mercy

The Kingdom of Mercy and Grace

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — “The Kingdom of Mercy and Grace” Luke 23:39-43

Jubilee is a Christian community and working farm set in the beautiful, rolling countryside of Comer, Georgia. For many years, until recent changes in our national immigration policy, the Jubilee partners welcomed refugees to their farm, offering a safe place to land for weary newcomers to our country, many of whom had survived exile and trauma, languishing for years in refugee camps around the world. When I visited Jubilee in 2008, I was drawn to a grove of oaks near the center of the 260-acre property. There, in a quiet clearing, stands a cemetery, a peaceful final resting place for both the residents of Jubilee and the people whom they have ministered to over the years. Robbie Buller, one of the original Jubilee Partners, pointed to a plain grave with a simple marker. “That grave is William “Pop” Campbell,” Robbie said, “He was the very first to be buried here in 1983.”

William “Pop” Campbell had a complicated moral picture. In 1975, Pop killed a smalltown barber near Athens, Georgia in a robbery gone wrong. At the time, Pop insisted that he was innocent. He was just getting his haircut when another man Henry Drake entered the shop and began to beat the barber and demand his money. Pop claimed that he tried his best to intercede, but Drake overpowered him. The jury didn’t buy it. Pop was convicted of murder and landed on death row. Henry Drake, the man Pop accused of the killing, was also convicted. Both men awaited execution by the state of Georgia.

The second thief on Golgotha also had a complicated moral picture. Luke doesn’t tell us much about him, but the teachings of the early church do. According to John Chrysostum, the 4th century Archbishop of Constantinople, the thief’s name was Dismas, a desert bandit, who robbed and killed pilgrims as they traveled to Jerusalem for the Passover. A century later, Pope Gregory the Great taught that Dismas was also a fratricide, guilty of murdering his own brother. On Golgotha, Dismas faced the Roman consequences of his life of thievery and murder: death on a cross.

Dismas and his fellow bandit weren’t the only ones dying on Golgotha that day. Throughout Lent, we have been following Jesus through his final week in Jerusalem. At the start of Lent, when I preached on the Palm Sunday story, I pointed to two radically different kingdoms that would clash in that holy week as the Roman Empire would collide with the Kingdom of God.

Last Sunday, we considered Jesus’ final supper with his friends and the foot-washing lesson he taught them about the prime importance of love and humble service. This Sunday, we encounter Jesus less than twenty-four hours after his object lesson and new commandment that we love one another as he loved us. In those bleak and bitter hours, Jesus was betrayed by Judas, abandoned by his closest disciples, and denied by Peter. The Temple court found him guilty of blasphemy. Pilate condemned him to death on trumped up charges of sedition. Now, Jesus was dying on a cross. Crucifixion was a state-sponsored weapon of terror, a public execution that inflicted excruciating pain in a slow, humiliating death. Above his head hung Jesus’ death sentence in Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, “King of the Jews.”

William “Pop” Campbell learned a lesson in Jesus’ Kingdom from Rev. Murphy Davis. She befriended Pop in her ministry to inmates on death row. She visited him weekly, listening to him and praying with him. In 1981, Pop confessed to Murphy that he lied when he implicated Henry Drake in the crime for which he had been sentenced to death. Pop had invented the story, hoping to muddy the waters, pass the blame, and avoid the death penalty. “What I said were lies,” Pop confessed, “I was the one to kill Mr. Eberhart. Henry wasn’t even there.” When Pop’s lawyer learned of his confession, he was irate. He insisted that Pop renounce his admission of guilt, arguing that it scuttled their chances of a commutation and was a virtual guarantee of death. “I want to do the right thing,” Pops argued back. “What I did was wrong.”

Dismas knew the innocence of Jesus. Dismas also knew his own guilt, as with the hindsight of fast-approaching death he looked back at his long history of thievery and brutality. Jesus didn’t deserve to die, but Dismas did. In the eyes of Rome and in his own eyes, his life of selfish ambition and casual cruelty had landed him on a cross. When the other thief dying on Golgotha began to deride Jesus, Dismas knew it was wrong, just as surely as Pop Campbell knew it was wrong to blame Henry Drake. “We have been condemned justly,” Dismas called out to his criminal colleague, “We are getting what we deserve for our deeds.”

We aren’t Pop Campbell or Dismas, but we know how it feels to have a complicated moral picture. We know the wrong that we have done: the beloved ones that we have failed, the friends we have betrayed, the ethical corners that we have cut, the selfish ambition that we have pursued at another’s expense. We know the good that we have left undone: the times we have refused to help, the occasions when we have turned a blind eye to another’s malfeasance, the good we will not do because the personal cost is just to high, the dirty little secrets that we keep rather than admit our failure. We long to be reconciled with God and with those whom we have hurt. Like Pop and Dismas, we need to believe that there is hope for us—that somehow, despite our wrongs, we can be loved, accepted, forgiven, offered a second chance (or a third or a fourth).

On that lonely hilltop outside Jerusalem, hanging between two criminals, Jesus taught us one last lesson about his Kingdom, even as he was dying at the hands of the empire. Half prayer, half gallows plea, Dismas turned to the Lord and asked “Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom.” In response, Jesus assured him, “Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” Dismas didn’t have to recite the long laundry list of his sins. He didn’t need to undertake the journey of a hundred miles on his knees as an act of penance. He didn’t have to recite the Apostles’ Creed. In Jesus’ Kingdom, Dismas was known in all his frailty and loved in his entirety. In Jesus’ Kingdom there is room for Dismas and Pop Cambell. In Jesus’ Kingdom there is room for us. We are known and we are loved. In Jesus’ Kingdom, there is mercy and grace for all who ask.

Pop Campbell died of natural causes in 1983 while awaiting execution. In Georgia, prisoners whose families are too poor to afford funerals and prisoners who do not have kin or friends to receive their bodies are buried on prison grounds with only their state-assigned inmate number to mark their graves. When Robbie Buller of the Jubilee Community heard of what would be done with Pop’s body, he had a better idea. Jubilee had 260 acres of land. Why not welcome Pop to the community? Plans were quickly drawn up, local zoning authorities approved, and Pop came home to a place and a people whom he had not known during his lifetime.

In speaking about the cemetery, Robbie Buller says, “It’s a final hospitality for people who have had trouble finding acceptance anyplace else.” Since Pop’s burial, the graveyard at Jubilee has welcomed five more death row inmates, as well as seven homeless people, fourteen refugees, and the Rev. Murphy Davis, who so kindly visited Pop Campbell on death row all those years ago. Immediately after someone is buried in the Jubilee cemetery, a new grave is hand dug by volunteers. That’s hard work in the red and rocky Georgia clay. A piece of sheet metal roofing and a blue tarp are placed over the hole. A mound of red dirt waits next to the grave, ready to be filled back in. There is always room for more in the Jubilee burying ground. There is always room for more in the Kingdom of mercy and grace.

Resources

Matt Skinner. “Walking the Palm Sunday Path: A Lenten Sermon Series for 2026” in Preaching Series, January 21, 2026. Accessed online at https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching-series/walking-the-palm-sunday-path-in-lent-a-sermon-series-for-2026

Melva Sampson. “Commentary on Luke 23:39-43” in Preaching Series, Jan. 22, 2026. Accessed online at https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching-series/sermon-series-jesus-promises-paradise-to-a-victim-of-crucifixion

Craig T. Kocher. “Theological Commentary on Luke 23:32-43” in Feasting on the Gospels, Luke, vol. 2. Westminster John Knox Press, 2014.

