The Waking Dreamer: Mercy

Showing posts with label Mercy. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 18, 2026

Unworthy?

Matthew 15:21-28[1]

We have all kinds of ways of drawing lines between “us” and “them.” It’s tempting to add “these days” to that statement, but I think in fact the human family has always had plenty of ways to draw lines between “us” and “them.” I’m sure there was a time when that was purely a matter of survival. But that time has long passed for most of us. Yet we persist in seeing those who are “too” different from us as “others” and perhaps even “enemies.” It seems to me that we do that most in uncertain times. Especially when influential people use their voices to stoke our fears and anxieties and to convince us that they’re the only ones we should trust with power. This happens at all levels and on all sides of the lines we draw between “us” and “them.”

Part of the problem with this mindset is that when we label someone as “other” or as an “enemy,” it opens the door for us to devalue their humanity. That’s true in times of war. It’s almost impossible to put someone into battle and expect them to actually kill other human beings without convincing them that their “enemies” don’t deserve to live. But it’s also true in other aspects of life. I find it troubling that our political discourse takes this approach. The attitude these days seems to be “If you disagree with me, you’re not worth my time.” At least that’s the tone of what I see and hear on social media, and again, it’s on all sides. But even more troubling to me is the fact that we bring this mindset into our religion as well. If someone’s religion makes them too “different” from us, we tend to dismiss not only their faith but their humanity as well. That means they’re not even worthy of our friendship, let alone our love!

Unfortunately, this attitude toward people who hold different faiths has infected people of all religious persuasions throughout history. “We,” whoever we may be, are most worthy of God’s love because we worship “the right way.” “They,” whoever they may be, may be loved by God, but they don’t really deserve it because they don’t worship “the right way.” This attitude may show up as a preference, or as a sense of superiority, or even as stated doctrine! Unfortunately, the various declarations of God’s love in the Hebrew Bible convinced many Jewish people that they were “special” in this way. They missed the fact that what made them special was that they were “chosen” to extend God’s love to “all the families of the earth” (Gen 12:3). Like many people through the ages, because they believed they were “special,” they concluded that those who were different were not only “beneath” them but not even worthy of God’s love.

This is important background for our gospel lesson for today. When you read it as a straightforward story and assume that Jesus meant what he said to be taken literally, it’s disturbing if not downright offensive. We’re shocked when this woman, who was a “foreigner” from “Tyre and Sidon” in gentile territory, came begging Jesus for mercy and he ignored her request. Or at least so it would seem. When she fell on her face and “worshipped” him, he responded, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Mt 15:24). And when she persisted in her faith, and continued to ask for his mercy, instead of helping her he said, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs” (Mt 15:26)!

We overlook this disturbing story because, if we take what Jesus said here literally, it would mean that he responded to a mother who was desperate to save her child and who came to him in faith with some of the harshest words he ever said to anyone! That makes this story stand out like a sore thumb. How could Jesus have been so uncaring, so unkind, so downright mean as to respond to her heartfelt and faith-filled request for mercy by saying she didn’t “deserve” it because she was a “dog”? That just doesn’t fit with what we know of Jesus elsewhere. He’s the one who looks at the crowds who were “like sheep without a shepherd” and has compassion on them. He’s the one who forgives the thief on the cross and invites him, even as he was dying, to join him in paradise!

So what’s going on with this story? Some think perhaps that Jesus was “testing” this woman to make sure she had “enough” faith. But I’ve never believed that fits this story. Everything about it demonstrates her faith. She approaches him from the very beginning by calling him “Lord.” She also falls on her face and worships him when she asks for his mercy. And in the end, Jesus declares that she has “great faith”! We should remember that last week we heard Jesus calling Peter, who would become the leader of the Apostles, “you of little faith” (Mt 14:31). By contrast, he said to this woman, “you have great faith!” I think the woman in this story had plenty of faith!

I think that the ones who were being “tested” here were Jesus’ disciples. You can tell by the way they reacted to her that they didn’t think she deserved Jesus’ help. As she was crying out it didn’t take long for them to get fed up and ask Jesus to “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us” (Mt 10:23). I think we would be right to assume that the ministry apprentices Jesus had handpicked to carry on his work also carried all the entitlement that so many religious people had in that day, and have claimed for themselves throughout the ages. I think it’s pretty clear that they looked down on this “Canaanite” woman as someone who was not only beneath Jesus’ help, but also beneath even being in their presence! “Send her away!,” they said. The point of this encounter was to confront Jesus’ disciples for their prejudice. That means that the seemingly harsh words Jesus said were not meant to be taken literally, but rather he was speaking somewhat ironically in order to teach his disciples that their notions of God’s mercy were too limited. I’m sure there were plenty of other people in their world besides this mother whom they deemed “unworthy” to even be in Jesus’ presence, let alone to receive his mercy and compassion. They needed to learn better![2]

One of the lessons I’ve learned from studying the world of the Bible is that we humans haven’t changed much. We may have technology that changes our lives, but our fundamental nature hasn’t changed over the millennia. We still draw lines that divide those of “us” who are “worthy” of God’s love from the “others” who are “unworthy” not only of God’s love but even of our attention. This Scripture lesson confronts us by reminding us that God’s mercy cannot be limited by the lines we draw to exclude people we consider to be “unworthy.” Right after this episode, while he was still in that “foreign” territory, Matthew tells us that Jesus healed everyone who came to him. I can’t imagine that he first checked to make sure they had the “right” to God’s mercy. He simply healed them all (Mt 15:30). Jesus knew in the depth of his very being that God’s mercy has no limits. In God’s sight we’re all worthy of God’s love simply because God loves us!

