Be merciful, as our Father is merciful . . .

      God waited until the last minute, but He finally gave me my sermon illustration I needed for today.  Joshua was upset this am as the technology stuff was not working.  Comcast was here for a few hours while we were doing the Vestry retreat, so I am guessing the problem was not yet completely fixed.  Or maybe they created a new problem.  I am of the opinion the Comcast is an unholy owned subsidiary of Satan, as, perhaps, are all the telecoms and probably a few other companies if I spent some time really considering things.  Good.  You are laughing and realize it is a bit of humor and sarcasm with a hint of plausibility.

     Anyway, it drives Joshua nuts when things do not work the way they are supposed to work.  I was trying to calm him down and remember the serenity prayer that my maternal grandmother had posted a couple places in the house and I often heard her say.  I drew a blank, though, in the Vesting Room, which is crazy given the number of AA meetings that have been held at churches where I have served.  I told him the prayer asks God to give us strength and courage to change the things I can and the serenity to accept the things I cannot change and discernment to know the difference.  Then I shared with Joshua, as I was trying to recollect the prayer, that Grandma Kitty said it a lot around me.  I chuckled, as did he.  Then he said it was a good thing that I and mom did not have it posted in our house, because we would be saying it A LOT.

     I share the story not just to give you a laugh and a bit of insight into our family dynamic, but maybe to encourage you to think about your own family dynamics.  Families are crazy good at passing down dynamics and systems.  Counselors make a small fortune off us helping us to change unhealthy patterns and dynamics because they get implanted in us, handed down to us, whether we want them to come to our families or not.  I mean, really, how many of us men swore as kids we would never tell a bad dad joke when we were kids?  Be honest now.  How many of us men are now trying hard to outdo our dads or our grandfathers because we want to be the worst dad joke tellers in our families?  I think a couple of you are going to have to confess, given a few sheepish expressions.  lol  Families are the smallest unit of community, as Aristotle famously observed, so it makes sense that we are shaped and formed, for good or for ill, by those families of which we are a part.

     The Gospel reading in Luke today is very well known.  Many non-Christians even know most of this passage.  And I must confess, I think Robert Jensen, preached a good sermon on this that stuck with me, which is to say, if this ends up being a good sermon, thank him.  If it ends up being bad, that’s all on me.  The teaching comes after Luke’s account of the Sermon on the Mount.  Luke shares that Jesus gave those who heard both blessings and woes.  Rather than stop after pronouncing the woes, Jesus forges ahead to describe a new way of relating.  Really, it is the way God intended in the beginning, but the world has always chosen darkness of His light.

     All of the verbs about how to behave in the face of evil or ill treatment by the wicked are in the present, ongoing tense.  Love, do good, bless, pray, turn, offer, and give.  Jesus is citing a number of activities that happen in the world and instructing His disciples, and us, how to behave in light of what is happening.  Chances are, whatever is causing you anxiety in the world is addressed by one of those present tense verbs.  That is not to say that Jesus’ list is exhaustive.  In fact, Jensen argued that the verbs are meant to draw us in and cause us to add to the list with more specific examples of our own day.  You know, like be patient when the person ahead of you in the grocery check out line cannot get off the phone to check out or maybe still depends on checks rather than a debit card when finally paying.  Whoa, that was a groan!  I'm with you, sometimes I think the sin against the Holy Spirit described by Jesus is when they wait until everything is rung up and THEN they start looking for their checkbook.  lol  Jesus goes on to point out that when we honor people we like, love people who love us, give to people from whom we expect to be paid back, we are no different than the wicked or the sinners.  They treat people that way.  We have a different standard, however, because of the “money statement” of the passage.

     “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”  That’s verse 36 in our passage today, and it is in red letters in those Bibles that claim to stress Jesus’ words in them.  You and I are called into this family, we call the Church or, specifically in our case, Advent.  And it is here that we are expected to practice, to test this old way, the way God intended, for us to live, before we head out into the world to do it for real.  Y’all might not be surprised at the analogy, but you attend a church that has a “we are family” banner hanging from the parish hall walls and a mission statement that stresses our multi-generational effort to make disciples.  Sally shared that observation with the Vestry yesterday during the retreat.  We are a bit unusual in the Church.  But that unusual understanding makes us perfect for the work we have to do out there, manifesting the mercy of our Father in our lives, like any son or daughter manifests any characteristic of their parent.

     What do I mean?  First, that on-going process.  Think of the people whom we know who count themselves Christians because they declared one day they believed or they underwent a believer’s baptism.  When the stress is on the choice, what often happens?  There is not always growth, discipleship, and any manifestation of God’s character in the life of the so-called believer.  Look in the wider world over the events of the last couple weeks.  How many public professing Christians are rejoicing that people are losing their jobs or scared they might be losing the job thanks to the activities of Musk and the President?  I’m talking rejoicing.  A number of non-Adventers shared on my social media these last two weeks the fact that more than 12,000 homes went on the market in and around DC.  They are excited and rejoicing people are losing homes, that children are being uprooted from schools, that communities are being broken up, that uncertainty is being thrust upon people who were only doing the job for which they were hired and trained.  Do they really think Jesus would cheer such activities and results?  Do you?  But if you believe discipleship ends with the choice, it is easier to understand why some self-described Christians do not believe there is work yet to do, formation yet to occur. 

