Thomas Kleinert
Mary sings a tender song with a rough voice.
My father could use a little mercy now
The fruits of his labor fall and rot slowly on the ground
His work is almost over, it won’t be long, he won’t be around
I love my father, he could use some mercy now
Mercy Now, written by Mary Gauthier, was released twenty years ago, almost to the day. “[The song] came to me as a prayer in a time when loved ones and the world around me were sinking into darkness,” she wrote in her autobiography.
My brother could use a little mercy now
He’s a stranger to freedom, he’s shackled to his fear and his doubt
The pain that he lives in, it’s almost more than living will allow
I love my brother, he could use some mercy now
My church and my country could use a little mercy now
As they sink into a poisoned pit, it’s going to take forever to climb out
They carry the weight of the faithful who follow them down
I love my church and country, they could use some mercy now
She sings of people in power who’ll do anything to keep their crown, and I’ve been listening to her a lot through these twenty years. “The song brought catharsis,” she wrote, “and then, unexpectedly, it brought something else. The desperation I’d felt, laced with anger and fear, began to give way to a new calm. I began to feel connected.” She sings, “Every little thing could use a little mercy now, …and life itself could use a little mercy now, …yea, we all could use a little mercy now—I know we don’t deserve it, but we need it anyhow… And every single one of us could use some mercy now.”[1]
In her book, she recalls how ten years ago, Rolling Stone called Mercy Now one of the “Top 20 saddest songs of all time.”
I’m honored to have one of my songs in a Rolling Stone top-twenty-of-all-time poll, but “Mercy Now” is not sad, it’s real. People sometimes cry when they hear it, but if tears come, I think they are tears of resonance; the words provide listeners a witness to their struggle. “Mercy Now” started as a personal song, then it deepened. It became universal.[2]
Tears of resonance. Something utterly real touches your real self, and for a moment you’re no longer shackled to fear, doubt, pain, anger, and desperation—and you get a full taste of sweet mercy and release.
I know many of you are struggling these days. It’s like you’re living inside this surreal fever dream that loudly insists on being all kinds of great and very smart, when all you can see are emotionally and morally stunted men moving fast and breaking things—commitments, norms, laws, and entire institutions, without a care in the world.
Breathe. Pray. Look up. Know who you are. Know whose promise you trust. Know whose life and whose vision for the life of all you want to live. Breathe. Pray. Hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.[3]
In the midst of this chaotic moment we hear Jesus say, “Love your enemies.” He says it twice in today’s passage. And because he knows that we immediately ask, most of us quietly, “What do you mean… LOVE our enemies?”, he adds three more brief statements to help us unwrap the meaning: Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you. Keep in mind that “you” in today’s passage, in just about every instance, is plural. Y’all do good to those who hate y’all. These are commands for the whole community of disciples to put into practice, and not just various individuals at the receiving end of hate, violence and abuse. The point is not to create more accommodating victims—meek, silent, and conveniently invisible—but to create a community that cultivates kindness and stands up against hate, violence and abuse with the relentless power of mercy.
When Jesus says, “Do good to those who hate you” he’s not addressing individual black and brown people, queer folk and trans people to figure out ways to do good to those who hate them—he’s addressing the whole community of believers. He’s telling us to stand together against the reign of hate, and to remind one another that we belong to each other. And then we can talk and strategize about how to remind the haters that they too are beloved.
When Jesus says, “Pray for those who abuse or mistreat you,” he’s not telling individual survivors of sexual abuse or domestic violence to pray for those who have shown no regard for their dignity as persons—he’s addressing the whole community believers. He’s telling us to stand together against lovelessness and against any disrespect for each person’s dignity and sanctity. He’s telling us to be in prayer about how best to protect each other from the trauma of abuse.
Pray for those who abuse you. Bless those who curse you. Do good to those who hate you. The sayings are short and memorable, and they easily take on a life of their own. They float around in the mind and in the culture, and without the ballast of Jesus’ proclamation of good news to the poor, release to the captives, and freedom for the oppressed—without that critical ballast, these sayings turn into destructive pills that only perpetuate piously white-washed systems of domination.
Listen to your mother. Brush your teeth. Wash your hands. Love your enemies. They sound deceptively similar, but the last one doesn’t pretend to be just another bit of parental wisdom. Love your enemies isn’t a bit of memorable advice, passed down from parents to their children, for how to deal with bullies, batterers, and abusers.
Also, cruel advice hardly qualifies as good news. And telling the bullied, the battered, and the abused, “Love your enemy,” that is cruel advice. Saying it may well be the least merciful act imaginable.
Love your enemies. The only one who can say that is the One who did say it. The rest of us need to listen. The only one who can say, Love your enemies, is the One who’s done it. The One who embodied God’s compassion and mercy like no other. The One who revealed the unfathomable depth of God’s mercy in his whole life and in his death by execution. As Paul reminds us, “Christ died for the ungodly… While we still were sinners Christ died for us… While we were enemies, we were reconciled to God.”[4] Love your enemies is not some pithy adage, short, memorable, made for sharing. Love your enemies is the life of Jesus in three words. It is the revelation of the heart of God.
Miroslav Volf is a theologian from Croatia who has lived and taught in the U.S. for much of his life. In his book, Exclusion and Embrace, he recounts an experience from the winter of 1993. It was at the height of the fighting between Serbians and Croatians in the former Yugoslavia, and Volf delivered a lecture arguing that disciples of Jesus ought to embrace our enemies just as Christ embraced us. After the lecture, a member of the audience asked him if he could embrace a četnik. Četniks were notoriously wicked Serbian fighters infamous for destroying Croatian cities, and rounding up, murdering and raping civilians. For Volf, a četnik stood as the epitome of a real and concrete enemy. Could he embrace a četnik?
“No, I cannot,” he answered after some hesitation, “but as a follower of Christ I think I should be able to.”[5]
“I think I should be able to” describes the direction of his life and his life’s work—toward that impossible embrace. Volf struggles, and how could he not, to fully imagine and live what Jesus and the first Christian witnesses teach: Like me, my enemy is the recipient of God’s love and stands with me at the cross of Christ, both of us together in the embrace of the love that will not let us go.
Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you. These words were not spoken for easy repetition, to be passed on as pious personal advice. The place to hear and ponder them is in the embrace of God’s love. That may be the only place to hear and ponder them. And it is only there that we can even begin to think about living them.
The world says, do to others as they do to you. Jesus teaches, do to others as you would have them do to you. And then he points to the reality in which we already live, in the embrace of God’s love, and he says, do as God does to you: be merciful. And heaven knows, there’s no dearth of realities needing our best, most thoughtful mercy now.[6] Breathe. Pray. Practice mercy.
[1] https://www.marygauthier.com/mercy-now-lyrics
[2] Mary Gauthier, Saved by a Song: The Art and Healing Power of Songwriting, United States: St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 2021.
[3] Hebrews 10:23
[4] Romans 5:6-10
[5] Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 9.
[6] Thanks to Sarah Henrich for this lovely phrase; https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/seventh-sunday-after-epiphany-3/commentary-on-luke-627-38-2