The Rev. Dr. Pamela Dolan

The Blessing of Mercy: A Sermon for All Saints’ Sunday

November 5, 2023

Those of us who had the pleasure of attending our diocesan convention this weekend, heard our keynote speaker Lisa Kimball quote Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury. At a different church gathering, she once heard him say this about why the church exists: “The purpose of the church is to form people into the kinds of people who can receive the gifts God wants to give.”

According to this definition, which I love, the church’s primary vocation or calling is formational in nature. Formation isn’t just another word for Sunday School; it’s not necessarily about classes or programs at all. It’s more of an attitude, or posture, of receptivity. It requires humility and openness and curiosity. Most of us have to be formed into people who are able to fully live into our baptismal covenant, formed into truly living as the Body of Christ. It’s not that God doesn’t want to give us all the gift of abundant life, it’s just that we’re not always in a good place to receive and take in that gift.

If you’ve ever tried to teach something to someone who is not in the mood to learn, or even tried to learn something new yourself when you’re overly tired or stressed, you know how it can feel about as effective as taking a shower wearing waterproof clothing—the lessons just bounce off, like water off a raincoat. It can take some work to become receptive, willing to be formed and thus transformed. Without that formation, in whatever shape in takes in our lives, we’re unlikely to receive the gifts of transformation that God wants to make ours.

Speaking of gifts—it occurs to me that all the characteristics highlighted in the beatitudes can be seen as gifts God wants to give us, and the blessing in them is how willing and able we are to receive them. Thinking about it this way, we might imagine that the saints were and are “just” people who are better at receiving these gifts than the rest of us tend to be. Notice my BIG air quotes around the word “just.”

• The saints are just people who turn their mourning into an opportunity to connect with the brokenness of the world.
• The saints are just people who turn their hunger and thirst for righteousness into justice-fueled action in the world, spending their lives exposing and overturning systems of oppression.
• The saints are just people who face the enormity of war and violence in the world and respond with sustained efforts at peacemaking.
• The saints are just people whose meekness and purity shine out from them into a world that badly needs these beacons, these icons of kindness, hope, and joy.

Our patron saint, St. Martin, was both a peacemaker and a man who embodied the beatitude, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.” The most famous legend about him is that when he was still in the military and just learning about becoming a Christian, he was confronted by a cold and hungry man begging for a little food. Martin slashed his soldier’s cloak in half and give it to the man, possibly saving his life. For a military uniform to become the blanket for a poor and suffering person—that’s a wonderful image, and one that has rightly been celebrated through the centuries. It’s a bit like turning swords into plowshares, except more intimate and personal.

Something about that encounter goes deeper than a simple act of charity, at least in the way it plays out in the Church’s imagination through the ages. When Martin encountered that cold, hungry man, he didn’t just pity him. For all we know, Martin had seen plenty of beggars before that day, and probably even felt pity for them. But this time Martin saw, not a beggar, but a human being: a human being made in the image and likeness of God. And knowing that they were connected by their humanity, more alike than different because they were both beloved children of God, Martin turned his feelings of compassion into action.

I have to admit, from time to time I have thought it would have made a better story if Martin had taken off his cloak and given the whole thing away. Wouldn’t that have been more dramatic, more heroic? What changed my mind about this is what happens in the second part of the story, what happens after Martin gives half of his cloak away. “That night, he dreamed that Jesus himself was clothed with the torn cloak. When he awoke, the garment was restored. Moved by this vision and apparent miracle, Martin immediately finished his religious instruction and was baptized at age 18.” I can only imagine how proud his Sunday School teachers must have been!

In all seriousness, this part of the story, where Christ is the one who has received Martin’s gift and now gives Martin a gift in return, this is what illuminates the true quality of mercy. Those who show mercy, who engage in compassionate action, will be shown mercy in return. Mercy begets mercy and the one who gives will also be the one who receives.

This reciprocal quality of mercy makes it an entirely different experience than noblesse oblige or what some call toxic charity. Mercy is a profoundly leveling experience, a behavior or way of being in the world that bridges the divide between haves and have-nots, benefactor and beneficiary, giver and receiver, ultimately removing those labels and distinctions altogether. Giving away half of his cloak was an equalizing gesture; Martin and the man were now the same: both were equallyvulnerable and exposed, and both now had something of value in their possession. 

Letting ourselves be vulnerable and receptive, accepting our own dependence on others and embracing the radical equality of all human beings—this is how we embody the true nature of mercy, and indeed how we become transformed by Christ in ways large and small. You might say it is how we let the waters of baptism soak through us, making all things new.

Today we give thanks for those saints, like Martin, who have given us examples to follow. May we walk in their slightly wet and maybe muddy footsteps, and, with Jesus, may we all find shelter under the protective cloak of mercy and grace. It is wide enough for us all. Amen.