Lincoln Galloway. “Homiletical Commentary on Luke 23:32-43” in Feasting on the Gospels, Luke, vol. 2. Westminster John Knox Press, 2014.

Josina Guess. “Folks Ought to Have a Resting Place” in Sojourners, Nov. 2025.

Barry Siegel. “Parole Board Frees Man Courts Wouldn’t” in The LA Times, Dec. 23, 1988. Accessed online at https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-12-23-mn-530-story.html

Luke 23:39-43

39 One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” 40 But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? 41 And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” 42 Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom.” 43 He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

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The New Commandment

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — “The New Commandment” John 13:1-9, 31-35

Andrew Rice’s best friend when growing up was his brother David. Although the two shared a rebellious spirit as kids, with age they settled down to careers in journalism and finance. On September 11, 2001, Andrew was covering the Toronto Film Festival when their mother called him with unsettling news. His brother David, had telephoned from his office in the World Trade Center to say that a plane hit the tower next door, but he was OK. Andrew rushed to the press room of his hotel, just in time to see a second jet hit the trade center. Filled with panic, Andew ran back to his hotel room. He turned on the TV as the first tower collapsed. In Andrew’s words, “At this point I just let out this terrible shriek, overwhelmed by the certainty that David was dead.”

After the attack, Andrew read a New York Times “Portrait of Grief” about his brother David. In the very same paper, Andrew was discomfited to read another article with words of impending retribution from Vice President Cheney, who threatened, “if you’re against us you’ll feel our wrath.” Andrew felt an inner tension. Part of him was with the Vice President, “We’ll show them,” while another part knew that force wasn’t the answer. In ensuing weeks and months, as news of mounting civilian deaths came from the war in Afghanistan, he felt increasingly concerned that ordinary people like his brother were dying. Andrew didn’t know how to respond to his brother’s death, but he had a growing sense that retribution would get him nowhere.

We may not have lost a brother on September 11th, but we have all struggled to discern how to respond when we are hurt. Whether it is a spouse who walks out the door, an adult child who severs ties, a colleague who badmouths us to the boss, a friend who betrays our dearest trust, a sibling who cheats us out of an inheritance, or a complete stranger whose violence shatters our lives, it is hard to imagine how to move forward. We may, like Andrew Rice, feel the unbearable tension between our desire for payback and our feeling that violence is not the answer.

Throughout Lent, we have been considering Jesus’ final week in Jerusalem. On the night of his arrest, Jesus offered an object lesson in how to respond to those who wrong us. He then invited his disciples to forge a new kind of community, a fellowship that would make revolutionary choices when it came to building a life together.

Foot washing was an essential rite of hospitality in the Ancient Near East. In an arid world with unpaved roads, sandaled feet got dusty, gritty, and grimy during the course of a day. Upon entering a home for a seder, the guests would shed their sandals, and a servant would wash their feet, sluicing them with water over an open basin, drying them off, and perhaps anointing them with a drop of oil. Foot washing was the most menial of household chores, performed by the lowest status slave, typically a woman or a child. With feet refreshed, the guests moved on to the table and an evening of good food and congenial conversation.

At the last supper that Jesus shared with his disciples, he rose during the meal, and undertook that most humble of services. He removed his outer robe, girded himself with a towel, and washed his friends’ feet. It was a wildly countercultural act. A high-status rabbi, acclaimed by his friends and the crowds as the Messiah, chose to do the work of a slave. It was a loving act, the kind of simple service that warms our heart—like when a caring parent kisses a child’s booboo, or a good coach takes the time to praise our efforts on the playing field; or our beloved ones remember our birthday with roses or a special meal or a night on the town.

John’s gospel tells us that Jesus knew exactly what was going on that night. He understood that he would soon leave this world and return to his heavenly Father. Soon, his passion predictions of terrible suffering and a horrible death would be fulfilled. Within the hour, one of his trusted disciples, Judas, would depart to betray him, selling his life for thirty pieces of silver. Later, all his disciples would abandon him, running off under the cover of darkness to save their own skins. Next, Peter, a dear friend and confidante, would deny and curse him three times before the sun rose. Jesus knew everything that was to come, and still he chose to do the work of a humble servant, washing the feet of those who would betray, abandon, and deny him. It was a radical act of loving kindness. Then, Jesus told his friends that they were to do the same for one another.

Humble, loving service isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when we ponder those who have betrayed, abandoned, denied, mistreated, oppressed, badmouthed, robbed, or smeared us. Our hearts skip a beat and our blood pressure rises at the very thought of mercy for those who have been so merciless to us. Our sense of justice bristles. It seems only fair that our oppressor should experience a taste of the hurt and pain that we have known. It seems only right that there should be an, “I’m sorry,” a mea culpa, a comeuppance in the court of public opinion, or at least some acknowledgment of wrongdoing. Jesus, we know you washed the feet of your fickle and failing friends, but you are who you are—and we are not. Do you truly demand this of us?

I imagine that on Holy Saturday, when Jesus lay dead in the tomb, and the women wailed in grief, and the disciples hid away in the Upper Room filled with remorse and self-recrimination, they remembered the foot washing. They recalled the stripped-down Jesus with his sleeves rolled up, kneeling at their feet. They remembered how it felt to be held and appreciated, to be accepted and loved, even though they weren’t perfect. In the darkness of that day, I like to think that the foot washing was the luminous thread that bound them to Jesus and to one another. Yes, Caesar’s Kingdom had unleashed unthinkable horror against their Lord and upon their community. Yes, the desire to either hit back or flee must have been great. Yet there had been that irresistible invitation to make a different choice, as Jesus had made a different choice. There was the call to humility and love. Rome may have appeared victorious on that first Good Friday, but Jesus had shown them another Kingdom. In Jesus’ Kingdom, power is exercised in acts of humble service and love heals the gaping holes that we carry in our hearts.

In November 2002, Andrew Rice, with others who had lost loved ones in the September eleventh attacks, learned that Madame al-Wafi, the mother of alleged twentieth hijacker Zacharias Moussaoui, was in New York City and wished to meet with them. They struggled with the choice to accept her plea for a face-to-face, but they ultimately agreed. It was a profound meeting for all. Andrew remembers that Madame al-Wafi greeted them with tears of grief and remorse for her son’s hatred. She reminded Andrew of his own mother, who had cried so much after David died. Madame al-Wafi spent three hours with them, recounting how the hatred peddled by al-Qaeda had given her mentally-ill son a purpose in life. There was no foot washing in that room, but there was healing. Many tears were cried, hugs exchanged, and a better way forward was found.

Andrew says, “One day I’d like to meet Zacharias Moussaoui. I’d like to say to him, ‘you can hate me and my brother as much as you like, but I want you to know that I loved your mother and I comforted her when she was crying.’” Andrew is still hurt and angry about the events of September eleventh, but the choice for love freed Andrew from the desire for payback and retribution. He writes, “I’m refusing to fall in line with what ‘they’ want, which is visceral hatred between two sides; this [choice for love] gives me permission to reconcile.”

