Who Deserves Mercy? The Question That Exposes Us All

In Jericho, dust clings to the feet of the crowd. A blind beggar named Bartimaeus sits at the edges of the road, where the forgotten ones always seem to land. He is shouting. Pleading. Breaking the social contract of invisibility.

“Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

The crowd tells him to be quiet. “Hush! Don’t make a scene.”

But Bartimaeus knows something about mercy that they don’t:

Mercy doesn’t ask for permission to enter the story.

So, Jesus hears the plea and stops. “What do you want me to do for you?”

And that is how the world changes — one act of recognition at a time.

This past summer, I found myself inside Texas’ execution chamber. I had spent ten years as Ramiro Gonzales’ friend and spiritual advisor, and now I was standing at the edge of his life, watching as the state took it from him.

Before that moment, thousands of us had lifted our voices, pleading for mercy. Letters, petitions, calls to the governor — we wrote and rewrote the reasons he should live, as if life should ever need justifying. But Texas, whose veins run thick with retribution, answered only with silence and poison.

They took him anyway.

Ramiro had been shaped by a childhood laced with bruises and a loneliness that consumed him. He grew up in a world that forgot how to dream beyond cycles of harm and a world where love had no native tongue. And yes — he had caused harm too. Deep, irreversible harm.

But within the confines of a concrete cell no bigger than a parking space, he found a way to lean toward the light.

Ramiro became the kind of person who prayed for the men who would strap him down. The kind of person who, in the last moments of his life, told me he loved me.

Lord, have mercy.

Here’s what I know about mercy:

Mercy is what we ask for when justice feels too small. Mercy is what we give when punishment has lost its point. Mercy is the crack in the lies we tell ourselves that lets the light seep in.

Mercy is the thing that Texas would not grant Ramiro. Mercy is the thing Bartimaeus hoped he was worthy of. Mercy is the thing that changes everything, if we dare to believe in it.

Jesus heard the cry of the man at the roadside and stopped. The people in power heard Ramiro’s cry and carried on walking.

But maybe we don’t have to.

Maybe mercy is ours to choose, again and again, in a world desperate for healing. Maybe we can refuse to let vengeance be the last word. Maybe we can dare to insist, like Bartimaeus, that mercy belongs to everyone. Even the condemned. Even us.

And maybe, in the end, that is the thing that makes us well.

I think about Bartimaeus, shouting at the top of his lungs, and I wonder how many times he had been ignored before Jesus stopped. How many times had he lifted his voice, only to be swallowed up by the noise of a world that doesn’t like to be inconvenienced by suffering? By need? By the ones who sit on the sidelines, holding out their hands, knowing they will likely be overlooked once again?

And I think about Ramiro. How many times had he cried out for mercy as a child, his pleas unheard by those who should have cared? How many cracks had he slipped through as his life unraveled, each misstep pushing him further into desperation, until violence felt like the only option he had left? How many times had he reached for redemption, hoping someone might see him as more than the sum of his worst choices? How many times had he searched for mercy, only to learn that in this world, it is not freely given to those who need it most?

It’s an exhausting thing, asking for mercy. It requires not just humility, but courage.

I have seen what a lack of mercy does to people. I have seen how it turns grief into rage, how it isolates and destroys. We might think withholding mercy makes us strong, but it only builds a thicker wall between us and the very thing that might save us.

I have also seen what mercy does when it takes root. I have watched people break open, watched the weight of their pain shift just enough for healing to emerge. I have seen how mercy — when it is real, when it is given freely — becomes a kind of resurrection. A bringing back to life of something that had been lost.

The thing about mercy is, it’s not just about the one receiving it. Mercy changes the giver, too. It reshapes our own hearts, widens our vision, and softens the hard edges of a world that wants us to believe in punishment more than redemption. Mercy is an act of defiance against a culture obsessed with retribution.

I don’t know what the officers felt when they strapped Ramiro down to that gurney. I don’t know what Ramiro might have said to them or if they carried his words home. I don’t know if the members of the Board of Pardons and Paroles thought about mercy in the quiet of their own rooms as the time of death was read out. I doubt it.

But I know that as I stood there, watching the drugs take effect, all I could do was pray that mercy would still find its way to Ramrio. To everyone participating in this act of violence. And to me.

Because here’s the truth: none of us are getting through this life without needing mercy. None of us. We are all Bartimaeus, sitting by the roadside, crying out in some way or another. We are all Ramiro, carrying stories of harm and regret, hoping that someone will see us beyond our worst mistakes.

We are also the crowd, sometimes silencing the cry of another. We have the power to turn toward mercy or to walk past it, to hush those calling for it or to amplify their voice. What we do with that power matters.

If we dare to believe in mercy — if we dare to make it the way we move through the world — then maybe we’ll find that it’s not just Bartimaeus or Ramiro who receive it.

Maybe it’s us, too.

Lord, have mercy.

And may we have the courage to show it.