Grace to you and
peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen
Be merciful, just as your Father is
merciful.
Mercy is to show
compassion or forgiveness towards someone whom it is within one's power to
punish or harm.
And the simple
truth of today’s Gospel lesson is this:
That because God has shown mercy to us, we are to show mercy to
others. Period.
We are invited to
live in the realm of grace and mercy, not the law and condemnation.
Yet it is our
tendency to ask questions of Jesus.
Show mercy. Ok.
But to whom? And under what circumstances? And in certain circumstances won’t it do more
harm than good.
I struggle with
these words of Jesus. Which is to say, I
find it difficult to be as merciful as God is merciful.
“Give to everyone who begs from you”, Jesus
says, and then later follows it up with “for
God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.”
When I was an
intern in the inner city of St. Paul, MN it was my responsibility to listen to
those who came begging for assistance, and usually they wanted money, and then
to politely say “No.”
We had a food
bank, and we could offer food, but definitely no money.
The practice hasn’t
stopped.
We have a phone
here at the church. You know what it is
used for? The vast majority of people who
call our number do so looking for assistance.
Very early on in
my ministry I got very cynical regarding offering assistance to those who beg
for it.
I had gotten
deeply involved in the life of one homeless family that came asking for
assistance and what I learned in that process shaped the rest of my ministry.
One of the things
I learned is that there is an entire counter culture of people in this country
who choose to live lives dependent on charity.
Sanders County in
Montana where I served my first parish was listed in underground newspapers as
one of the best places to go for public assistance in the nation.
Why?
Because there are
those who calculate the ratio of public assistance levels to the cost of living
and Sanders County has one of the most positive.
In other words,
you don’t want to be on welfare in Seattle, because the cost of living is so
high. But if you move to a place like
Thompson Falls you can do much better.
And as I said,
there are underground newspapers that share that information.
Just say no.
Drug addicts are
quick to ask for money, and to give it to them is to enable their addiction.
Furthermore, we
don’t have the resources in the church to meet the need and satisfy the
requests that are made of us. If you
give out assistance to people the word quickly spreads and more and more people
will come.
Another
experience.
In Baker our
ministerial association decided to pool our resources that we had to help the
transient people who came through town.
The method we came up with for offering this charity was that we
established a fund with the Sheriff’s office, and we’d refer requests to him.He
would then, in turn, run a background check on the individuals requesting aid
prior to offering it. When he needed
more money he’d ask us for it.
He never asked.
No one would
submit to the background check and they simply went down the road.
“Give to everyone who begs from you.”
“Lend, expecting nothing in return.”
“Be merciful, just as your Father is
merciful.”
Naïve.
My cynical side
says that such sentiments are simply naïve.
Oh, but
wait. It is Jesus who is saying this and
perhaps, just perhaps, Jesus who has been with God since the beginning, and is
God, and through whom all things came into being, perhaps this Jesus, the Lord
and Ruler of the Universe, may not in fact be naïve.
I’d even go a
step farther and say that perhaps Jesus is even wiser than I am.
And it is Jesus
that says “give to anyone that begs” and also, “be merciful.”
But maybe the
times have changed.
I found myself
asking my colleagues at text study a question.
“Were the beggars
in Jesus day morally superior to the beggars in our own day, and hence, more
deserving of charity?”
Would Jesus have
said “Give to everyone who begs from you” if he saw how people abuse charity
today?
What about those
who abuse our welfare system, who make a living having children so that they
can get more money from Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and the Women,
Infants, and Children programs?
What about the
drug addicts?
What about the
mentally ill?
What about those
with a criminal record?
What about those
who have made homelessness a way of life, living in Walmart parking lots and
other places? By the way, did you know
that Walmart parking lots are the largest homeless shelter in the country?
I see all this
and I want to shout out to God “Be cynical even as I am cynical.”
But maybe Jesus
is smarter than me.
And no, Jesus
didn’t say “Be cynical, just as your Father is cynical.”
He simply said “Be
merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”
There’s one thing
we could rightly add to Jesus’ words.
Be merciful, just
as your Father is merciful to you.
When I am most
cynical about all these people who need assistance, I need to remember that I
too, once needed assistance. It came in
the form of the Church’s disability program.
I got my first
job when I was in second grade and have been employed ever since.
I mowed lawns,
raked leaves and shoveled snow.
I had a paper
route.
I worked as a box
boy, cashier, and butcher.
I worked in a
lumber yard, and as a carpenter.
I've been a custodian.
I’ve had a cabinet
making business.
I’ve been a
pastor.
And I’ve been
disabled, not able to do any of that.
Disabled by a mental illness.
Rendered unemployable.
But God showed
mercy.
God showed mercy
through a disability program sponsored by our church and into which my
congregations had paid throughout my ministry, and which you still support to
this day.
Were it not for
that I might have been begging for assistance.
“Be merciful,
just as your Father is merciful.”
We shouldn’t miss
the point that our Father in heaven is merciful.
God’s not naïve.
He’s merciful.
And he cares
about people simply because they are people.
My eyes were
opened to the humanity of the homeless in a big way a while back.
We sent four kids
from our congregation in Sandpoint to New Orleans for the national youth
gathering, including my daughter.
They got the
crazy idea to get up early the last day in town and go watch the sun rise over
the Mississippi River. So up they rose,
before dawn, and without a chaperone walked through the French Quarter to the
River.
The French
Quarter is not where you want your kids in the middle of the night.
They were
approached by a homeless man.
“You shouldn’t be
here!” he said.
“What are you
doing?”
They told him
where they were going and what they wanted to do.
He said, “Alright
then, I can keep you safe on my street, but when you turn the corner you make
sure you young men are on each side of her.”
A homeless man showing
compassion and mercy and protecting my daughter.
Be merciful, just
as your Father is merciful.
Be merciful.
We feed the
hungry, not because they deserve it, but because they are hungry.
We cloth the
naked because they are naked.
We offer shelter
to people because they are homeless.
We give expecting
nothing in return, because people are poor and have nothing to return.
We provide for
other people’s need because we have been blessed to be able to do so.
This is the way
of grace.
Jesus isn’t naïve.
Jesus cares about people, including
us.
So be merciful.
How can we be
most merciful to those in need?
That’s where we
need to show wisdom.
Handing a drug
addict a twenty dollar bill might not be the merciful way.
Creating a
welfare state might do more harm than good.
Jobs programs and
a livable minimum wage might be wise.
Treatment
programs and adequate mental health addresses those needs.
For some of the
world’s poor, maybe all they need is a flock of chickens, a couple goats, or a
cow. . .
Pardon the ad,
but our fundraiser for animals is one way we show mercy. . .
“Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful”,
Jesus says.
And then he gives
us a brain to figure it out.
What he doesn’t
give us is an excuse NOT to do it.
And remember, we
are merciful because we have first received grace and mercy. Amen
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