Love gives us permission to reconcile. Jesus saw this so clearly on the night of his arrest. In washing his disciples’ feet and commanding them to love one another as he had loved them, he forged the graced space for them to overcome the everyday hurts, betrayals, rifts, and harms that could tear them apart. In washing his friends’ feet and commanding them to love, he sent them forth to forge a world where we do not resort to hatred and violence, a world where enemies could become friends.

What a world that will be! I can imagine it. Can you? Vladimir Putin will be on his knees, washing the feet of Vlodimir Zelenskyy. The new Ayatollah Khameini will wash the feet of the jailed protesters who called for Iranian reform. Israeli Defense Forces and Hamas Rebels will wash the feet of the widows and orphans of Gaza. Chuck Shumer and Mike Johnson will try to outdo one another in humility, each washing the other’s feet. Pam Bondi will tie back her hair, put on the apron, and wash the feet of those Epstein survivors.

And we will be there, too, daring to dream of that graced space where hurts are healed and new beginnings are found through humble acts of self-giving love. May it be so. Amen.

Resources:

Andrew Rice. “My Story” in Stories Library, The Forgiveness Project, https://www.theforgivenessproject.com/stories-library/andrew-rice/

Matt Skinner. “Walking the Palm Sunday Path: A Lenten Sermon Series for 2026” in Preaching Series, January 21, 2026. Accessed online at https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching-series/walking-the-palm-sunday-path-in-lent-a-sermon-series-for-2026

Karoline Lewis. “Commentary on John 13:1-9, 31-35” in Preaching Series, Jan. 22, 2026. Accessed online at https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching-series/sermon-series-john-13-footwashing-and-new-commandment

Kathleen Long Bostrom. “Pastoral Perspective on John 13:1-9” in Feasting on the Gospels, John, vol. 2. Louisville: WJKP, 2014.

Coleman Baker. “Exegetical Perspective on John 13:1-9” in Feasting on the Gospels, John, vol. 2. Louisville: WJKP, 2014. Michael Waters. “Homiletical Perspective on John 13:1-9” in Feasting on the Gospels, John, vol. 2. Louisville: WJKP, 2014.

John 13:1-9, 31-35

13 Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. 2 The devil had already decided[a] that Judas son of Simon Iscariot would betray Jesus. And during supper 3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going to God, 4 got up from supper, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. 5 Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. 6 He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” 7 Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” 8 Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” 9 Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!”

31 When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. 32 If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. 33 Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ 34 I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

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Have Mercy

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — “Have Mercy” Luke 10:25-37

It was a Sunday morning and Rev. Stephen Farris was late. He was filling in at a small church for a few months, and it was an icy day, not unlike today. By the time he got his car defrosted, he knew he was cutting it close. Wouldn’t you know that he hit every red light along the way? At the biggest intersection, while he sat anxiously waiting for the light to change, an older man, leaning on a cane, started to slowly cross the road in front of him. As the crosswalk light turned amber and then red, the older man tried to hurry. His cane slipped on a patch of ice and he fell, heavily.

In the split second that it took Pastor Stephen to put the car in park and reach for the door to get out, many thoughts flashed through his mind. He thought about the time it would take to help the man, call the rescue squad, and ensure he got to safety. He thought about the disappointment of his parishioners, who would sit in the pews waiting and wondering. Another thought crossed his mind. He could just drive away. He would make it to church in time to start the service, and he could trust that someone with more time would come along to ensure that the fallen man got the help he needed.

The story of the Good Samaritan is so familiar to us that most of us know it by heart. It all starts with a provocative question, “Who is my neighbor?” As Jesus tells his story, we can imagine the steep and windy road where the poor man was attacked by robbers and left bloodied, bruised, naked, and nearly lifeless in a ditch. We can see first the priest and then the Levite hurry by, even though they are righteous men who should help. We can see the Samaritan, that hated outsider, stopping for pity’s sake: tending wounds, transporting, lodging, and arranging for further needs. It’s an example story in which the enemy is held up as the neighbor by virtue of his extraordinary mercy, and we are told to go and do likewise.

Mercy, in Hebrew hesed, is a fundamental virtue of Judaism. Our Israelite ancestors believed that they were called to be merciful because God is merciful. God had chosen Abraham and Sarah to be a blessed covenant people, even though they were old, childless, and as good as dead. Later, in God’s mercy, God had heard the cries of the Hebrew people in bondage to Pharaoh and sent Moses with ten plagues to soften Pharaoh’s hard heart and set the people free. God had brought Israel through forty years in the wilderness to a land flowing with milk and honey. God’s mercy was a freely given gift to a people in special need.

The prophets called the people of Israel to see that mercy, hesed, wasn’t just for some. A close translation of Micah 6:8 calls us to “seek justice, love mercy (hesed), and walk humbly” with God. Mercy involves active concern for the wellbeing of all the people of God, not just those known personally to us. In fact, God spoke through the prophets that the people of Israel had a particular duty to show mercy to the most vulnerable people of the community: the widow, orphan, and resident alien (Jer. 22:3, Zech. 7:9-10).

The early church was founded upon this ancestral virtue of mercy, hesed. From its earliest days, the church saw Jesus as the ultimate revelation of God’s mercy. Jesus was God’s shocking and merciful choice to be flesh, live among us, and suffer for us. Jesus, of course, served as both role model and instructor in the way of mercy. Whether feeding crowds or reaching out a helping hand to heal the leper, Jesus showed his followers what mercy looks like. He also left them with a few roadmaps, like the story of the Good Samaritan, to show us the way.

Jesus’ friends followed his example, responding to God’s incredible mercy by sharing their own acts of mercy. The first office of the church—deacon—was created by the apostles in Jerusalem to address the needs of widows. The first churchwide offering, collected by the Apostle Paul from the Gentile churches in Greece, was received to help victims of famine in Jerusalem.

In his book, The Rise of Christianity, sociologist Rodney Stark argues that Christianity was transformed from a marginalized sect of Judaism to the leading religion of the Roman Empire in only three centuries because Christians practiced mercy. The apostles and those who would follow them, tended to souls and to bodies. They shared the core practices of mercy that Jesus taught in his Parable of the Sheep and Goats. They fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, clothed the naked, tended the sick, visited prisoners, and welcomed strangers. As they did so, they trusted that they were serving Jesus, who promised to come to them in the least of these, his little brothers and sisters. In the year 1281, the Archbishop of Canterbury John Pecham called for a council of the bishops of the church to gather at Lambeth. There they established the “Seven Acts of Mercy,” which codified those merciful practices and the burial of the dead as the core mission of Christians.

This ruling on the Seven Acts of Mercy led to a flowering of medieval artwork as churches and patrons commissioned paintings, stained glass, and murals that would teach their parishioners what mercy looked like. In 1504 in the Church of St. Lawrence in Amsterdam, the Master of Alkmaar painted a series of seven panels to show the seven acts. In the panel entitled “Feeding the Hungry,” a woman holds a basket of freshly baked bread. Her husband stands with his back to a crowd of hungry neighbors and distributes the bread, passing it without prejudice to the unseen hands that wait behind him. A disabled man with twisted legs, who scoots along on his bottom, reaches up for a loaf. A poor woman with a naked child waits her turn. A blind man in a tattered cloak with a little person tied to his shoulders holds out a hand in hopes of bread. As you look at the panel, it gives you a little shock to see Jesus, standing at the back of the crowd. He is dressed like a medieval peasant. He isn’t looking at the bread. He looks directly at you.

