[From Part II, Chapter
VII: “Mercifulness, a Work of Love, Even if It Can Give Nothing and is
Capable of Giving Nothing”]
“And he called his disciples to him and said to them, ‘Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.’” ~ Mark 12:43-44 (ESV)
“‘Do not neglect to do good and to share’[Hebrews 13:16]—but also do not forget that this perpetual worldly talk about doing good and well-doing and charity and charities and gifts and gifts is almost merciless. Let journalists and tax-collectors and parish clerks talk about charity and calculate and calculate; but let us never fail to hear that Christianity speaks essentially of mercifulness, that Christianity would last of all reward this mercilessness, as if poverty and wretchedness were not only lacking in money, etc., but also were excluded from the highest of all, from being able to practice mercifulness, because they are excluded from the capacity of being charitable, well-doing, beneficent.”[1]
We often associate love with
charity. We associate “works of love” with charitable giving. There is a
problem with this association: God has commanded us to love—each one of us
ought to love her neighbor—and yet not each of us can be charitable. A person
mired in poverty has no capacity to give large sums of money to charity. When
we say that love is charity—or when we imply that the only real acts of love
are charitable ones—then we are saying that the poor cannot express true love.
This passage hit me particularly hard because Kierkegaard goes on to target
pastors specifically for spreading this idea: “Woe,” he writes, “to the
preachers who are silent about mercifulness in order to talk about charity!
Preaching should be solely and only about mercifulness.”
But how can Kierkegaard criticize
charity? After all, it is one of the cardinal Christian virtues. How can we say
that it’s wrong to celebrate charity? Well, the giving of money to the needy is
an important virtue for those who have money to give—but the universal virtue
is mercifulness. Not everyone can
give large sums of money, but everyone can show mercy. The giving of money is
an expression of mercy, but it is not the only expression of mercy. Therefore
the true work of love is mercy; the command of Christ for all Christians is to
show mercy.
To illustrate, Kierkegaard tells
a variation on the story of the Good Samaritan. What if the Samaritan had been
walking instead of riding a donkey—because he couldn’t afford one—and had
picked up the man and carried him on his own back to the inn? And what if the
innkeeper had turned him away because the Samaritan had no money, so that all
the Samaritan could do was comfort the man while he did? Would this version of
the Samaritan be any less “good,” simply because he had no money? Of course not! And yet we
continually choose to emphasize charity over mercy. We give glory to the big
gifts, the large donations of wealthy people and ignore the small but dramatic
gifts of those who have little to offer. In so doing, we fail to show mercy ourselves,
because we have allowed the great gifts of the poor to be overshadowed by the
lesser gifts of the wealthy.
Of course, on the other hand, not
every small gift offered by a person of small means is inherently a gift of
love. In truth money has nothing to do with mercy, but we are so prone to
celebrating large sums of money that we have to compensate for that tendency.
As Kierkegaard writes,
“Does mercifulness consist in giving hundreds of thousands to the poor? No. Is it mercifulness to give a halfpenny to the poor? No. Mercifulness is how it is given. Therefore the hundreds of thousands and the halfpenny are a matter of indifference… But if I can see mercifulness in the halfpenny just as well as in the hundreds of thousands, I can really see it better in the halfpenny, for the hundreds of thousands have an accidental significance which easily draws physical attention to itself and thereby distracts me from seeing the mercifulness. Is it mercifulness when one who can do everything does everything for the wretched? No. Is it mercifulness when one who can do just about nothing does this nothing for the wretched? No. Mercifulness is how this everything and this nothing are done.”[2]
Gifts given in love are merciful.
When a person gives whatever they can to help others, that is mercy. When a
person cares more about their neighbor-s well-being than their own, that is
mercy. This is the virtue we ought to cultivate in ourselves and our churches.
Charity is important—in fact, it is commanded by God—for those who have the
means to give. But those who have no capacity to give are not excluding from
being able to show God’s love—and neither are they exempt from the command to
show God’s love to others. We all must be merciful people.
Dear Father,
I am so easily distracted by
appearances. I do get more excited by big, flashy acts of charity than by
small, unassuming acts of mercy. Give me eyes that see as you do, that perceive
the eternal value of those small acts. Make me to be merciful. Push me to give
all that I can to the care of others. May your church be a people of limitless
mercy.
In the name of Jesus Christ,
Amen.
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