MERCY A sermon based on Luke 10:25-37, preached on Sunday, June 28, 2015

Transcription

1 MERCY A sermon based on Luke 10:25-37, preached on Sunday, June 28, 2015 Most words I don t think about; some words I really like; others, not so much. I dislike the American word pants, preferring the British word trousers. I also prefer the British word biscuit over the American word, cookie. As for the word thong, it s almost as hard to pronounce as it is to wear, I m told. One word that I truly do like is the word mercy. Why do I like the word? Well, let s pretend that I ve been pulled over by a police officer and accused of driving at 130 in a 100km zone. Justice demands that I be fined and have points deducted from my license. Instead of doing that, the police officer suggests that it s probably the first time I ve been guilty of speeding [who am I to contradict him?], and lets me off with a warning. Mercy is a wonderful word for those in trouble. Psalm 51, which we just read, begins: Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgression. King David, to whom the Psalm is attributed, had done wrong, and felt wretched. So he prayed for mercy. We ve all done wrong, and we all need mercy. Mercy is the word for God s kindness to us when we mess up. David begged for it after his affair with Bathsheba, and after David saw to it that her soldier husband would never return from war. Don t cast me off, don t turn me away, David pleads in Psalm 51. I can t forgive myself for the evil I ve done. Have mercy on me, O God. Mercy is a wonderful word for those in trouble. David knew that God was a God of justice, but also a God of mercy; on the one hand, God s law declares that what David had done was wrong, and thus justly deserved punishment; yet in mercy God forgives lawbreakers. Think of what happened in Charleston, South Carolina this past week. The US justice system will deal, as it must, with the young man accused of killing a group of black Christians as they attended a Bible study. The families of those murdered, however, offered remarkable mercy to the accused. Mercy isn t something that replaces justice; but it may accompany it. Nor is mercy something we deserve.

2 Far from it! That s why David didn t say: Lord, I know the fling with Bathsheba was wrong, but I ve been under stress lately, being king an all. Nor did he say: Lord, I failed recently, but don t forget all the times when I was good! David knew he was guilty and cried for mercy. The Bible says that God is merciful. Deuteronomy 4:31 puts it like this: Because the Lord your God is a merciful God, he will neither abandon you nor destroy you; he will not forget the covenant with your ancestors that he swore to them. Though this is a biblical truth worth hearing, what I want to address today is an extension of this truth, namely, that if God is merciful, then mercy should mark our character too. But does it? That s the question posed in Jesus parable of the Good Samaritan. A lawyer, listening to Jesus talk one day, dismissed him as a hick from the sticks; he had neither a proper education nor proper credentials; yet he was able to draw big crowds. The lawyer didn t like that one bit, and so, says Luke 10, decided to test Jesus with a question: Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Most often, questions signal curiosity and an eagerness to learn. But not always! In school, I used to pretend to be interested in some topic in class, and so I d ask lots of questions; but it wasn t because I was curious; it was my attempt to stall the teache from moving to the topic of the day for which I was unprepared. The motives of the lawyer who questioned Jesus were worse; he hoped to expose Jesus as a know-nothing. Discerning his motives, Jesus turned to him and said: You ask me about eternal life. Well, you re a lawyer; what does the law say? That forced the lawyer to say what Jewish kids learnt in kindergarten: love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself. Right answer, said Jesus; do this and you will live. Stumped in his bid to take Jesus down a peg or two, the lawyer then tried to un-embarrass himself by asking another question: Jesus, he said, define please who constitutes my neighbor. Jesus responded by telling a story of a man traveling down the notorious

3 road from Jerusalem to Jericho. He s mugged, beaten and left for dead. A member of the Jewish clergy arrives, looks at the man, assumes he s dead, remembers that according to Jewish law he shouldn t touch a corpse, and passes by on the other side. A second clergyman arrives; same thing! Story-teller Jesus is Jewish, the nit-picking lawyer is Jewish, the story s characters are Jewish, his listeners are Jewish; and it sounds like they re going to enjoy a joke at the expense of the Jewish clergy. But no! Jesus says that a third man came down the road, saw the wounded man, stopped, dressed his wounds, put him on his animal, and took him to an inn to be cared for at his expense. Which of the three travelers was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers Jesus asked. The lawyer answered, The one who showed him mercy. In retelling the parable, I left out one fact. The man who showed mercy in Jesus parable was a Samaritan. For centuries, hostility between Jews and Samaritans had kept the two groups apart, not unlike the way Native people and most Canadians live at a distance from one another, out-ofsight, out-of-mind, or in the way that Protestants and Catholics keep apart in the social life of the province from which I come. To tell Jews that the man who showed mercy was a Samaritan would be like telling Ulster Protestants that one of their own, having been mugged, was cleaned up and taken to hospital, not by two Orangemen who ignored him, but by a member of the IRA. Jesus answered the lawyer s question-who is my neighbor-by saying that our neighbor is any person, to whom we ought to give mercy. If a merciful God gives mercy to those who don t deserve it and have no right to expect it, then so must we. Go and do likewise, said Jesus. There the parable ends; and there this sermon could end, the point being: God shows mercy to the undeserving, and so must we. But I m not going to end at this point, and here s why: while mercy characterizes God, it doesn t always characterize us. In a sermon on the parable of the Good Samaritan, Tom Long refers to an experiment conducted on a group of theology students. Each student was asked to record a sermon on the

4 parable of the Good Samaritan, and deliver their recorded sermon to a building on the other side of the campus as quickly as possible. What the students didn t know was that an actor had been placed near the entrance to that building on the other side of the campus, who was to play the part of a slumped-over man in obvious need. As they rushed over to the building, almost every theology student ignored the slumped-over man in order to deliver their recorded sermon on the parable of the Good Samaritan on time, proving that though we may know what mercy is, we don t always give it! Why is that? Tom Long suggests that for most of us, until we ve been in the position of needing mercy, are we likely to give it to others. God is merciful; us, not so much! Most of us know something about the life of Johnny Cash. Growing up in depression-era Arkansas, he learnt the gospel songs of his mother. It didn t stay that way. Johnny became a singer, made money, got hooked on alcohol and drugs, engaged in a life of hell-raising stunts, wrecked car after car, sank two boats, and jumped from a truck just before it went over a 600-ft Californian cliff. In 1966 his wife gave up on him, and Cash went to jail. When he got out, he returned to Nashville, but was banned from the Grand Ol Opry because of the drugs. That s when a Christian couple called Ezra and Maybelle Carter reached out to him. They moved into his home just to keep the drug dealers away; another friend stayed in his room at night as Johnny Cash endured the agony of becoming sober. It worked. Cash didn t deserve mercy, yet received it. Thereafter, his favorite concert location was America s jails; as a former prisoner, he hoped to offer inmates the new start he d found in Jesus; because he d received mercy when desperate, he gave it; before he became, if you will, a Good Samaritan, Cash knew that he d been a bruised and wounded man lying in a ditch in need of mercy. Of course it s the Good Samaritan in Jesus parable whom you re to emulate. Of course you re to go and show mercy. But perhaps you first need to identify with the wounded man in the parable, and realize that it s only because a Good Samaritan called Jesus came down the road of your life, picked you up, and cleaned you up, that you re here today.

5 Only when we realize that we ve received God s mercy are we be ready to give it. And what a different country Canada would be if every Christian did! Mercy: it s a wonderful world for those in trouble.