The Quality of Mercy Is not Strained

Jonah 3:10 – 4:11

 

 

The quality of mercy is not strained. This line is spoken by Portia in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. I have always understood "the quality of mercy is not strained" to mean that mercy, if it truly be mercy, is something that flows from the heart; it is not something we must strain to allow. In the play, we see very little of the quality of mercy. For those of us who may not have seen much Shakespeare lately, let me give us a quick synopsis. Antonio and Shylock make a business deal whereby Shylock agrees to lend Antonio 3000 ducats, and as collateral Antonio promises Shylock "a pound of flesh" if he cannot repay the debt. As the play develops we learn that Shylock has a deep and abiding hatred of Antonio for past slights and sins Antonio has committed against him. As insiders we learn that Shylock hopes to exact his pound of flesh quite literally and quite brutally from the heart. In the play's climax, Antonio has failed to repay his debt and by law his life is forfeit to Shylock. All those around Shylock plead for mercy. They offer to repay the debt and even three times the debt if Shylock would but exchange his pound of flesh for an ounce of mercy. But Shylock responds not with mercy but with the law. "I stand here for law...I crave the law," he says. Shylock is kin to Jonah.

 

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The book of Jonah is a book about the quality of mercy. What we all remember, of course, is the big fish, but the punch line, which we read today in chapter four, is about mercy. The parts of the book I did not read today are the parts most of us know quite well. Jonah is called by God and sent to preach judgment against the people of Ninevah, against Israel's arch-enemy the Assyrians. This would make perfect sense to all those hearing the book of Jonah read, for the Assyrians were a hated people.  In the 8^th century Assyria had swept into the northern kingdom of Israel and slaughtered its people.  The men who survived were “shish-kabobed,” literally impaled from groin to head, and placed as flag poles along the road between Israel’s capital city of Samaria and Assyria’s capital city of Ninevah.  The women were forced against their will to bear children sired by multiple Assyrian men (I’m trying not to be too graphic here), and both the women and children were marched into slavery past the “flag poles.”  While they marched, a ring was put through their nose and a chain attached from their ring to the rings of those in front and behind them, such that if one person fell along the way all would feel the tug and pull of the ring.  To put the Assyrian brutality in perspective, I thought about our own national enemies with whom we have warred: the British, the French, Trinidad and Tobago, Native Americans, the Spanish, the Mexicans, the Germans and Austrians, the Germans again, the Italians and Japanese, the Soviets, the North Koreans and Chinese, the Vietnamese, the Iraqis and al-qaeda.  None of them has been a brutal as the Assyrians.  Perhaps al-qaeda would be if given the chance, but, to date, we have no enemy like the Ninevites.

 

 

 

The Scripture does not say up front why Jonah runs, just that he runs from God's command. Instead of heading east to Ninevah, which is modern day Iraq, Jonah heads west to board a boat for Tarshish, which is modern day Spain. Of course, the Lord will have none of Jonah's stubborn disobedience. The Lord sends a big storm to rock the boat upon which Jonah sails. The sailors are afraid and begin to cast lots to see who among them is responsible for such a calamity, and the lot falls to Jonah. Unsure of what to do, the sailors ask Jonah, "What should we do?" Jonah tells them to throw him over board, and the sailors do just that. Then, the part of the story all the kids like happens: a big fish swallows Jonah, and just as Christ spent three days in the belly of the earth, Jonah spends three days in the belly of the fish. As we can imagine, spending time in the belly of a fish makes one somewhat pensive and leads one to reflect upon the direction one's life is taking. The Bible calls Jonah's pensiveness "prayer" and his reflection "repentance." And so the Lord commanded the fish to force Jonah's departure on to dry land so that Jonah might go and preach against the Ninevites. Preach against the arch-enemy.

 

So far, we have the story we all know and all expect. So far, there has been some drama but no surprises. This is true for us, but it is even truer for the Israelites who first heard the Book of Jonah. To this point in the story, all the Israelites’ expectations have been met: no surprises have come their way, but that is all about to change. In just a moment, all that the Israelites thought they knew is going to be turned upside down. And in that moment they, and we, will understand the message of the Book of Jonah: the message that says the quality of mercy is not strained.

 

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A little reminder about historical background is in order. The Book of Jonah was written after the time of the exile, about 400 to 500 B.C.E., when the Israelites returned to a Jerusalem which lay in ruins. The people who returned engaged in a heated controversy that lasted for centuries. Nehemiah, who we talked about last week, rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem to protect the city and its people. The Book of Nehemiah represents one side in the controversies of the day, the Book of Jonah the other side. Nehemiah argued a good and worthy argument; namely, that the people needed to build strong walls around the city, both physically and spiritually, in order to protect themselves from those who would attack. But Nehemiah's argument has a harder edge to it as well. If we are building ourselves up, to make ourselves strong, to protect ourselves from the influence of others, it is but a very short step to putting others down, seeking to make others weak, attacking others and their influence. And this is exactly what Nehemiah advocates. The people living in Samaria, which is the province next door to Jerusalem, had intermarried with non-Jewish peoples during the exile. According to the Nehemiah side of the controversy, that made them polluted. They were impure.

