Who Locked Up Mercy and Threw Away the Key?

Who Locked Up Mercy and Threw Away the Key? July 17, 2017

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Photo Credit: montillon.a

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” (Matthew 5:7; ESV)

It’s not easy to find mercy in our society today. In reflecting upon personal examples of mercy, I was hard-pressed to find them. It’s almost as if someone locked up mercy and threw away the key.

Take driving down the highway. We can feel so easily slighted by other drivers, as we are locked up behind metal and glass in our cars, SUV’s, and trucks. Try using your turn signal to change lanes. Some drivers will speed up so that you can’t merge, while others will cut you off from entering the freeway, or ride your bumper to save their gas when you do merge. They (we?) feel entitled to the mercy of others, and hoard it as if it’s in short supply.

One would assume it would be even more difficult to find mercy in a prison where people are locked up and belted all the time, not just when driving down the road. But God’s mercy is not chained and can show up anywhere, even behind bars.

Steve is a chaplain in a medium-security prison. He’s required by law to provide support for all faith communities represented there, including help with their services. So, not only does Steve support Christians in worship, but also he supports the religious expression of Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Native Americans, Wiccans, and a variety of other groups. It’s not easy for Steve, as he is a Fundamentalist-Evangelical Christian. But he does so with great care and love, knowing how important it is to these incarcerated persons that they express themselves freely in one of the few areas where the prison system does not lock them up—their souls.

In my encounters with Steve, I have found him to become all things to all people, yet in doing so, he has become more fully like Jesus Christ. By being merciful toward those behind bars, he has become increasingly a beneficiary of God’s mercy, too. Steve realizes that our hearts are really locked from the inside and that God desires to set us free. By being merciful, he has experienced increasingly God’s mercy revealed in Jesus. Steve knows full well you can never outdo or out-mercy God. As Matthew 5:7 declares, we will receive God’s mercy when we operate mercifully toward others. I myself come away from our visits more fully alive to the good news, as Steve speaks so graciously and affirmatively. There’s even a bit more bounce in my step as I walk about freely in society, a little less encumbered by my own merciless ambition’s ball and chain.

One should not think that Steve is but a carefree spirit, a maverick who throws the law books to the wind and springs people from jail. He goes according to the script that aims to protect the inmates, the security guards, and other staff. He does not allow those entrusted to his spiritual care to get control of him either, as some are always looking for an angle or inroad into how to manipulate him and work the system.

There are dangers, as fights break out, or those incarcerated may even threaten to hurt Steve or those close to him. Once he told me in passing during a phone conversation that he barely avoided being punched on three separate occasions that day. Moreover, given their lack of freedoms, some get explosive if they feel their spiritual self-expression is not honored. While not intimated, Steve wants to make sure their human dignity is affirmed and desired spiritual expression is honored, when almost everything else has been taken away from them.

While Steve does not proselytize, still many inmates of other paths come to believe in Jesus through his thoughtful and caring regard for supporting their own faith expression. Some have noted how struck they are by his humble and loving service. While he does not serve this captive audience in some bait-and-switch manner, still humility has a way of speaking for itself. Perhaps these new believers in Jesus are drawn in part because humility and mercy are in short supply in a system that often humbles them mercilessly, reminding them daily in various ways they are guilty as charged. And what then about the rest of us who are free to drive down the road? If we can’t operate mercifully toward other drivers, but demand it from them, maybe the authorities should take away our keys.

Readers are also encouraged to read the biblical meditation titled “‘Blessed are the merciful’—not those who look out for number 1.”


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