Acts of mercy continue to define vibrant churches like this one. We feed the hungry through the food pantry and Jubilee Garden. We give drink to the thirsty with shallow wells for sub-Saharan Africa. We clothe the naked and meet pressing needs with the help of our Deacons Fund. We tend the sick with home-cooked meals, caring calls, prayers, cards, and visits. We have visited prisoners over the years at federal, state, and county penitentiaries. We make it a practice of welcoming all—and we affirm that each week in worship. The example of the Good Samaritan and the Seven Acts of Mercy continue to inspire us to reach out in love in response to God’s great love for us and the needs of our neighbors.

Perhaps the most pressing questions of our time is “Who is my neighbor?” Is the refugee my neighbor? How about the undocumented migrant? Is the single Mom in section-8 housing my neighbor? How about the suburban soccer Mom? Is the disabled child, who takes up classroom time and needs a special aid hired at tax payer expense, my neighbor? Are LGBTQ people my neighbor? How about the white supremacist? The Christian nationalist? The gang banger? The bleeding-heart Yankee liberal? The Q-anon conspiracy theorist? Do we draw lines, and if so, where? Believe me, there are powers and principalities who are drawing the lines even as I speak. They will be glad to tell you who is not your neighbor, who is beyond the pale of mercy.

In Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan, the wounded man receives critically needed help from a traditional enemy. The wounded man receives the help even though, if not in such distress, he might hate, reject, and despise the Samaritan who helped him. The Samaritan proves that he is a neighbor by choosing to cross centuries-old lines of hatred and prejudice in order to be merciful to someone who needs it. When John Calvin wrote about this story, he said that it forces us to admit “that our neighbor is the man most foreign to us, for God has bound all men [and women] together for mutual aid.” Perhaps we can only truly appreciate this holy bond that makes neighbors of us all when we are the one who is lying in the ditch, weeping as we are passed by.

I’d like to return to Pastor Stephen at the icy intersection. As he put his car in park and reached for the door, his mind was flooded with possibilities. Stay and help the fallen man, even if he would be late for his responsibilities at church. Turn his head and go, let it be someone else’s problem. No one would be the wiser. Before he could pull the handle to open the door, the fallen man got up. He looked around and gave Pastor Stephen a dirty look for witnessing his icy tumble. He limped away, leaning on his cane. Pastor Stephen put the car in drive and continued to church. He made it there just in time for the service. He still wonders what he would have done if the situation had taken a different turn.

May we go forth to be merciful as God is merciful.

Resources

Douglas Otati. “Theological Perspective on Luke 10:25-37” in Feasting on the Gospels: Luke, vol. 1. Westminster John Knox Press, 2014.

Mary Miller Brueggemann. “Pastoral Perspective on Luke 10:25-37” in Feasting on the Gospels: Luke, vol. 1. Westminster John Knox Press, 2014.

Stephen J. Farris. “Homiletical Perspective on Luke 10:25-37” in Feasting on the Gospels: Luke, vol. 1. Westminster John Knox Press, 2014.

Katherine Sakenfeld. “Love (OT)” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 4, K-N. Doubleday, 1992.

Philip H. Towner. “Mercy” in Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology. Baker Books, 1996.

Steven Croft. “The Seven Acts of Mercy” in Letters from the Bishop, The Diocese of Oxford, Feb. 27, 2016.

Rodney Stark. The Rise of Christianity. Harper Collins, 1997.

Luke 10:25-37

25 An expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” 27 He answered, “You shall 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 your neighbor as yourself.” 28 And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”

29 But wanting to vindicate himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 30 Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and took off, leaving him half dead. 31 Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. 32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan while traveling came upon him, and when he saw him he was moved with compassion. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, treating them with oil and wine. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him, and when I come back I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ 36 Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” 37 He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

Master of Alkmaar. Seven Works of Mercy, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57901 [retrieved March 30, 2025]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Master_of_Alkmaar_-_The_Seven_Works_of_Mercy_(detail)_-_WGA14368.jpg.

The Reckoning

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — “The Reckoning” 2 Sam. 11:26-12:13a

We are constantly judging others. It is part of how we are hardwired as human beings, a legacy of the days when determining the safety or danger of any given situation could mean the difference between life and death. Researchers at Dartmouth and New York Universities determined that the human brain begins to label people as trustworthy or untrustworthy in a split second, even before we have time to consciously analyze what we see.

Our natural tendency to judge others is further shaped by our context. Children raised in families with critical parents learn to judge, sorting people into a ranked hierarchy from excellent to good to adequate to “you should be embarrassed by that effort.” Similarly, students, who cut their teeth in hyper-competitive schools and universities, can be ruthless in assigning value to the efforts of their classmates. We want that gold star for ourselves.

Psychologists suggest that our innate need to judge finds further reinforcement from the mental payoff that we reap. Finding others inadequate boosts our own sense of self-esteem and competency. We think, “At least I’m better than that!” Carl Jung, whose work was so formative for analytical psychology, formulated that there is a deeper and darker motivation behind our need to judge. Jung argued that we refuse to see what we do not like about ourselves, but at a deeper level, we still need to deal with those qualities and actions. So, we project those flaws onto others. We dislike and even hate in others that part of ourselves that we have denied and disowned.

In our reading from 2 Samuel, King David rushed to judgment when the Prophet Nathan told him a story of injustice. Last week, we heard the story of David’s abuse of power. While the armies of Israel waged war against the Ammonites, David stayed home and got up to no good. First, he violated and impregnated Bathsheba. Then, he had her husband Uriah murdered to cover up the sin. As today’s reading began, David thought all the mischief had been managed. He had even appeared generous and magnanimous by taking the widowed Bathsheba into the royal household and making her a wife.

There was only one problem—and it was a big one. God was a witness. God knew that the king had coveted his neighbor’s wife, committed adultery, borne false witness, and staged a murder. God didn’t like what God had seen, so a holy messenger, the Prophet Nathan, was called to confront David with his sin.

It was deftly done. David as king spent part of his day hearing the disputes of his people and rendering judgments. Nathan stood in line in the judgment hall and waited. When his turn came, he told a sad story of the abuse of power. We heard it—the rich man stole and killed the beloved pet of his impoverished neighbor without a second thought to the lamb’s suffering or the neighbor’s grief. David, who had not acknowledged the abuse and injustice of his own actions, rushed to judgment as he heard those actions attributed to another. “This man deserves to die!” the king proclaimed, unwittingly passing judgment on himself.

It’s a story that makes us want to pass our own judgments. How disappointed we are in David, who has proven that he is just as capable of misusing his authority as the last king, Saul. It’s a story that uncomfortably reveals that David is both sinner and saint. He is a rapist, murderer, liar, and predator. Yet, David is also Israel’s champion, a war hero, a poet, the anointed one, and a man with a heart for God. Humanity is complex, with the potential for so much good—and so much evil. It’s a fact that undergirds the salvation story of scripture. It stretches from God’s warning to Cain in the Garden of Eden, saying, “Sin is at your door. Its desire is to master you, but you must rule over it” (Gen. 4:7). It stretches to the cross, where Jesus took on the sin of the world so that we could be reconciled to God and one another. We are all sinners and saints.

