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The following message for the moment is delivered by the Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler Thielman. Today's sermon is entitled "Grow with the Flow." Jesus said, "Happy are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." And strange to say, whenever I think of these words of his, I think of a musical composition called the Moldau.

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Smetana was one of Czechoslovakia's great composers, and in 1874 he set about writing a series of tone poems to tell the story of his country, his beloved Bohemia. He called this series of tone poems "Ma Vlast," or "My Country," and one of them is called the Moldau, which is one of the principal rivers of Czechoslovakia.

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As you listen to the music, it starts out with the sound of a small spring, piccolos, flutes, some pizzicato on the strings, and then it moves down until it is rolling over cataracts and the white water comes and the sounds of the cymbals, and then the music broadens and more and more of the voices of the

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orchestra are added to it until finally it reaches a climax as it enters the city of Prague and then disappears in the distance. To me, this composition, the Moldau, is a musical picture of what mercy is like, so I ask you to think with me this morning about the river of mercy, and we'll use as our image

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Smetana's the Moldau. Now, the river begins in the heights with God. As you know, much of the moisture that causes a river to come into being comes from above in the form of condensation and precipitation. This is one of the principal ways in which a stream has its nativity. Well, just so, in the Moldau you

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hear the thin small melody with which that spring begins. Now, just so, the mercy of God begins with his act. It, too, comes down gently from above. Christian grace, the grace of mercy, and all other expressions of Christmas grace have their nativity in God. And the world would be a much harder place if this

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were not so. Think, for example, of what the world was like in the first century before Jesus modeled for us what the grace of God and mercy is to be. The ancient world was a very cruel world. The Jews did not hesitate to despise all Gentiles and killed unbelievers at the slightest provocation. The Romans

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tortured their slaves and did not hesitate to kill unwanted children. The Greeks despised everyone but themselves. They called everyone else barbarians, and if they had crippled or deformed children, they literally threw them onto the town garbage heap. Even so great a mind is that of Plato, produced a

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sentence like this, "Defective children must be done away with." So the old world was a very callous world. And in like manner, those portions of our planet today which have not been reached thoroughly by the gospel still have a tendency to be very cruel, far beyond anything that we experience in our own

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land. I think of walking through the marketplace in Lomé in Togoland and of watching a woman taking a living chicken and tearing it into bits to sell it to her customers. Now this hideous thing was being done with the piteous screams of this chicken, and people didn't even turn around to look. No sense of mercy, no

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sensitivity to hurt or harm at all. We have in the Islamic world a man named Rushdie who writes a book in which there are some criticisms directed at Muhammad. What happens? The Islamic world puts a price on his head and they are sending people out to find him wherever he might be and to end his life for

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financial reward. The only Christian minister still preaching in Iran a year ago has now been hanged by the Iranian government. The charges were trumped up. And in like manner, the Islamic people, whenever someone converts to Christianity, subject that person to all kinds of indignities and tortures and

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brainwashing to force that person back into the confines of Islam once again. You see, in these parts of the world where Christianity does not hold sway, there is still very merciless conduct. Now I am not saying that only a Christian can be merciful. I am sure, for example, that there are Muslims who are

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merciful, but I would argue this way. I would suggest that it is the influence of 60 generations of Christians. It is the combined meaning of 20 centuries of the gospel's presence on the earth that has ingrained itself so much into the heart of our times that when we do see acts of mercy on the part of those who

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do not believe or who have some kind of false belief, what we're seeing is an echo of the gospel in their lives. Their religions are without that mercy, and when mercy shows up in them, it is not because of their faith or it is not because of their utter lack of faith. It is because of the Christian influence

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which has covered the globe, some places very thinly, other places very thoroughly. So the mercy of God is essential to life as we know it on this earth, and it falls as the gentle dew from heaven that starts a spring and a river. It falls gently into our lives. Mercy literally means God's loving kindness, and it is

