Sunday, July 13, Fifth Sunday after Pentecost… “The Mark of Mercy”

Psalm 41; Leviticus 19:9-18; Colossians 1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37

Divine Service III (without Communion)

Hymns: #915 “Today Your Mercy Calls Us”; #793 “Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven”; #809 “Great Is Thy Faithfulness”; #686 “Come, Thou Font of Every Blessing”

Dear Friends in Christ,

     Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus. Amen.

     How many times have we spoken the words in our liturgy, “Kyrie Eliason, Lord, have mercy?” Or how many times have we prayed, “O Lord, have mercy on me?” What is mercy anyway? If we can define it, maybe we can figure out what God is asking for from us, and maybe appreciate a little more what God’s mercy means for us. Our English word “mercy” comes from the Latin misericordia, which is a combination of two words: miseriae,  which means misery, and cordis, or cardis, or cardia, meaning heart. So mercy is “misery in the heart.” Mercy is a heart’s response to seeing suffering in another living being. Mercy says, “My own heart will suffer until I do something to help you.” Mercy is God seeing our misery and drawing it into Himself to make it His own. Mercy is Jesus taking our sin upon Himself and suffering on a cross for our sakes

     If we had one thing for this Church of ours to be known for, what would it be? If we had to name one thing we could hang our reputation on, one thing where people would say, “Oh, that’s the Church that does … “ what would that something be? In Jesus’ famous Good Samaritan parable, the answer is “mercy.” Who was the neighbor to the man in need? “The one who had mercy on him.” If we could make God’s mercy the mark of our Church, the one thing we’re known by most of all, I believe we’d find ourselves doing everything our Lord has called us to do. May we learn to show mercy, as our Lord has had mercy on us.

     St. Luke reports in our Gospel: “On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. ‘Teacher," he asked, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’" The man is a lawyer; he’s an expert in rhetoric, in legalese, in fine print and hidden clauses, in trick questions and twisting words. And he’s a church lawyer to boot, an expert in the Scriptures and Hebrew Law and the Law of Moses. But is he really interested in eternal life, or just looking to trap Jesus with another trick question? Jesus answers him, "What is written in the Law? How do you read it?" You’re an expert in what the Law says; what does the Law – the black and white, pen and ink written Word – have to say about the “heaven question?” That’s the question of questions, after all; how do we get to heaven? Everyone needs to know the answer to that question. God’s Word is clear enough on the answer, and this lawyer, God bless him, knows it well enough.

      The lawyer answers by the Book: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" That’s a direct quote from Deuteronomy 6:5. That verse was part of the phylactery, that little box of Scripture verses the Hebrews wore on the edge of their robes.Those were familiar words, ones the Jews recited every day. So familiar, that it was easy to rattle them off without thinking much about what they mean. Easy to say, but how many of us actually do what those words ask of us? How easily our mouths can say the words – but do our hearts believe them?

     Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul (that’s spiritually and emotionally). And love Him with all your strength (serving with all your physical ability and with all that your body can do). And love Him with all your mind (that is, logically and intellectually, knowing and applying yourself to know the Word). And then, applying all the love and knowledge that’s in you to loving and helping your neighbor. The call is clearly to be all-in for God, with a level of commitment that few of us are actually willing to make.

     "You have answered correctly," Jesus replied to him. "Do this and you will live." Jesus has the poor man cornered, using his own words. Your answer, He tells him, is orthodox; scripturally and theologically, your words are correct; now all that remains is to see to it that you words match your deeds. If you want to live, to inherit eternal life, to go to heaven, and your hope is to do it by keeping “the letter of the Law,” then all you have to do is keep it perfectly, in every way, in thought, word, and deed, every moment of every day, every day of your life. “Do not merely listen to the Word and so deceive yourselves; do what it says.” So… how ya doin? How’s that workin’ for ya?

