“Built for Mercy”

Luke 6:28-38

February 24, 2019

Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

First Congregational UCC of Manhattan, KS

At this very moment there are over a thousand United Methodists gathered together in St. Louis for a General Conference. 864 delegates from all over the globe plus alternate delegates, observers, reporters, lobbyists, and other interested parties are gathered for four days to receive recommendations created by a special commission charged with forging a resolution to decades-long conflict in the UMC over human sexuality and gender identity.

I was raised in the United Methodist Church. I attended a United Methodist seminary. Many of my friends are United Methodist clergy and my mom is currently in St. Louis serving as an alternate delegate to this conference. For the past several weeks, I’ve been praying - daily and emphatically - for those who are gathering in St. Louis. Because when a gathered body of Christians gets together to make decrees on whether or not some human beings have inherent dignity and worth, I think we should all be praying mightily that grace and love and justice and mercy will prevail. The United Methodist Church is the second-largest Protestant denomination in the U.S. and is also spans the globe. Their discrimination against LGBTQ is a major problem with dire consequences that affect all Christians, not just United Methodists.

And so, on this morning when Jesus has several challenging things to say to us about how we deal with the more painful and ugly parts of our humanity, I want to begin this sermon by pausing for a moment to hold our United Methodist kindred in our prayers.

(Silence)

God who draws us beyond boundaries again and again, draw your infinite circle of love tightly around St. Louis in these coming hours and days. May those who are LGBTQ know they are fiercely loved and created in your image. May the delegates there feel your warm embrace and may the power of your love cause them to be bold and brave and strong for their work. May they seek to love even their enemies. May they walk in the ways of your mercy. May justice prevail. Amen.

Just as the United Methodist delegates are currently leaning into pain with the hopes of coming out the other side in a few days filled with hope for the future….we, too, are called on a similar journey if we wish to engage seriously with the second part of Jesus’s Sermon the Plain that the lectionary committee served up to us today.

A quick recap for those who weren’t here last week….Jesus has just come down off of a mountain and comes to stand on “a level place” with his disciples and people from all over the world. Jesus does not pontificate from on high but comes into the everyday mess and muck of humanity to gently but firmly teach us hows and whys of finding our better selves. In a continuation of earlier themes from Luke’s Gospel, Jesus continues to give preferential treatment to those on the margins of society. He lifts up the poor, the hungry, the weeping, the despised. And he cautions everyone who has it good to remember that no one has it easy forever. Our accomplishments and failures do not determine our worth as human beings...only God has the power to name us as blessed….and God is very much about the business of blessing.

God is so much about the business of blessing, in fact, that Jesus wants us to very seriously consider what it might look like to not only accept the Good News that we are made in God’s image in an intellectual way….but in a way that deeply transforms our living.

To be blessed….to allow ourselves to embrace that notion that we humans carry within us the imprint of the Divine…..is apparently not just about feeling good. It also carries with it some very difficult demands. Demands that Jesus is now ready to explicate.

If we’re truly going to understand the revolutionary power behind Jesus’s words here, I think we have to grapple with some of the very basic concepts that are the building blocks of Jesus’s sermon.

Building Block #1: Enemies

When Jesus is speaking of our enemies, I think it’s critically important to realize he’s not talking about people that annoy us. He’s not talking about John in accounts receivable who chews his gum too loudly over in the next cubicle. He’s not talking about our neighbor who consistently refuses to rake their leaves, thereby rendering our own raking pointless as soon as the wind comes sweeping down the plains. He’s not talking about our cousin Rachel who shows up at Thanskgiving dinner espousing political views that are counter to ours. He’s not talking about the faceless person in the SUV who cut us off in traffic yesterday. Those folks can all be annoying….and I feel certain that Jesus would approve of us loving them.

But when Jesus says we are to love our enemies, he is talking about people who are more than annoying. He is talking about those who wish us grave harm, those who abuse us, those who question our humanity, those who want to do violence to us, those who want to see us annihilated, those who hate and despise us.

