"Mercy in the Kairos Moment"
"Grace, mercy, and peace to you
from God our Father,
who judges with perfect justice yet clothes us in mercy;
from Christ our Lord,
who bears the weight of our burdens on the cross;
and from the Holy Spirit,
who empowers us to overcome evil with good."
As we turn now to God’s Word, let us hear Christ’s call
in Luke 6:36:
"Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful."
May the Spirit open our hearts to receive—
not as those who judge, but as those judged and forgiven;
not as those who demand, but as those who have been given much.
Dear Sisters and brothers in Christ!
We find ourselves standing at a crossroads of time - not
merely chronological time that ticks away indifferently, but Kairos time, that
pregnant moment of divine opportunity when eternity breaks into our temporal
existence. You see, our languages are quite weak in words, the Greek has to
words to define time; Cronos and Kairos. Cronos is the time marked on our
watches, the days, months and years passed by. The Kairos is the time of
critical decisions, the momentum of life when we need take position. In this
sacred interval, Jesus' words in Luke 6:36-42 come to us not as abstract moral
advice, but as an urgent summons to participate in God's economy and life of
mercy.
The passage begins with a radical imperative: "Be
merciful, just as your Father is merciful." This command shatters our
conventional understanding of reciprocity. In our world, we've grown accustomed
to transactional relationships - you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours, you
hit me and I will hit you doubled. But Jesus introduces a new paradigm where
mercy flows not from calculated self-interest, but from our fundamental
identity as children of a merciful God.
Consider the profound theological implications here. Mercy
isn't presented as one virtue among many, but as the very reflection of God's
character that should mark those who call Him Father. We understand ourselves
as image of God, or reflexes of God, and it means others ought to see God
through us. This transforms mercy and love from a moral achievement to a family
resemblance. As Dallas Willard observed, "Grace is not opposed to effort,
but to earning" and this means receive Grace is not something I do, but
what God does for us. Our capacity for
mercy doesn't originate in our moral resolve, our doings but in our spiritual
DNA as God's redeemed children, as daughters and sons of God.
Yet the speech of Jesus doesn't allow us to remain in
comfortable abstraction, as good people meditating listening a sermon that
won’t change our lives. Jesus confronts us with visceral metaphors that expose
our hypocrisy - the image of someone with a wooden beam protruding from their
eye attempting to remove a speck from another's eye is almost comical in its
absurdity. But this is precisely the point. Our judgmental tendencies, often so
natural to us, appear ridiculous when viewed through Christ's lens.
The contemporary implications are staggering. In our digital
age where social media platforms have become arenas for public shaming, debates
and virtue signaling, Jesus' words cut through our self-righteous posturing.
How many of us have played both roles - the one pointing out specks with
gleeful indignation while remaining oblivious to our own glaring faults? Jesus
forces us into very uncomfortable self-examination:
What planks do I carry? How big is each of those planks? (in
Greek it is more than a plank, it is a crossbar)
How have my judgments harmed others?
What structures of self-deception prevent me from seeing my
own failings clearly?
This passage also dismantles our meritocratic illusions. The
"measure for measure" principle (v. 38) operates not as a mechanical
law of destiny, but as a revelation of God's generous character, God’s mercy,
God’s love. When we forgive, we don't manipulate God into forgiving us; rather,
we demonstrate that we've truly received and understood His forgiveness. As
Brazilians say “sin is human but forgive is divine”. Our mercy toward others
becomes evidence of our apprehension of divine mercy, it is the purest of being
God’s image, letting God’s mercy reflect from us. Is what, as said in Psalm 8,
makes us just a bit smaller than God.
The ecological implications shouldn't be overlooked either.
If we're called to reflect God's mercy, this extends beyond human relationships
to all creation. In an era of climate crisis and mass extinction, what would it
mean for Christians to lead in merciful stewardship of the earth? Jesus invites
us to consider how our economic systems, often built on exploitation, might be
transformed by mercy.
This brings us to the Kairos urgency of the passage. Every
moment presents a decision point - will we continue in cycles of judgment and
retaliation, or will we step into the liberating way of mercy? For the
individual, this might mean forgiving a long-held grievance. For congregations,
it could involve creating cultures where people feel safe to be imperfect. It
could mean also in being involved in church life in full. For society, it
demands reimagining justice systems that prioritize restoration over retribution,
that priories the less powerful people, the ones living at the margin of the
society, the ones that are being genocide.
The time for mercy is now, now is the Kairos moment. Not
because we've achieved moral perfection, but precisely because we haven't. As
we stand in the light of God's mercy, we become conduits of that mercy to
others, we become the mirror where people see the love and mercy of God. This
is the revolutionary power of the gospel - that the forgiven become forgivers,
the recipients become givers, and the judged become agents of grace.
In our final consideration, we must ask: What would our
communities look like if we took this passage seriously? Perhaps we'd see less
moral posturing and more honest brokenness. Less condemnation and more
compassion. Less tribal hostility and more bridge-building. This is the vision
Jesus holds before us - a people so transformed by divine mercy that we can't
help but extend it to others.
As we leave this reflection, the challenge remains: In this
Kairos moment, will we choose the costly path of mercy? The world has seen
enough of judgment. What it desperately needs to see is people who have been so
profoundly affected by God's mercy that they become living embodiments of it in
every sphere of life.
Armin Andreas Hollas