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crystallized for us in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus said, "As you have received mercy, so give mercy." And you remember the parable which was read in your hearing just a few moments ago. Let me take that parable and transliterate it into financial terms that we would understand today. Here is a man who owes

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his overlord twelve million dollars. The overlord is merciful to him and allows him not to pay the debt. Now as this man leaves, having received this great mercy, he encounters a fellow who owes him only ten dollars, and he extends no mercy to that man at all but has him thrown into jail to stay there until he can pay the

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debt. And Jesus says, "How is it that one who has received so much mercy can then begrudge so little mercy to another person?" Jesus is teaching us, you see, that mercy is to be present in all of us. Because we have been the recipients of God's mercy, we are to echo it in our own experience. And God is the model of what

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sacrificial mercy is to be. It comes down from Him. There's a story about a young Chinese artist who was converted to Christianity, and he decided to draw a picture of the parable of the prodigal son. And in this picture, the son is pictured off in the distance, and the father is standing by the gate waiting

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for his son to come. Now this young Chinese artist invited some of his Christian friends in to see it, and they saw the picture and they said, "Well, this isn't right. What's wrong with it?" he asked. "Well, the whole point of the parable is that the father doesn't just wait for the son to come, but rather he rushes out, he

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chases after him, he goes to help him and bear his weight and assist him as he comes home." The Chinese lad said, "Well, no Chinese father would do that." To which the other Christian said, "That's just the point. Earthly fathers most often don't do that kind of thing unless the Spirit of God

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dwells in them. But this is the truth that God models for us. His mercy, His love reaches out, runs out, grabs and draws to Himself all whom He loves, and He loves all." Well, the young Chinese decided that he would draw the picture again, and when he had finished, he invited his friends to see it once more.

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And the prodigal son still was off in the distance, but now the father was rushing toward the son. And the other Christians looked at it and said, "That's fine now. You just made one mistake." And he said, "What's that?" They said, "Well, you've painted two different shoes on the two feet of the father. They don't

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match." And he said, "Well, you see, the father was in such a big hurry to go and help his son that he made the mistake of taking one shoe each from two different pairs." You see, he had gotten the vision. He had come to understand that this kind of pursuing loving-kindness is of the essence of God. It is what God extends to

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us, and it is what we are to extend to others. And the world, where it is decent, does this. And the world today or yesterday, when it was indecent or is indecent, does not do this. The world is without mercy, but Christians bring the mercy modeled in Christ into the world, a river of grace. Now notice further that

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this river is constantly in motion. When you listen to Smetana's piece, "The Moldau," you notice that it's so forward-moving. From the very beginning to the very end, the melody keeps rolling on and on, and as the different places are passed in the music -- different scenes, an ancient castle, a wedding dance on the shores of

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the river, some whitewater cataracts -- as the river goes past these places and goes through these places, there is always this sense of forward motion. It's always moving until it enters grandly into the city of Prague. Mercy, you see, is an ongoing, aggressive thing, always on the move. And this brings us face to face

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with a serious misconception, which many people have with regard to mercy. You see, there are a lot of people who define mercy only as forgiveness. If you remit some penalty that you have the right to claim, if you relax justice when you do not have to relax it, when you omit some demand which you are not forced to omit,

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that, they say, is forgiveness. That is mercy. Well, it is, but it's negative mercy. You see, it's not something you do. It's something you do not do. You do not demand the penalty. You do not demand the justice. It is something that is by its very nature an omission. But Scripture says far more frequently than it speaks

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of mercy as forgiveness, Scripture says that mercy is a positive thing. It's not what you don't do to somebody that you have the right to do. It's what you do for someone when they have no expectation whatever of what your loving kindness is going to be. You see a model of this in the Old Testament. Joseph was

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one of God's favored ones, and the Scriptures say the Lord was with Joseph and showed him mercy. There's no forgiveness in that. The mercy, you see, was the loving care and support, or in the New Testament, Jesus talks about mercy not essentially as eliminating something from our lives, but rather