Now….it occurs to me that some people in the room today may not actually have enemies. Some people may not know what it feels like to be despised or hated. But there are others here who absolutely do know what it feels like to be hated…..to know that there are people who want to see you fail, who are trying to make your life a living hell, who curse and revile your very existence.

If you know what that feels like, then you have enemies. Enemies that Jesus says we are supposed to love.

That brings us to Building Block #2: Love

Jesus wants us to love our enemies….so what does that even look like? You know, if you try to look up the definition of the English word love, you’ll mostly find a definition about warm fuzzy feelings, attraction, enjoyment. That kind of thing.

But the Greek word used here, agape, actually has very little to do with our emotions. Agape is not primarily about warm fuzzy feelings or even liking another person. Instead, agape is about our behavior. Agape is rooted in the love God has for humanity. Out of that unbreakable, unconditional love we are called to extend charity, grace, mercy to every person we encounter. No exceptions.

A note on abusive relationships, because when Jesus says “pray for those who abuse you” it seems we could quickly veer into dangerous territory. God does not want us to stay in abusive relationships. Full stop. You can leave an abusive relationship and still pray for the person you’ve left behind. By asking us to pray for those who have abused us, I think Jesus is inviting us to consider how God can partner with us to find our own healing.

Agape also frees us to love people we don’t like. We don’t have to have any warm fuzzy feelings at all. We can disagree with people vehemently. We can even condemn their behaviors, calling them towards their better selves….while still loving them. Because agape is not primarily about being nice or making other people smile. It’s about witnessing the God-given dignity in each person, holding their complexity in the light of God’s love, and choosing always, always to emulate God’s mercy.

Which brings us to Building Block #3: Mercy

The crux of this entire passage is verse 36: “be merciful, just as God is merciful.”

This entire endeavor of loving even our enemies is about imitating God. If we are blessed, if we are imprinted with the very image of the Divine, then we are both empowered and expected to emulate God. We aren’t called to agape because it’s easy. We are called to it because it is our birthright as humans created to point the way to the Holy. We are called to it because we were built for mercy.

Mercy is at once simple and confounding. Mercy is the radical resistance to giving people what they deserve. We live in a world that is so firmly steeped in the notion of quid pro quo that it becomes easy to even realize it’s there, operating in the background. If you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice to you. If you work hard, you should be able to get ahead. If I do the right things, I should be rewarded.

But this is not God’s way. God is like the merchant at the end of today’s passage….we go to the market and walk up to a stranger in a booth, ready to buy grain. We ask her to please fill up a container with grain. She fills it, taps it down, filling every nook and cranny, making sure we get the very most grain possible in that container. She shakes it, adds a little more, and then carefully pours just a bit more on the top. We pay her the negotiated price, she dumps the measure of grain into our apron and we carry it home, wondering just what we did to deserve her kindness. After all, the price was set. Five dollars for a container of grain. The merchant would make more money if she just hastily poured some in...maybe even filling it slightly less than full. Why on earth did she go to all that trouble to make sure we received more than we deserved?

Mercy. That’s mercy. Giving others not what they deserve but better than they deserve. Treating others the way we wish we would be treated. Extending radical and confounding hospitality. Suspending harsh judgment. Giving freely, expecting nothing in return. This is the way of God. She is the merchant who freely pours out more than we’ve asked for, more than we’ve earned, simply because mercy is her essence.

And it is in this way that Jesus asks us to shape our lives. Doing the confounding, difficult work of agape….not just when it’s easy, but also when it’s very, very hard.

In this invitation is a reminder of blessing. Jesus would not ask us to do this if he felt it were impossible. He invites us into the task of transforming the world because he sees God in us and believes we have the capacity to bring about God’s realm here and now.

And so...we build the road by walking. We mend the world by choosing to love….in big ways and small, again and again and again. And we do so because God first loved us.

May it be so.