 

All of a sudden, the Samaritans were the enemy; their bloodlines did not measure up. For five-hundred years the Israelites of Nehemiah's camp feuded with the Samaritans. We see the hostility revealed in the gospels. In John's gospel Jesus is resting by a well in Samaria and he initiates a conversation with a woman at the well. Her response is revealing, "'You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?' (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans)." The other side of the controversy is represented by the Book of Jonah. Imagine, if you will, being raised in Nehemiah's Israel where bloodlines were the most important spiritual characteristic one could have, and you hear the Book of Jonah read. Imagine your surprise.

 

Jonah enters Ninevah, the capital city of the hated empire of Assyria, and he proclaims the word of the Lord, "Forty more days and Ninevah will be overturned." So far, so good. Just what the Nehemiah camp wants and expects: let the Lord reek vengeance upon our enemy. May Ninevah know the same destruction as Jerusalem and worse! But then comes the surprise. Ninevah repents. From the king on down to the people, and even the animals, they repent. They tear their clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes, which are signs of repentance. And when God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.

 

The character of Jonah, of course, represents the Nehemiah camp through his reaction: "Lord, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love and mercy...And Lord, I don't like it! I am angry enough to die! How dare you have mercy on those people! How dare you have mercy on those outsiders whose bloodlines don't measure up! How dare you show mercy toward those people who did what they did to us!" But God does indeed show mercy, even to those people. The message of the Jonah camp is that God does not measure us by bloodlines but by mercy. As I have said, this controversy between Nehemiah and Jonah lasted for centuries. Even the early church was divided between Nehemiahites and Jonahites, between those who wanted gentile converts to observe every jot and tittle of the Law, and those who said let the gentiles be gentiles and let God's mercy be also for them. The Christian Church, obviously, went the way of Jonah and left the harder edge of Nehemiah behind. The Church of Jesus Christ decided within a few years after Jesus' death and resurrection that in the character of God the quality of mercy is not strained. And yet the controversy continues within each of us.

 

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In a sense, the tension between Antonio and Shylock, between the Books of Nehemiah and Jonah, between law and mercy is a tension we all experience. Every one of us has known a time when the quality of mercy did not flow from the heart but was a strain to allow. My guess is that we always had a good and just reason why our mercy should be strained. I know I always have a "good" reason when I strain at allowing mercy to flow. But then again, so did Shylock.

 

A modern example of the tension between law and mercy is depicted in John Grisham's novel The Chamber. In The Chamber, Grisham tells the story of Sam Cayhall who is a disgusting and despicable man: brutal, racist, remorseless, and a killer of children to boot. There is no question but that this man is evil. He is sent to Death Row to face the gas chamber. The story is taken up within months of the date when the execution is about to take place. A young lawyer named Adam takes the case to argue the last, long list of desperate appeals. As the story unfolds, we learn that Sam Cayhall is every bit the disgusting and despicable man we thought he was when we first met him, yet he is a man. A fellow human being. Also created in God's image, even if that image has been tarnished and obscured almost beyond recognition. A man with a family. A man who even in the darkness of a soul such as his own knows light and love. As the reader, we are asked the question, "Do we want him to die?" By rights he should die. He ought to die. If ever there was a man worthy of death, Sam Cayhall is it. And yet the quality of mercy is not strained; the controversy continues within each of us.

 

C.S. Lewis talks about the controversy within us in terms of the tension between ourselves and others as relates to mercy and justice. Lewis says we all want mercy for ourselves while usually offering justice to others. Lewis counsels us to apply the Golden Rule here so that the extent we desire mercy is the extent we render the deeds of mercy. Most of us want others to assume that our motives are good and that we are trying our best. We want others to focus on our strengths and be tolerant of our weaknesses. We want others to accept our apologies offered in sincerity and be willing to move on in the relationship. We want the mercy of gracious space to be ourselves and do our best and a little help picking ourselves up when we fall. Lewis asks that we let this kind of mercy be the standard of our mercy toward others, for as Shakespeare reminds us:

 

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,/ It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven/ Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;/ It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes:/ ‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes/ The throned monarch better than his crown;/ His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,/ The attribute to awe and majesty,/ Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;/ But mercy is above this sceptred sway; it is enthroned in the hearts of kings,/ It is an attribute to God himself;/ And earthly power doth then show likest God's/ When mercy seasons justice.

 

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