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putting an action into our lives which is outgoing and genuinely caring. Jesus did not say God so loved the world. Jesus said God so loved the world that he gave, and that, you see, is a positive act. That's a positive contribution to Jesus. Mercy is the gift that God puts into a life and which then comes out through

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the fingertips of the person who has received it. Mercy is that loving kindness which models God, that God puts into a heart and then is worked out in the hands of that person in acts of grace and kindness. To go back to that Chinese artist I was talking about a few moments ago, you see the picture of the

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father waiting at the gate going to pass over the penalty, but that's all. That's essentially a negative picture. That sees mercy as essentially forgiveness, but the real truth, and this is what the artist depicted in his second picture, the real truth is that the father runs as fast as he can. He hurries to the side of his son

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to extend him, lifting love, the power of his grace, and that's what mercy is essentially. Not something we don't do, but something that we do do. Mercy is not just forgiveness, it is aggressive love which moves always just as a mighty river moves. Jesus said, you remember, that we should forgive others 70 times

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seven times, which means endlessly, and when he speaks of that kind of forgiveness he is talking of mercy, true, but Jesus also said that whenever you give someone so much as a cup of cold water, you are doing to them a merciful thing, because mercy is most of all simply love on the move. And notice

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this too, that as this river flows, it grows. Smetana's "The Moldau," for example, starts off with the thin sound of this spring, but as it comes closer to its end, as it enters the city of Prague, then the whole orchestra is playing. The melody captures every instrument on the platform before you, and they are all

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singing this song together, the rolling motion, the ongoing motion of this river which is growing in every moment, and the music is so joyous and so positive and so affirmative that you find yourself swaying with it or your toes tapping. That's what mercy is, something that grows with the flow, and

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this brings us face to face with another error which people have when they think about mercy. You see, a lot of people think that when Jesus said, "Happy are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy," what he meant was, if you are merciful to other people, then God will be merciful to you. A kind of deal, you see. You do

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nice things for others, and God will do nice things for you. But that's not what Jesus means at all. Now, what I've just described is what I call the Androcles syndrome. You remember the story of Androcles? He was a slave who escaped, and he hides in a cave, and he sees a lion go by limping on three paws, and the lion

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comes up to him and extends his one paw in which there is a huge, ugly, festering thorn. Androcles very gently and carefully and quickly removes that thorn, and the lion licks his hand and then goes on. Shortly thereafter, Androcles is captured by his owner, and he is to be used as an example to put fear into all

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of the other slaves, and so the owner says he will be thrown into the pit and a lion put in there to eat him alive. But the lion that they put into the pit happens to be the lion whose injured paw Androcles helped to heal, and the lion recognized Androcles, and instead of going up to chew on him, he goes up and

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nuzzles him and then lies down at his feet. And when the people saw this, they were so amazed that they demanded that Androcles be given his freedom. Now, you see, the suggestion of the story is because Androcles did something good, something good was done for him by the lion. And there are a lot of people who

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think of mercy just like that. You do something merciful, and God will do something merciful for you. But my friends, let's be very frank about this. We all know that mercy does not inevitably beget mercy. I doubt if there's any person within the sound of my voice at this moment who has not at

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one time or another done some very merciful, sacrificial act for some other individual. And what was their response? They were clobbered. Their kindness was not met with kindness, but rather with resentment, and sometimes with hardness and with cruelty. The supreme example of this, of course, is the life of our Lord.

