Consuming Mercy

Grace Church

“Father Jack”, as he is affectionately known, has served the parishioners of Grace Episcopal Church as their rector since 2004.

Life is brutal. We try to sugar coat that fact, but ultimately life is fatal.
Life can be like robbers attacking a passing innocent and unsuspecting stranger, unexpected and violent.
Sometimes we survive…for awhile.
Sometimes we don’t.

What do we do about it?
Do we hide from the suffering?
Do we walk on by?
Do we use pain as an excuse to lash out?
Or, does suffering become the invitation to experience mercy, to show mercy, to reach out?

The issue always before us is whether we let the suffering in our lives twist us or transform us.
Christianity is a religion of the Cross, it is about suffering and the response to suffering.
The Gospel is that we are offered the promise of resurrection rather than the continuous treadmill of more of the same damn thing, of lashing out over and over.
The mercy of resurrection transforms the god-forsakenness of a suffering world into the Kingdom of God coming near.

The parable of the Good Samaritan is a parable of the cross, a parable of brutal suffering being transformed by mercy.
So who is my neighbor?
Turns out that is the wrong question. Often questions can be gutless and evasive, and that question, “who is my neighbor” is one of those. Give me some lines so that I can use my neighbor colored crayon to fill it in.
But “the neighbor” is not about lines, or crayons or coloring pages.
Jesus asks the real question, “How will you respond to the suffering in the world?”
The question is not , “Who is my neighbor?” The question is, “Will I be the neighbor?” Will I do the neighborly thing? Will I give mercy to the suffering?

We want to draw lines of responsibility. Where does my responsibility end? We do this because there are other things we would like to do. Otherwise my whole life will be consumed by mercy. And what kind of life would that be?

This parable and the religion of the cross expose our love of convenience.
What if my whole life were consumed by mercy?
What kind of life would that be?
Mercy is of God. In a sense mercy is God. Jesus is that mercy present in the world, God doing the neighborly thing, God being the neighbor to our broken world.
Jesus is the life of God consumed by mercy.
What kind of life would that be if God were consumed by mercy? The answer is the life that is the cross and resurrection of Christ.

How will I respond to the suffering in the world?
Walk on by?
Draw lines for some to be inside or out, on my side or the other side?
Or will I pour wine and oil on the wounds and carry the pain to where it can be healed?
Will it cost me?
Will mercy consume me?
So often those who show us the mercy of God at work in the world are the least expected, not the priest, not the Levite, but someone I really don’t like, someone who is offensive to me, like a Samaritan …of all people.

Twelve years ago I preached my first sermon here at Grace Church on this parable of the Good Samaritan.
In that sermon, I challenged the congregation to imagine the life of this parish if we gave just as much attention to outreach and pastoral care as we do to pulling together our Sunday morning worship, Sunday school, and fellowship.
What if this parish were consumed by mercy?
What kind of life would that be?
One of the things I love most about Grace Church is that we really don’t spend much time drawing lines for some to be on one side and some to be on the other. We aren’t conservative or liberal or moderate, we just spend our time being consumed by the mercy God.
The world needs our witness to this mercy.
How will we continue to be consumed by the mercy of God? How will we continue to respond to the pain that fills our lives and our world?
Who is the neighbor in the parable of our lives?
The one who shows mercy.
May that mercy be all consuming.