     But the man wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" 

He was trying to talk himself off the hook; trying to self-justify. (We’re good at that!) I’m not that bad, compared to most. I’m pretty good compared to that guy. And I know what the Book says, but does God really mean that or expect that much of us? Does God really expect us to love our neighbor to that high and ridiculous and really impractical degree? Surely there must be some wiggle room in this thing, some half-way measure, some easier way to get there? And Jesus, just how may we define that word “neighbor?” Don’t we get to choose who our neighbors are, and who we choose to be neighborly to? Can’t we limit this thing to people we like, or to people who look like us or talk like us or agree with us? That I could manage to do, most days, if I have to, I guess… but Jesus, let’s get real.

     Jesus responds with a parable, with a word picture, one the lawyer and anyone who lived in Jerusalem would have understood. Jesus said: "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead.” The road from Jerusalem down to Jericho was a dangerous road to travel alone in those days. It was rocky and steep in places, with lots of places for bandits and highwaymen to hide and ambush travelers. The man in Jesus’ parable wasn’t the first one to be left naked and bleeding by the side of that road; it happened all the time.

     Jesus goes on: “A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.” Oh, Lord Jesus, have mercy on us! Oh, man, are You going after it today! Who were the people that passed the poor man, a fellow Hebrew, by?The priest, and the Levite – the church people! Maybe they were afraid the bandits were still around. Maybe they were late for a convention or a convocation or a semi-annual meeting or something.Maybe they were afraid touching a wounded man would make them unclean for the banquet tonight.Whatever their reason, the picture Jesus paints in His parable in convicting and terrible and awful, as far as we church people are concerned. The priest and the Levite are us, and all the times we’ve put our fear, or our own little agendas, or our own inconvenience, over the need to have mercy. May the Lord have mercy on us all.

     “But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came to where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity (he had mercy) on him.” Jesus continues to drive this thing home. Jesus is telling this parable to a Jewish lawyer, and He makes the hero of His story a lowly Samaritan. The Jews and Samaritans hated each other.There were years of animosity between them over what God’s Law said and what it didn’t, and about the right way and the wrong way to worship, and the right or wrong way to believe - and about how to get to heaven. But it’s the Samaritan in the end who’s willing to put all that stuff aside for the sake of compassion and mercy. “And who is my neighbor?”

     The Samaritan also must have had his reasons for traveling down that road; places to get to, his own business to attend to. But he was willing to put all that aside for the sake of a Jew, who probably wouldn’t have given him the time of day if they’d met under ordinary circumstances. But it didn’t matter to him if the man was a Jew, or what he was. He was a fellow human being, a fellow traveler, and he was hurt and in need. The Samaritan had “misery in his heart” over that poor man. So, “He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him.” “Let mercy triumph over judgment,” Jesus once said – and isn’t that a lovely rule to follow?

     And “The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.'” He was in it for the long haul. He didn’t just patch him up, leave him at the inn, and forget all about him; he went the extra mile. He was concerned enough about him to see to his care in the days to come. He loved that man he didn’t even know, with all his heart, all his soul, all his mind, and all his strength. He loved him like a brother and treated him like kin. That’s mercy. Jesus asked the lawyer, “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" The expert in the law had to reply, "The one who had mercy on him." Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."

     Just as the priest and the Levite in the story are us, the man left for dead by the side of the road is us, too. Jesus’ parables work that way; we can see ourselves all over them, if we’re being honest with ourselves. We were dead in our sins. We had no hope of heaven. We would have been lost in that “dominion of darkness” St. Paul talks about, if it hadn’t been for mercy. We’ve been rescued by the love of the Son, redeemed, restored, and forgiven by His precious blood, shed on a cross for our sakes. We’re blessed to know the answer to the “heaven question.” And isn’t keeping laws or keeping rules or “doing” anything; it’s believing that we’re loved.

     Can we really make mercy the mark of our Church? Can we make it our corporate logo, put it on our letterhead, put it on our signs, write it on our foreheads? Can we make everything we do like a big neon sign with an arrow pointing to it: “Mercy found here!” May the mercy we show to others, show the mercy God has shown to us in Christ. Until the whole world knows His name. Amen.