There was a monk, a desert father, named Ammonas. He may have been a bishop. Whatever he was, there’s a story about him I’ve always liked. It’s the story of a monk he once had to deal with, a monk who had a bad reputation; no one liked him, and he probably wasn’t a good monk at all—a fraud, perhaps.

Anyway, the story is that one day this bad monk invited a woman into his cell; she likely had a bad reputation too. And, obviously, others saw this and were scandalized. A mob formed, and they went to get Ammonas; they wanted him, I think, to act as judge of some sort, presiding over what could have become a rather violent impromptu trial. The bad monk got wind of this somehow, so he worked quickly to hide this poor woman somewhere in his cell. There was a barrel in his room, so he made her squat down inside of it; the story reads like some sort of cartoon at this point. But as Ammonas entered the bad monk’s cell along with the angry mob, Ammonas instantly put two and two together, figuring out that the woman was hidden away as she was in the barrel. And so, Ammonas took his seat upon the barrel and ordered the mob to search the cell. But, of course, they couldn’t find her; no one had thought to look in the barrel because Ammonas was sitting on it. So, Ammonas chastised the mob, having found nothing: “What is this? God will forgive you,” he said, ordering them to leave. And then, finally alone, Ammonas hopped off the barrel, looked at the bad monk and said simply, “Pay attention to yourself, brother.” And then he went away.[1]

Now, I tell this story, one because I like it, but also because it shows us what mercy sometimes looks like, what, in fact, it often looks like. Which is good for us all to remember, for those of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus and who therefore remember and believe what Jesus taught: that we won’t know mercy unless we’re merciful, and that we won’t know salvation unless we share the mercy we’ve been given (be very careful, by the way, with that grudge you hold). Mercy is a funny thing. Because, plainly, it makes little sense. To be merciful, at times, is to act ridiculously. Like Ammonas, what he did makes little sense; that bad monk was probably a hypocrite; he probably should have had it coming. Yet, Ammonas did the silly thing; the text of the story simply says he “covered the matter up for the love of God.”[2] We don’t like that way of putting it, especially today—covering it up. But that’s what he did. Mercy is a strange thing. We should just be clear about that right up front: how mercy doesn’t compute and that there’s no real reason for it.

But here’s the thing. That’s just the way it is. Christ died, Paul said, for the “ungodly.”[3] That us, you and me—the ungodly. That’s what God did; he didn’t need to; maybe he shouldn’t have, I sometimes think. But that’s what God did. He was merciful to the ungodly. For God so loved the world, he gave his only Son; if you think about it, that world he died for was and remains a pretty wicked world.[4] For some reason, the risen Lord went back to the friends who scattered and left him, who after several years with him didn’t understand him. He didn’t give up on his disciples when maybe he should’ve. Yet he went to them, and through a door they themselves locked.[5] That’s what God did. He’s merciful. I don’t understand it; sometimes I wonder why he didn’t think better of it. But that’s just what God did. He’s merciful.

And God’s always been like that, really. As he said to Moses: “I am merciful to whomever I choose.”[6] And again, what’s astounding is who God chooses; they’re often not the sort I would choose. I always think of Jacob here. He was a bit clueless, you see; there’s no real indication he was pious at all; you don’t see him praying much, for instance. Yet, at Bethel, God basically just grabs him. “I, the Lord, am the God of your forefather Abraham,” he says to him. “I am with you; I will protect you…I will never leave you”—that’s what God said to Jacob.[7] And Jacob didn’t deserve it at all, such mercy. He didn’t earn it. He wasn’t worthy of it. But that’s just what God did. And that’s what mercy is: the unreasonable fact that God has not given up on you, that he will never leave you alone, even when you deserve it, even when you want it. And I think it’s because he’s a Father, a perfect Father so very much unlike us. Because he never leaves his children. Because that just isn’t what God does. Because that isn’t the sort of God he is.

