are talking about the blessing of mercy. Jesus includes it as a blessing in his teaching in Matthew 5. Remember that he is teaching those who follow him with the backdrop of the “crowd” just down the mountain. We are not just to line up to receive God’s blessings; rather, we are to take them and share them in the world beyond these walls. Mercy and Justice First of all, mercy can simply be compassion and kindness. It translates the Hebrew concept of hesed, which is a rich and multi-faceted word describing one of the main ways we experience God. When the Good Samaritan took care of the wounded man, he was showing hesed: compassion and mercy. So that kind of love and care of others is at the heart of this blessing of mercy. But I also want to focus in on a particular kind or sub-set of mercy today. Sometime this week I realized the strong connection between mercy and justice, or between mercy and righteousness. The two are often mentioned together, including right here in Matthew 5. Consider last week’s verse together with the one from this week: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” (Matthew 5:6-7) Or several other times justice or righteousness are paired with mercy: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others.” (Matthew 23:23) “He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8) So which is it? Does God desire justice and righteousness? Or does God desire mercy? Let’s consider God’s own example: “[God] saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit…” (Titus 3:5) It is both! God desires us to do what is right, but not without mercy. That was the problem the scribes and Pharisees got into. They kept all the rules and laws and lost sight of “weightier provisions” of the law, the foundation and reason FOR the laws: justice AND mercy AND faithfulness. What God demonstrates and desires for us is that justice and mercy exist together. I’m not going to say ‘balanced’ because that suggests a formula of 40% justice and 60% mercy, or whatever. It takes both to even make sense of the other. In fact, how does mercy even make sense if there is not something rightly or justly deserved that is forgiven or paid? It’s like the difference between saying “no big deal” and “it was a big deal, but I forgive you.” The second takes full account of justice AND mercy. There are also situations – I’m thinking of crimes and repeated injustice, where it is not a mercy to dismiss the injustice. If anything, the greatest mercy I