David’s response to the parable of the ewe lamb reflects his inability to see and accept his own moral failure. We, too, find it easier to see the sins of others than to recognize our own faults. We lament and demonstrate against the humanitarian crisis in Gaza even as we arm the Israeli Defense Force. We rail against illegal immigration at our southern border even as we tank bi-partisan efforts to address the problem. We judge our neighbor’s addiction to drugs or alcohol while we soothe our anxiety with too much food or pornography or shopping ‘til we drop. Everyone is a judge. Everyone is a critic. Everyone has an inner troll, waiting to drop the bomb of condemnation on anyone other than ourselves. There’s a reason that Jesus cautioned the Pharisees when they judged his ministry and his disciples, saying that they would be better served attending to the plank in their own eye than casting aspersions against the crumb in the eye of their neighbor.

Nathan’s parable serves as a reminder that, not only are we sinner and saint, not only are we more eager to judge the fault of others than to confess our own failings, but we are also all subject to holy judgment. It’s a disquieting contention of scripture that there will be a Day of Judgment when we will be deemed sheep or goats, saints or sinners. David thought the mischief was managed. We think no one knows our sin. But God sees and God knows. In fact, our sins against one another are also sins against God. Nathan said it best in telling David, “Why have you despised the word of the Lord?” Indeed, according to the Ten Commandments, David’s sins of adultery and murder were a violation of Israel’s covenant with God and punishable by death. David knew this. That’s why when he was publicly confronted with his crimes, he confessed, “I have sinned against the Lord.” He threw himself upon the mercy of his eternal judge.

There is a lot of bad news in our scripture today: we are all both sinners and saints, we judge others and fail to accept our shortcomings, and we will one day face judgment. And yet there is good news. The good news is that God is merciful and abounding in steadfast love. When David finally faced facts, Nathan offered God’s mercy, saying, “God has taken away your sin; you will not die.” There would, of course, be consequences that sprang from David’s unjust actions. We all know what it is like to face the music of owning up to what we have done, whether we want to or not. Yet we can trust that God chooses to forgive. There is mercy for us.

We, who are hardwired to judge and have painfully experienced the judgment of others, struggle to trust in the mercy of our God. That steadfast love only becomes real for us when we remember what God has done for us in Jesus of Nazareth. The life of Jesus is an extended metaphor for the limitless love and incomparable mercy of God. In Jesus, we know that God loves us enough to become flesh, live among us, and teach us the better way of the kingdom. In Jesus, we learned that God loves us enough to generously forgive frail disciples, formidable opponents, and even the executioners who nailed him to a cross and gambled for his clothes. Who is in a position to condemn us? Only Jesus. As we celebrate the Lord’s Supper today and partake of the body and blood of our Lord, we remember that God would sooner die than be parted from us. The mercy of our Lord abounds for us. Thanks be to God.

Perhaps we come closest to Jesus and to embodying his Kingdom when we dare to allow God’s mercy to flow through us to others. When we rise above our instinct to judge, when we stop projecting onto others what we loathe in ourselves, when we understand that we are all in need of a savior, it is then that the Kingdom comes alive in life changing ways. We find the wherewithal to truly love our neighbor, and we place our hearts on the altar of God’s love where we are helped and healed and made new. May we go forth to love more and to judge less.

Resources

Dana Harron. “Why Do We Judge Other People?” in Psychology Today, Oct. 21, 2021. Accessed online at https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/living-eating-disorders/202110/why-do-we-judge-other-people

Visweswaran Balasubramanian. “Psychology of Judging – what it reveals about us” in Linked In Pulse, Dec. 8, 2020. Accessed online at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/psychology-judging-what-reveals-us-visweswaran-balasubramanian/

Dhuvra Koranne. “The Psychology of Judging Others” in Mind Voyage, Nov. 8, 2023. Accessed online at The Psychology of Judging Others | Mind Voyage

Alexandra Sifferlin. “Our Brains Immediately Judge People” in Time Magazine, August 6, 2014. Accessed online at https://time.com/3083667/brain-trustworthiness/

Ted A. Smith. “Commentary on 2 Sam. 11:26-12:13a” in Preaching This Week, August 2, 2009. Accessed online at Commentary on 2 Samuel 11:26—12:13a – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

Ralph Klein. “Commentary on 2 Sam. 11:26-12:13a” in Preaching This Week, August 2, 2015. Accessed online at Commentary on 2 Samuel 11:26—12:13a – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

Roger Nam. “Commentary on 2 Sam. 11:26-12:13a” in Preaching This Week, August 4, 2024. Accessed online at Commentary on 2 Samuel 11:26—12:13a – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

2 Samuel 11:26—12:13a

26When the wife of Uriah heard that her husband was dead, she made lamentation for him. 27When the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife, and bore him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord,

12and the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him, and said to him, “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. 2The rich man had very many flocks and herds; 3but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. He brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his meager fare, and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him. 4Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was loath to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb, and prepared that for the guest who had come to him.” 5Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man. He said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; 6he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.” 7Nathan said to David, “You are the man! Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I anointed you king over Israel, and I rescued you from the hand of Saul; 8I gave you your master’s house, and your master’s wives into your bosom, and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would have added as much more. 9Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. 10Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, for you have despised me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. 11Thus says the Lord: I will raise up trouble against you from within your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes, and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this very sun. 12For you did it secretly; but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun.” 13David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Nathan said to David, “Now the Lord has put away your sin; you shall not die.

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Mercy, Not Sacrifice

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — “Mercy, Not Sacrifice” Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

Timmy feels like an outsider. He’s at that awkward adolescent stage where his legs have gotten too long for the pants his Mom bought for him in the fall, but he still hasn’t outgrown his baby fat. When it comes to gym class, he’ll be picked last for a team. Timmy asked a girl to the school dance, but she said “no.” Lately, the popular boys in his class have been bullying him. They call him by a mean nickname. They ridicule the ankles that show beneath his too short pants, the thick glasses that he needs to read, and the pimples that are beginning to erupt on his chin. Timmy spends a lot of time at home in his room, reading or playing video games. He tells his parents that he doesn’t want to talk about it.

Sara hasn’t been to church since she was a teenager. Last year, she got married to her longtime girlfriend. It was a sweet ceremony, outside in a garden with vows they wrote themselves. A friend with one of those online ordinations that you can buy for $10 presided at the service. Sara loved church, but one day in Youth Group, as she was coming to terms with her sexual identity, the Youth Pastor told everyone that people who are gay or lesbian are an abomination. Sara didn’t really know what that word meant, but she knew it wasn’t good. Later, when she looked it up, it hurt her heart to think that people would actually believe that God hated her for the way that God had made her.

Martin and Adele feel like outsiders in their own family. It started with the 2016 Presidential election when family members split over the two candidates. What started as a minor squabble at the Thanksgiving dinner table over the election outcome has exploded into years of animosity. You should see the insulting and demeaning partisan emails and Facebook posts that have fanned the flames of conflict. Disagreement has escalated to division. Martin and Adele may love their family, but they find it hard to like them these days. Last year, they skipped Thanksgiving, and they don’t know if they’ll ever return to the family table.

