While at high school, my English class spent one entire term reading through Shakespeare’s ‘The Merchant of Venice’. Every lesson, we simply swapped parts and read through the play.
Ad infinitum … or as ‘ad infinitum’ as lots of things feel when you’re 14 or 15.
Consequently, these lines remain with me: 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. Portia is asking the money lender Shylock to show mercy. She can’t demand it, so she subtly reminds him that such mercy might benefit him as giver, as much as the one who receives his mercy.
I remain challenged by those words. For there seems to be a natural human inclination for mercy only to be given when it is deserved, yet Jesus taught mercy was an essential component of true religion and of Christianity.
The imagery of mercy falling like ‘gentle rain from heaven’ reminds me of Jesus’ words that the rain falls on both the ‘just’ and the ‘unjust’ (Matthew 5:45). In other words, if we’ve a farmer desperate for rain on our parched soil, whether or not that rain comes doesn’t depend on whether we’re ‘good’ or ‘bad’ people. Sometimes it will rain, sometimes it will not—the blessing of rain is not evidence of God showing anyone special favour.
So it is with mercy, it is not just to be given to those who ‘deserve’ it—those who have never messed up or made a mistake. It is meant to be available equally to all.
What a challenge then to read Robin Raymond’s interview with Principal Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft, who shows that a commitment to both justice and mercy truly can bless those who give and those who receive.
Mercy does not mean an absence of justice—the two ideally co-exist. When they do, people may choose to respond with gratitude, and perhaps even change the direction of their lives as a result.
Christina Tyson
2 Peter 3:18 Contemporary English Version
‘Let the wonderful kindness and the understanding that come from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ help you to keep on growing.’
2 Pita 3:18
‘Engari kia neke ake i runga i te aroha noa, i te mātauranga o tō tātou Ariki, arā o te Kaiwhakaora, o Īhu Karaiti.’