From time to time one hears of rather callous acts of neglect - situations where the sufferings of fellow human-beings are simply ignored.  An attack of violence occurs in the inner suburbs of a large city.  Screams and shouts punctuate the night and people peer through their blinds and curtains but no one comes to help; no one wants to get involved.  A motor-cyclist, struck by a car, lies unconscious beside his bike on a busy highway.  Several cars speed by before one eventually stops – the others were too busy or perhaps expected foul play.

Jesus once told a story of such a situation.  A man, beaten and robbed by thugs, is left half dead beside the roadway.  A priest passes by – but on the other side of the road – he’s running late for a meeting... no time to stop.  Another churchman passes by but he doesn’t want to get involved either.  Finally a foreigner, a second-rate citizen, passes by and he, of all people, stops to assist the injured man... he pauses to care.

What a sad commentary on the lack of compassion in our world.  Often it takes an enormous tragedy to get us motivated to even begin to be compassionate – for the rest we are too busy looking after the interests of Number One.

Jesus once said, “Blessed are the merciful for they shall be shown mercy.”  They are to be congratulated who do deeds of kindness and show compassion to their fellow man.

‘Mercy’ is another of those words that we just don’t use a great deal in ordinary every day conversation.  So what does it mean to be merciful?  In the Bible the word is used in two ways.  First it uses the word in connection with debt and with guilt.  Jesus once told a parable of a man who was forgiven a huge debt by a king but the man then went out and tried to extract a very small debt from a fellow servant of the king.  The king rebuked him for not being merciful.  He should have shown mercy just as the king had shown mercy to him.  A second way the Bible uses the word mercy is as synonym for compassion.  That takes us back to the parable of the road-side victim of the hold-up and the foreigner who showed mercy.  We know that story as the parable of the Good Samaritan – a parable that has left us a legacy: a term for mercy and compassion in today’s world – where someone who goes out of their way to help others is still called a Good Samaritan.  It is such people on whom Jesus pronounces this blessing... this beatitude.

But it raises a question for us doesn’t it?  Does that mean then that there won’t be very many people who are blessed?  You see, by nature we’re not so inclined to be compassionate.  We are part of a compassionless world that prefers not to get involved.  Well, the fact is that it takes nothing less than a miracle to create in me that kind of compassion that Jesus advocated in the parable of the Good Samaritan.

You see, this is precisely the message of the Christian faith – God can and does do that miracle for those who come in faith to the Lord Jesus Christ.  God showed us His compassion by sending Jesus, His Son, to die for compassionless creatures so that they too begin to show the kindness that was there in the life of Jesus.

Okay, Christians don’t have a monopoly on compassion.  But it’s not surprising that, despite our shortcomings, compassion is nevertheless one of the marks of Christianity.  From its earliest days Christian Missionaries set up schools and hospitals even as they preached the good news of Jesus.

I’ve been viewing recently some lectures on YouTube by historian Tom Holland.  Tom came out of unbelief into the Christian faith because he became convinced that it was Christianity that shaped the morality of our Western Society and slowly but surely led it out of cruelty and brutal barbarism into a compassionate society that provides welfare and health care.  Think only of the abolition of slavery that was driven by the Christian conviction of people like William Wilberforce and John Newton.

All this makes the word of Jesus very relevant for our society today as some activists do their best to remove Christian influence from our Western society.  Today’s world still needs the reminder: Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy.

John Westendorp