Our reading from Matthew’s gospel serves as an extended example of how Jesus responded to first century distinctions between outsiders and insiders to God’s love. It all started when Jesus saw Matthew sitting at his roadside toll booth and invited the tax collector to become a disciple. The Pharisees were scandalized. Didn’t Jesus understand that Matthew was an outsider? He was an unclean collaborator, who had profited from the Roman occupation. Matthew wasn’t fit for decent society.  Didn’t Jesus understand that breaking bread with Matthew was risky business? After all, you know what they say, “Birds of a feather flock together.”

Then, there was that woman, the one with the bleeding down there. She had been unclean for longer than anyone could remember. Ten years? Twelve? A long time. Leviticus fifteen taught that a woman with a discharge of blood was impure. Anyone who came into contact with her was rendered unclean. She was an embarrassment to her family, shunned by the neighbors. Everyone in Capernaum knew to steer clear of her.

How about that little girl? She may have been the daughter of the synagogue leader, but dead is dead. The professional mourners were already wailing. In a world where six out of ten children didn’t grow to adulthood, this death was no rare tragedy, and she was a girl, after all, not a higher status boy. The Torah taught that anyone who touched a corpse was rendered unclean for seven days, a whole week of prayer and separation. There would be purification rites to undertake, too, on the third and seventh days. Jairus should have known better than to waste Jesus’ time. This little girl wasn’t worth the trouble.

Matthew, the woman, Jairus’s daughter. All were unclean outsiders in the eyes of first century Israel. Beyond any social stigma—and there was plenty of that—people like the Pharisees believed that Matthew, the woman, and Jairus’s daughter were separated from God. Matthew had willfully disregarded the Torah to consort with Gentiles. That woman must have been a terrible sinner for God to afflict her so shamefully for so long. And that little girl? Dead! Perhaps God would raise her on the Day of Judgment.

We all have times when we feel like outsiders. Like Timmy, we may have been rejected or bullied by siblings, classmates, or colleagues. Like Sara, we may have been told that God can’t and won’t love people like us. Like Martin and Adele, we may have fallen victim to the bitter divisions of partisan politics that cast those with differing opinions as mortal enemies.

The world is full of other neighbors who feel like outsiders. They live in poverty on the margins of the community. They cope with autism that makes it daunting and difficult to connect socially. They wrestle with mental illness that makes them want to go back to bed and pull the sheets over their head. They grapple with addictions that fill them with guilt and shame.  They feel like they don’t belong. They may even wonder why God doesn’t love them.

Jesus chose to reach outside, to move beyond the traditional limits of first century Judaism, to stretch the bounds of the Torah. When the Pharisees challenged him on the company he kept, he quoted for them the words of the Prophet Hosea, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” Jesus chose to practice mercy rather than become a prisoner of purity. Jesus came for tax collectors, hemorrhaging women, little girls, and all the others who had been made to feel like they lived life on the outside, looking in, unwelcome at the table of the righteous, unwelcome in the Temple of God.

Jesus’s ministry was a bold witness to God’s love and mercy for those who felt unwelcome and excluded. Of course, Matthew was called to serve as a disciple. Of course, that woman was healed and praised for her faith. Of course, Jesus took that little girl by the hand and tenderly restored her to her family.  Rather than sacrifice a sister or brother on the altar of holiness, Jesus chose mercy. Jesus knew that God’s love longs to welcome the outsider in.

There must have been great rejoicing that evening in Capernaum. Matthew threw the biggest dinner party ever. He broke out the best wine. He killed the fatted calf. He invited not only Jesus and all his former colleagues in the tax booth, but also all the Pharisees to feast at his sumptuous table.

That woman, who no longer had the issue of blood, sang praises to God. She was celebrated by her neighbors who had never really seen her before. They had only seen her disease. They realized how lonely she must have been all those years. They saw that just touching Jesus’ prayer shawl must have taken tremendous courage. Then, she went home to her family filled with rejoicing and together they wept tears of gratitude and joy.  

That funeral wake for Jairus’s daughter turned into a birthday party. The weeping turned into cries of jubilation. The sackcloth was traded for some festive party hats and Mardi Gras beads. A conga line danced through the streets of the village with Jairus, his wife, and daughter leading the way.

This morning, we who have been made to feel like outsiders join the party. We are loved in the midst of our gawky adolescence. We are loved whether we are LGBTQ – or even straight. We are loved regardless of our political sensibilities. Jesus wants to spend time with us, whether we are poor or rich, have autism or social anxiety, contend with mental illness or feel enslaved by our addiction. Jesus is for us, his mercy and love abound.

If we listen closely this morning, we who feel at home inside the church, inside the tradition, may even hear Jesus calling us to reach outside, to follow him in extending the boundless love and mercy of God to those who need it most. May it be so.

Resources:

Rolf Jacobson, “Followed by the Lord” in Dear Working Preacher, June 4, 2023. Accessed online at www.workingpreacher.org.

Cleophus LaRue. “Commentary on Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26,” June 11, 2023. Accessed online at www.workingpreacher.org.

Greg Carey. “Commentary on Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26,” June 8, 2008. Accessed online at www.workingpreacher.org.

Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

9As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him. 10And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. 11When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 12But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 13Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”

18While he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader of the synagogue came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” 19And Jesus got up and followed him, with his disciples. 20Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, 21for she said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.” 22Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And instantly the woman was made well. 23When Jesus came to the leader’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, 24he said, “Go away; for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. 25But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. 26And the report of this spread throughout that district.

Photo by Marina Shatskikh on Pexels.com

Mercy, Me!

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — “Mercy, Me!” 1 Tim. 1:12-17

Oren Kalisman grew up with Muslim neighbors he never met.  In fact, as a Jewish child growing up in the Galilee, Oren’s only childhood memory of interacting with a Muslim neighbor was when his mother stopped to give a ride to an old man, hitchhiking on the road to the next village.  At eighteen, Oren, like his parents before him, began compulsory military service with the Israeli Defense Forces. He was selected for an elite squad of paratroopers with twenty soldiers under his command.

When the second intifada began in 2000, Oren and his unit were deployed outside a refugee camp. There they used snipers to pick off alarmed Palestinians who emerged to defend their homes with rocks and Molotov cocktails.  In 2002, a solo Palestinian attack at an Israeli checkpoint killed six Jewish soldiers.  Orders came from Oren’s commanding officers: the Muslim policemen manning Palestinian check points in the West Bank were to be killed in retaliation.  Fifteen officers were executed.

Oren justified the violence that he and his men perpetrated. If someone was throwing a Molotov cocktail at you, they should be killed.  Likewise, someone had to pay for the murder of six Israeli soldiers, even if those killed had nothing to do with the attack.  Oren was just doing his job.  He was following orders.

In our reading from 1 Timothy, the Apostle Paul alludes to his track record as a man of violence and a persecutor of Christians.  As a devout youth, Paul had studied with the esteemed rabbi Gamaliel in Jerusalem and become an expert in the Torah.  Paul practiced Pharisaic teachings, which touted an extreme piety and devotion as the best way to please God.  In his zeal as a young Pharisee, Paul had endorsed the stoning of the deacon Stephen, the first martyr among Jesus’ followers.  Paul had also harassed the church in Jerusalem, and when many fled to Syria, Paul sought special permission to take his violence on the road, to arrest and return to Jerusalem for punishment all who believed that Jesus was the Messiah.  Paul justified his violent behavior, believing that he was rooting out a dangerous sect that defiled Judaism with the news of a false Messiah. 