But, of course, that doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as responsibility, accountability, judgement, or even hell. Jesus himself warned us about this.[8] Mercy doesn’t mean nothing matters. We clergy especially should remember this, fearing rightly for our own souls. I often think of Dante passing through the fourth circle of hell; looking around, surprised, he turns to Virgil and asks, “Are all these clergy?”[9] There’s also that ancient story from Egypt of a holy monk granted a vision to see the soul of a bad monk he’d been praying for. The bad monk was in hell, standing in a river of fire; but when the bad monk saw the holy monk who had been praying for him, he thanked him, for now his head was above the flames; because, as he said, “Thanks to your prayers I am standing on the head of a bishop.”[10] Mercy does not mean there is no judgement—for me or for you. Mercy doesn’t mean you needn’t make any spiritual or moral effort. Again, I sometimes think so much of the desert fathers: a brother said to the great St. Antony once, “Pray for me.” But for some reason, Antony fired back, “Neither I nor God will take pity on you unless you yourself make an effort and petition God.”[11] Again, think of that story of Ammonas, the bad monk, and the woman in the barrel. Ammonas didn’t say, “Boy, that was a close call!” He didn’t politely ignore the sin and the hypocrisy. He also wasn’t so wicked as to suggest sin wasn’t sin. Rather, more hauntingly—it’s almost frightening—he simply said to the bad monk, “Pay attention to yourself, brother.” Again, that’s what mercy looks like, real mercy. It gives us another chance to grow up, to quit being the hypocrites we sometimes are. Again, because God’s a perfect Father. He knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows what we’ve been and what we can become.

And so, the question is: what will you do with the mercy of God? When you come to church, when you talk to a priest; when you hear comforting, uplifting words; when you hear about forgiveness and mercy, do you walk away, unchanged, thinking to yourself, “I’m not such a bad person. I’m okay”? Or, do you see mercy for what it is, a chance to change for the better? When the priest or the preacher doesn’t bluntly call you out for your sins, your pagan lifestyle; when, instead, the priest is polite, says nothing or awkwardly tries to be kind: unchanged, do you think to yourself, “It’s not really a big deal—mired in lies, in an immoral job, an immoral relationship, tightfisted, hedonistic—it’s not a big deal”? Do you think that’s what mercy is—a pat on the back, an “attaboy,” or worse an endorsement of your sins? Or, is mercy more like those haunting words: “Pay attention to yourself brother.” Or, those equally haunting words the priest says at the end of every confession: “Go in peace.” Or, as Jesus said to that brother he healed once, “do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse may happen to you.”[12] Because that’s what mercy is meant to do—give you peace, real peace and not any sort of cheap cleansing of your conscience. Because mercy is meant for change. Which is, really, the final question: if that’s what you want, if you want to change. Or, if by continued sinning, ignorant of truth, you finally stand apart from the sacrifice, remaining, very sadly, in the sins that will never make you happy.[13]

Such is the challenge of mercy—for me and for you. What will we do with it? It is quite a challenge. And, of course, I’ve only barely touched upon that other great challenge Jesus puts to us, that we must be merciful to others or lose mercy altogether.[14] But we’ll talk about that later. Sufficient is the challenge at hand—to learn what to do with the mercy God gives each of us. Whether it will change us. Amen.

[1] Give Me a Word: The Alphabetical Sayings of the Desert Fathers, 63

[2] Ibid.

[3] Romans 5:6

[4] John 3:16

[5] John 20:19

[6] Exodus 33:19 paraphrase; cf., Romans 9:15

[7] Genesis 28:13-15

[8] Matthew 10:28

[9] Dante, Inferno 7.37-39 paraphrase

[10] John Moschos, The Spiritual Meadow 44

[11] Give Me a Word: The Alphabetical Sayings of the Desert Fathers, 34

[12] John 5:14

[13] Hebrews 10:26

[14] Matthew 6:14-15

© 2022 Rev. Joshua J. Whitfield