Blessed [fortunate] are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. ^[1]

~Jesus (Matthew 5:7)

‘Mercy’ is compassion for people in need at work. Mercy always deals with what we see of pain, misery and distress, these results of sin; and grace always deals with the sin and guilt itself. The one extends relief, the other pardon; the one cures, heals, helps, the other cleanses and reinstates our colleagues at work.

Jesus does not specify the categories of employees he has in mind to whom his disciples are to show mercy. He gives no indication whether he is thinking primarily of those overcome by disaster, like the traveler from Jerusalem to Jericho whom robbers assaulted and to whom the good Samaritan ‘showed mercy’, or of the hungry, the sick and the outcast on whom he himself regularly took pity, or of those who wrong us in the workplace so that justice cries out for punishment but mercy for forgiveness.

• There was no need for Jesus to elaborate.
• Our God is a merciful God and shows mercy continuously; the citizens of his kingdom must show mercy too.
• We must show mercy to our colleagues, employees and managers.

Of course, the workplace is unmerciful, as indeed also the church in its worldliness has often been. The workplace prefers to insulate itself against the pains and calamities of employees.

• It finds revenge delicious, and forgiveness, by comparison, tame.
• But those who show mercy find it.
• The same truth is echoed in the next chapter: ‘If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you.’
• This is not because we can merit mercy by mercy or forgiveness by forgiveness, but because we cannot receive the mercy and forgiveness of God unless we repent, and we cannot claim to have repented of our sins if we are unmerciful towards the sins of others.

To show mercy and to receive mercy: these belong indissolubly together, as Jesus illustrated in his parable of the unmerciful servant. Or, interpreted in the context of the beatitudes, it is ‘the meek’ who are also ‘the merciful’.

^[1] New American Standard Bible. (2020). (Mt 5:7). La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.