We may not be members of the Israeli Defense Forces or Pharisees censuring blasphemers, but we know how it feels to be troubled by our pasts, even when we believed that what we were doing was true and righteous.  In fact, our past may continue to haunt our present and trouble our thoughts about the future.

Before coming to Saranac Lake, I enjoyed being a youth pastor in Morton Grove, Illinois.  I like to think that I did some good ministry among the young people of the church, but I think some of my best service was in providing caring presence and compassionate listening for some of the church’s oldest members, our World War II veterans.  They were troubled by remembrance of the friends they left behind on the beaches of Normandy.  They were disturbed by memories of the hate and violence they had directed toward Japanese enemies in the South Pacific.  They realized that they had brought the war home with them after it was over.  They kept secrets from their wives.  They had been emotionally distant with their children.  As Morton Grove welcomed an increasing number of Asian immigrants, they struggled to let go of their painful memories and love their new neighbors.  There were any number of ways that they could reasonably justify their past actions, but their violent pasts still troubled them.

In my twenty-two years of serving churches, I have learned that we can all be troubled by our pasts, whether we have embraced violence and persecution or we have simply engaged in practices that wound the spirit or brought injury to others.  We regret the harm we have caused our families: our impatience and harshness with our children, our failures to care for aging parents, or the too little love that we have shown to our spouse.  We regret the harm we have worked against the human family: our gender bias, our racial hate, our prejudice toward those whose ethnicity, social class, or political views are unlike our own.  We can be adept at justifying our actions and rationalizing our bad behavior, but when we are truly and deeply honest, we know our need for grace.  We know the late-night hours when we pray, “Lord, have mercy upon me, a sinner.”

Paul’s past caught up with him as he hurried down the Damascus Road, intent on arresting those who knew Christ as Lord.  According to the Acts of the Apostles, Paul was stopped dead, blinded by a heavenly light, and accused by the aggrieved Jesus, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”  Struck blind and powerless, the incapacitated Paul was taken to Damascus, where he spent three days without sight, neither eating nor drinking, pondering how he had gotten things so wrong.

Oren Kalisman’s turn around came during the Passover in April 2002.  In response to a terror attack in Netanya, Oren and his men were sent into the West Bank with orders to occupy Nablus, using whatever means were necessary.  From the second floor of a home that they had occupied, Oren heard gunfire from the room next door.  There, one of his men, a sniper, was firing at an unarmed old man who was seeking to recover the body of a boy, dead in the street below.  When Oren ordered his soldier to stop firing, he learned of orders from their commanding officer to kill with impunity.  Shocked at the inhumanity they had resorted to, Oren realized the moral quandary he was in.  Remembering that moment, the Israeli says, “We were surrounded by Palestinians who were fighting very bravely and who I realized, like ourselves sixty years ago, were fighting out of desperation for their very homes.”  At the end of the operation, Oren voiced his moral concerns and asked to be replaced.

We all have our Damascus Road moments when we are convicted of the harsh truth of sin.  Sin confronts us in the dysfunction that we instill in our families.  Sin shouts at us from the evening news as the murder of George Floyd, the shooting of Breonna Taylor, or the lead in Jackson, MI drinking water remind us of that racism is part of the fabric of our society.  If we are at all self-aware, we will admit the sin of writing off relationships, doing the wrong thing because it is the easy thing, and allowing ourselves to hate others because their political views are unlike our own.  When we sin against our neighbors, we sin against God.  We sin against Jesus, who asks why we are persecuting him. Lord, have mercy upon us.

Paul tells us good news. Although we act in ignorance and unbelief, the grace of God overflows for us.  Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom Paul deemed himself to be foremost. We are loved and forgiven.  And in the greatness of Christ’s mercy for us, we find a new purpose in service to God and neighbor.  Jesus would use Paul’s zeal to serve God’s Kingdom.  The former persecutor and newly Christened apostle would make multiple missionary journeys, plant countless churches, and touch many lives with the good news of God’s amazing grace that seeks and saves us when we are lost.

Oren Kalisman has found a new purpose.  He has established a chapter of Combatants for Peace in the West Bank community of Nablus where he once was an occupier.  Combatants for Peace brings together former members of the Israeli Defense Forces and former Palestinian combatants.  They share their stories, build relationships, and learn principles of non-violent conflict resolution.  Their goal is nothing less than building a foundation for Israelis and Palestinians that will bring lasting peace to the land.

My wise World War II friends knew that the only way forward from a war to end all wars was through the love and grace of God in Jesus Christ.  They trusted that, even though they might always be troubled by their war experiences, the grace of God overflowed for them.  They poured out their lives in God’s service in simple heartfelt ways. They attended church every Sunday. They shared their skills and abilities for God’s glory: founding a church, building a manse, tending the church gardens, serving on session. They kept God at the heart of their families with Sunday School and table graces, mission trips and church potlucks.  They knew their weakness and trusted that the Lord could do what they could not.  In the eighteen years since I served as one of their pastors, those men have all died.  I have no doubts that grace led each of them home.

The grace of Jesus Christ overflows for us this morning.  We are loved and God is faithful, even if we are, like Paul, the foremost of sinners.  Our immortal, invisible, only-wise God redeems us with a love that is stronger than the persecution of Pharisees or the intractable violence between Israelis and Palestinians.  God’s mercy for us is bigger than the legacy of war or all the ways that we can get things so wrong in our families and the human family. The mercy of God abounds for us and claims us for God’s purpose.  Lord, have mercy!

Resources:

The story of Oren Kalisman was recorded for The Forgiveness Project and may be read at https://www.theforgivenessproject.com/stories-library/oren-kalisman/

If you would like to learn more about Combatants for Peace, you can at this link: https://cfpeace.org/

Eric Barreto. “Commentary on 1 Tim. 1:12-17” in Preaching This Week, Sept. 11, 2016. Accessed online at workingpreacher.org

Benjamin Fiore. “Commentary on 1 Tim. 1:12-17” in Preaching This Week, Sept. 15, 2019. Accessed online at workingpreacher.org

Christian Eberhart. “Commentary on 1 Tim. 1:12-17” in Preaching This Week, Sept. 15, 2013. Accessed online at workingpreacher.org

A.K.M. Adam. “Commentary on 1 Tim. 1:12-17” in Preaching This Week, Sept. 12, 2010. Accessed online at workingpreacher.org

1 Timothy 1:12-17

12 I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he considered me faithful and appointed me to his service, 13 even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, 14 and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. 15 The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance: that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the foremost. 16 But for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience as an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life. 17 To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

By Chief Photographer’s Mate (CPHoM) Robert F. Sargent, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17040973

The Good Measure

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — Luke 6:27-38 “The Good Measure”

On October 2, 2006, milk truck driver Charles Carl Roberts IV barricaded himself inside the one-room West Nickel Mines School in Lancaster County, PA.  He had taken ten Amish girls, aged 6-13, hostage.  He lined them up and bound their feet.  As police sought to breach the schoolhouse, Roberts opened fire, killing five children and wounding five others before taking his own life.  Later that day, when the parents of Charles Carl Roberts learned that their son had been the shooter, they were shocked.  The husband Charlie turned to his wife Terri and said, “I will never face my Amish neighbors again.” 