     Or what of the non-attending believer that loves to convince me they are really Christian?  I spend literal hours every year with strangers trying to convince me they are Christian.  Mind you, almost none are Episcopalian; most find their way into my office from other denominations.  My calling, though, as a professional Christian, is to ask if they gather to worship, to pray, to study, and to exhort and be exhorted, to comfort and to be comforted, to share the amazing things God has done in their lives and to hear what our Lord has done in the lives of those around them.  More often than not, they tell me they do not need to be in a community to worship God, that they pray when they need to, and that they can study a Bible any time they want.  The truly indignant, though, will express they cannot gather with others because there are too many hypocrites in the pews.  How many times have you heard me tell them they are right and that we have room for them, too?  When they are not worshiping God, when they are not praying to and listening to God, and when they are not studying what He has caused to be gathered into Scripture, their growth is stunted, or worse, goes in directions it should not, much like a plant that will bend toward a bright light in lieu of the sun.  There’s no worry on their part because they chose Jesus on this date or that date,  He has to accept them.  Because they do not study what He says, they do not understand the fear and trembling with which we work out our faith.  They do not understand the warnings and instructions He gives to all who hear Him.  They have forgotten that Jesus reminds His disciples that in serving the least we serve Him, and that in neglecting the least we neglect Him.  And the consequence of neglecting is not something anyone likes to ponder.  But that is work that begins in the church, where we wrestle with God, where we struggle with His teachings, where we are convicted by the Holy Spirit, and where we have our first glimmers of the transformative grace that He promises to all who call upon Him.

     You are liturgical Christians, so you know this even if you do not think about it.  We pray, we read what God caused to be written, a clergy preaches and teaches on one of the readings, then we re-affirm our faith, confess our sins, are absolved and share the peace.  Then, and only then, are nourished by the Sacrament, by the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.  What we are called to do, how we are called to live, is so counter-the-world, so different, that our Lord Christ on the night before He was betrayed instituted the Sacrament.  He knew before He walked that final path of mercy that led to Calvary.  We need that mystical nourishment, so oppressive is the world in which we live, in order to live in accordance with the perspective and the instructions our Lord gives and expects of us.

     Our first practice of mercy is likely in the Church.  It is in the Church that we are reminded we do not get to choose our families.  In this case, God does.  Y’all are laughing, but only because you had families in which to learn the truth of that axiom.  Church serves the same role for God’s family.  We learn to live out His teachings by working our spiritual muscles here.  Think of the Peace as a good example.  How hard is it to shake hands with or hug or kiss someone who drives us nuts, to say nothing about those with whom we are at enmity?  Yet that is precisely what Jesus instructs us to do, especially in our reading from this day.  And we learn from Paul that approaching that altar to eat His flesh and drink His blood without settling our disputes and asking to be forgiven for our sins, means we blaspheme the Sacrament and His teaching, we reject the mercy that only He can give.  We aggrieve His heart.  “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

     Over time, as we repeat this liturgy each week, each month, and each year, we come to realize the mercy which our Lord has shown us.  As we ask Him again and again to forgive us our sins, and are absolved, we are reminded of our own need for mercy.  And as we grow in understanding of our own need for mercy, we begin to realize the need of mercy for those around us.  We begin to internalize that they are no different from us, especially in God’s eyes.  And so, in time, we become heralds of mercy or, to use the language of Epiphany, we manifest mercy to those in the world around us, that God might be honored and glorified in our lives, and that others will turn to Him, and be saved.  The style of worship we use, the liturgy which was handed down by the Apostles, steeps us in God’s mercy so that we might be merciful, just as our Father is merciful.

     I get it.  It is hard work.  The better news, though, is that God understands how hard that work is.  He makes it clear in His Scriptures.  He makes it clear in the instructions He gave during the Incarnation.  He makes it clear in our liturgy.  All of that helps us to see in our own hearts our need for mercy.  And then reminded, restored, and nourished in His mercy, we are sent back out into the world to share His mercy with those whom we encounter out there.

     But that hard work comes with the promise of great reward in the end.  It is almost as if Jesus understood the human heart.  If we are merciful, we will be shown mercy.  Or, to use the red letters of Jesus, “for with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”  Those kinds of promises are scary, aren’t they.  How we treat others is how we will be treated by God when He judges us.  Jesus does not add the “by God” at the end.  But all of us have been in families long enough to understand that promise or threat.  God instructs us to be like Him, to repent when we fail, but to be like Him.  We should be mindful when we fail of His mercy and exhorted all the more to be merciful to others, that He will treat us in that loving way in which we long to be treated.  But we refuse mercy at our own peril.  We rejoice at the sufferings of others warned of dire consequences.

     I know today’s teaching is hard.  I get that for some it sets us up to be preyed upon by the wicked and the evil.  Such would be the risk, were Jesus not raised from the dead that Easter morning.  Because He was raised you and I know God’s power and will to redeem all things in the end.  We can show mercy and risk losing everything, even our lives, because we know Christ’s expression of mercy on the Cross and God’s power to redeem even that death.  He demonstrated that mercy to each one of us, long before we called Him Lord.  Reminded of that, and of His merciful heart, we are once again a sent people, sent to be merciful, as our Father is merciful, convinced that He has already conquered those evils which would destroy us or separate us from His presence.  We sent to be merciful, just as He is merciful.

 

In His Peace and Mercy,

Brian+