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Jesus is the master of mercy. He is the most compassionate of all the compassionate. He sacrifices himself. He heals. He lifts up those who are downtrodden. And what did he get in return for all of this? He was betrayed, he was beaten, and he was broken on a cross. Now, Jesus' word, "Happy are the

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merciful, for they shall obtain mercy," does not mean that we do good deeds in order to gain good deeds. It does not mean that we seek to put God into our debt so that on the basis of our virtue, God must deal kindly and mercifully with us. No, what Jesus means is this. When a person is merciful, when the current of

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God's mercy is flowing through them like the current of a river, that flowing mercy, because of God's blessing, multiplies. It expands. The merciful person becomes even more merciful. Because this person knows God, he or she wants to become like God. And as they become more like God, they grow with the

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flow of God's mercy that is moving in them. See, Scripture nowhere says that we can buy God's mercy. What Scripture does say is that the more we experience the mercy of God, the more we will show that mercy to other people, and they will experience God's mercy through us. I read about a woman who was in an automobile

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accident. She was all upset, and she reached over to open the glove compartment to get up the insurance papers, and as she pulled the little packet from the glove compartment, there on the top was a note, and the note read, "Remember, dear, it is you that I love, not the car." And realizing how she was loved,

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she was filled with a great confidence and a great courage and a great sense of assurance, and she got out of that car, mirroring that love, and brought the situation to a peaceful resolution. You see, when you are loved, then you yourself, if that love is of God, will become a better lover. You will grow with the flow.

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And finally, notice this. The river eventually loses itself in the sea and descends again into the heavens. The end of Smetana's piece, "The Moldau," is a very short coda, two chords for full orchestra, but before that, the river begins to fade away. As it goes off into the distance, it is as if you're standing on

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the shore, and its great flowing stream moves far beyond you until you can see it only dimly in the distance, and the sound becomes very silent. The Moldau mixes with the Elba, and this goes on to the sea. This is true with every river, of course. It starts with some spring, it flows forward, it grows, because you see,

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like us, the more it gives, the more it grows. And then there comes the day when it goes around the bend and it sees before it the ocean, the blue immensity of God's sea. And the river flows in to that immensity, and when it becomes part of the ocean, it enters into the process of evaporation, and when it becomes a

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vapor, it rises again to the skies, whence it came in the first place. It has become once more a part of the infinite. And just so, for each of us, the day will come when we will round our last bend, and at that moment we will disappear into the infinity of heaven, into the infinity of God's marvelous love. And this is what

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Christ means when he says, "Happy are the merciful, for they shall obtain merciful." Merciful means to be given the capacity to become even more merciful. God's love growing in us makes us greater lovers than we ever were before. Well, this, I think, is the message that Jesus is giving to those who listened to

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his sermon a long time ago, that one delivered from the mount, and the message which he is bringing to us through the Holy Spirit today. I think of it in terms of a woman who was having her portrait painted, and after one particular sitting she went around and looked at the canvas, and then she looked at the artist and

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she said, "I don't think this painting does me justice," to which the artist responded, "Madam, with a face like yours, you don't need justice, you need mercy." Well, that's what we all need, mercy. And we receive it from God in great abundance, and the proof of our receiving it is that it shows in our lives, not only here, but

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hereafter. We come to understand fully what it is to know the happiness of mercy, the mercy God has given us, and the happiness of ourselves becoming more merciful, the joy we know when we can do some act of loving kindness for another. And I personally believe that it is not until we experience that, that we will be

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able to experience fully what the psalmist meant when he wrote, "Goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life," that's here, "and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever." That is hereafter. When Jesus said, "Happy are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy," he is saying, "Happy are those who mimic the

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model of God's mercy which they've experienced, and in their mimicking it, come to a joy and a happiness, a satisfaction and a peace which is beyond anything they have ever known before, and they know it now and forever. Goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the

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house of the Lord forever." What could possibly give us greater happiness than that? Pray with me. Oh God, we pray for those who this morning have not yet experienced thy

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mercy, who have pushed mercy away and are trying to lead their own lives without mercy. We pray that your Holy Spirit will be patient with them, and the time will come when they will recognize all of the mercy you are ready to pour into their lives, and when they have experienced that infilling, we know that they will

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grow with that flow, and that they will become marvelous agents of mercy in the world as they have received, so they will give. And there can be no greater happiness than to give in the name of that one who gave everything he was and had, that we might know what happiness really is, even Jesus Christ.

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Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]