But face them he did.  After the private funeral that the Roberts family held for their son, their Amish neighbors surprised them at the gravesite.  About thirty Amish, some of whom had buried their daughters the day before, showed up, arriving in their buggies and walking across the fields.  They surrounded the Roberts family in a crescent, as a sign of forgiveness and love.  Charlie Roberts’s Amish neighbor came to his home and spent an hour with his arm around him, offering comfort.  Ten months after the tragic attack, the Amish shocked the Roberts and the world again.  Community members had contributed money to create the Roberts Family Fund to support the widow and three young children of the man who had taken the lives of five of their own.

Those gestures of mercy from the Amish may have humbled, puzzled, or even outraged us.  We may have shaken our heads and thought, “Those people are better than I am.  There’s no way I could have put myself at that gravesite.”  Or we could have asked ourselves, “What’s up with that?  How could you hold in your heart both the anguish of untimely, tragic grief and the possibility of compassion for a stone-cold killer?”  Or we may just not have believed it.  Vocal critics at the time argued that the Amish didn’t forgive.  They simply went through the motions of mercy that had been imprinted upon them by their culture.  Yet on the day of the shooting, a grandfather of one of the Amish girls turned his family away from hate, saying, “We must not think evil of this man.”  Another father said, “He had a mother and a wife and a soul and now he is standing before a just God.”

“Love your enemies, do what is good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. . . Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.”  The forgiveness and mercy of the Amish in the wake of the West Nickel Mines school shooting put hands and feet and hearts to those tough words that Jesus spoke to listeners when he delivered that Sermon on the Plain.  For the disciples and others who had gathered to hear Jesus preach, those words would have felt impractical and unthinkable. 

The Ancient Near East was a world driven by retributive violence.  An accidental death could readily explode into the murder of an entire family.  Blood feuds pitted neighbor against neighbor and nation against nation for generations.  If you’d like to read a story of this sort of explosive, escalating, unstoppable violence, take some time to read Genesis 34.  The sons of Jacob took retribution against Shechem, who had sexually assaulted and married their sister Dinah.  To exact revenge, Levi and Simon came upon Shechem and his kin unawares and slaughtered all the men.  Then, Jacob’s other ten sons plundered the community, taking for themselves all the valuables, livestock, children, and wives.

The covenant of the Torah, the Jewish law, tried to limit this escalating cycle of blood violence by teaching a tit-for-tat justice.  Exodus 21 instructs that vengeance must be measured and reciprocal, “If there is an injury, then you must give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, bruise for bruise, wound for wound.”  To help the people move away from blood vengeance, six cities of refuge were designated in Israel. There the perpetrators of accidental manslaughter could claim the right of asylum and await appropriate justice.

Yet Jesus broke even with this moderate teaching of measured retaliation by insisting that his followers exceed the standards of the Torah.  Instead of pulling out their opponent’s teeth and blacking their eyes, Jesus’s friends were to love, do good for, bless, and pray for their enemies.  It was a completely new ethic that flew in the face of everything that his followers knew and experienced.  The love that Jesus enjoined his disciples to practice is agape, the love that God practices.  Agape chooses to act for the good of the other, regardless of what our hearts might be telling us. 

Love your enemies?  Love / agape is a tough choice that we learn to make.  We can only find the ability to practice agape when we consider the mercy of God to us.  Those of you who studied the ten commandments with me a number of years ago will remember that disobeying the moral code that Moses imparted to us carries a death penalty.  We are all deserving of Yahweh’s judgment, and yet God is shockingly merciful.  Instead of judgment and death, God became flesh and entered into this world’s darkness.  In Jesus, God chose to live for us and show to us the way of agape.  Traditional enemies like Romans, Samaritans, and Canaanites were welcomed, helped, and healed.  Clueless, fickle disciples and merciless executioners were prayed for and forgiven.  In the ultimate act of agape, on a merciless cross, flanked by common criminals, Jesus revealed that God loves us enough to die for us.

It is in the enormity of God’s costly love for us that we begin to see another way.  We begin to think that maybe we can move away from demanding an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.  We begin to see that only love can heal hearts, transform an enemy into a friend, and make a changed future possible.  With frail and feeble efforts, we begin to choose love.  We fail often.  And yet, we trust that God’s mercy is there to catch us when we fall.  The grace of Christ is sufficient for us. 

What might this transformational ethic of agape look like for us?  It might be letting go of a long-held grudge.  It could be letting bygones be bygones in a family feud.  It might be giving a second chance to a friend who betrayed a confidence.  It could be working hard together to mend a marriage that has endured infidelity.  It is choosing to act always in the best interest of the other and knowing that we can borrow some of God’s love when ours is in short supply.

Jesus described the fruit of a life lived in agape.  He called it the “good measure.”  When you went to a first century marketplace for grain, the merchant filled a measure to the brim and then gave it a good shake to ensure that every nook and cranny was filled.  The merchant then poured that overflowing measure into your apron to carry home.  It’s a beautiful earthy metaphor for a life that abounds with goodness.  When we practice and experience agape, the world gets blessed and so do we.  As we haltingly live into agape, we show God’s Kingdom to the world and in some immeasurable and hopeful way, that Kingdom comes.

In the days following the terrible events at the West Nickel Mines School, Terri and Charlie Roberts, the parents of the shooter, considered leaving the area.  Their grief, shame, and pain were so immense that they couldn’t imagine a way forward, but the Amish did more than forgive the couple, they embraced them as part of the community.  That generous agape prompted the Roberts to host a summer picnic in their backyard for their Amish neighbors, nine months after the attack.  They all came, including a little girl named Rosanna King, wheelchair bound, unable to speak or feed herself, the youngest of their son’s victims. 

A few months later, Terri Roberts asked Rosanna’s mother if she could help with the girl’s care.  Until her death from breast cancer in 2017, Terri spent nearly every Thursday evening at the King Family farm, bathing, reading, and attending to Rosanna until her bedtime.  Terri Roberts remembered the evening that a father said to her, ‘None of us would have ever chosen this.  But the relationships that we have built through it, you cannot put a price on that.”  Terri believed that the Amish choice for agape, the decision to allow life to move forward with love, was profoundly healing for her and her family.  Terri said that is “a message the world needs.” 

“Love your enemies, do what is good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. . .  Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.”

Resources:

Colby Itkowitz. “Her Son Shot Their Daughters 10 Years Ago, Then These Amish Families Embraced Her as a Friend” in The Washington Post, October 1, 2016.  Accessed online at washingtonpost.com.

Story Corps. “A Decade After Amish School Shooting, Gunman’s Mother Talks of Forgiveness” in Morning Edition, Sept. 20, 2016.  Accessed online at npr.org.

Sarah Henrick. “Commentary on Luke 6:27-38” in Preaching This Week, Feb. 20, 2022.  Accessed online at workingpreacher.com.

Ronald Allen. “Commentary on Luke 6:27-38” in Preaching This Week, Feb. 24, 2019.  Accessed online at workingpreacher.com.

Susan E. Hylen. “Theological Perspective on Luke 6:27-38” in Feasting on the Word, Year C, vol. 1. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

Charles Bugg. “Pastoral Perspective on Luke 6:27-38” in Feasting on the Word, Year C, vol. 1. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

Luke 6:27-38

27“But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 29If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. 30Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. 31Do to others as you would have them do to you. 32“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. 35But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. 36Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

37“Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”

Image source: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/us/03amish.html