Sunday Morning Worship

We've been climbing this mountain together all spring and summer — sitting with Jesus and the Beatitudes as wisdom for how life actually works, and as a proclamation of what is already true about us and about the world. Today we come to the fifth beatitude. And it may be the one our cultural moment needs most desperately. Blessed are the merciful. Not the toughest. Not the most righteous. Not the ones who got it right. The merciful. In a world that runs on retribution — on cancel and punish and make them pay — Jesus looks out at the crowd and says: the ones who have learned to see with compassion, to release the weight of contempt, to extend what they themselves need — those are the blessed ones.

And here is the promise: they will receive mercy in return.

Come, then. We all could use a little mercy now.