[2] Some take a very different approach. Interpreting Jesus’ words literally, they believe that this encounter was actually a test for Jesus to “free” him from limited notions of his mission and from patriarchal attitudes toward women. Cf. Sharon Ringe, “A Gentile Woman’s Story,” in Letty M. Russell, ed., Feminist Interpretation of the Bible, 67-68. However, Gene Boring, “Gospel of Matthew,” New Interpreters Bible IX: 337-38 rightly criticizes her for reading too much of an ideological agenda into the situation. As he observes, the story is about the sexism and racism of the Gospel readers (and I would say the disciples).

Tuesday, June 16, 2026

Loving Mercy

Hosea 6:6, Matthew 9:9-13[1]

I can’t say that I see much mercy in the way our society works these days. It hasn’t always been this way. There was a time when mercy was a common, everyday practice. Especially in the hardest of times, people regularly gave food to those who came to their door. There are different ways we do that now, especially through the food pantry. But I think there’s something that happens when we look a person in the eyes and extend mercy to them. Something happens to us and something happens to them. But it seems that’s something we’re less comfortable with. As we insulate ourselves behind the relative comfort and safety of some kind of “screen” or other in our homes, we distance ourselves from people who genuinely need our help. And I wonder whether the quality of mercy becomes strained in us. I wonder whether mercy no longer “drops as the gentle rain from heaven,” blessing both the giver and the receiver, as William Shakespeare put it so long ago.[2]

And I would say we’re the poorer for it. Mercy has a way of enriching life. As I mentioned last week, “mercy” has always been a core aspect of who God is. The heart of what the Bible teaches about God is consistent with the revelation to Moses: “The Lord! The Lord! The God of compassion and mercy! I am slow to anger and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness” (Ex 34:6, NLT). And as I mentioned last week, I like the way the Contemporary English Version puts it: “I am the Lord God. I am merciful and very patient with my people. I show great love, and I can be trusted” (Exodus 34:6, CEV). It’s no wonder that, at the end of Luke’s version of the sermon on the Mount, instead of saying “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” as Matthew’s Gospel puts it (Mt 5:48), Jesus says, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Lk 6:38).

More than that, the Bible makes it clear that mercy is what God wants from his people. God wants us to show the same generous and unfailing mercy to others that he has shown to us. I’ve mentioned before that one of my favorite Bible verses is Micah 6:8: “O people, the Lord has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God” (Mic 6:8, NLT). Again, I like the way the Contemporary English Version renders it: “The Lord God has told us what is right and what he demands: ‘See that justice is done, let mercy be your first concern, and humbly obey your God’” (Mic. 6:8, CEV). Mercy is not only the heart of who God is, mercy is also the heart of what God wants from us. That’s the point of our lesson from the prophet Hosea for today. If we truly want to “repent” of our wayward lives and return to loving God with all our hearts, the way to do that is by practicing mercy! According to the prophet Hosea, showing mercy to others demonstrates our love for God above anything else we might do.

Ironically, mercy seems to flourish among those who are living on the margins, even among those who sometimes may be barely getting by. On the other hand, prosperity and wealth are like poison to mercy. It seems the more we have to lose, the less we’re willing to give. We may give “token” gifts to “support” the ministry of the church or to “serve” the needs of the community, but our prosperity breeds in us a way of living that is primarily focused on our own comfort and wellbeing. So we withdraw from being personally involved in extending mercy to those who are genuinely in need. In fact, I daresay that many of us may actually be afraid of putting ourselves in that situation because it feels risky. I can understand that.

The other irony about mercy is that religion has a way of stifling it. We become so involved in “doing good things” around the church that we cut ourselves off from the people who are in genuine need. As a person who’s spent my career working in and around the church, I’ve often felt that. That’s the point of our lesson from the Gospel of Matthew for today. Jesus caused a scandal among the “religious people” by extending mercy to all who came to him without checking their “religious credentials” first. In our lesson for today, Jesus called “Matthew,” a tax collector, to be one of his hand-picked apprentices. Tax collectors in Jewish society were hated and despised as traitors. In fact, the phrase, “tax collectors and sinners” pretty much included everyone who was viewed as immoral, dishonest, tainted, or in any way “undesirable.” That’s who Jesus called to help him carry out the ministry of the kingdom of God: Matthew, a “tax collector.” I’m not sure he could have made a more dramatic demonstration of the kind of mercy he believed is at the heart of what it means to love God.

The “religious people” of the day were deeply offended by this. That’s the backdrop for Jesus’ shocking statement, “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’” (Mt 9:13)! Jesus didn’t just pull that out of thin air. He was quoting Scripture. Specifically, Hosea 6:6. But Jesus told them that despite their efforts to study Scripture they had missed the point: putting the mercy they had received from God into practice in the way they treated everyone. Unfortunately, they had convinced themselves that they only “had” to put that mercy into practice with their Jewish neighbors. And in fact, they only “had” to put that mercy into practice with some of their Jewish neighbors. But in the Bible, “mercy” is a fundamental life orientation toward treating all people with kindness, compassion, and dignity.

All of this makes me wonder what it says about the church in this day and time that a growing number of young people are leaving, and one of the main reasons is because they look at different churches and ask themselves, “I wonder whom they exclude.” They see the different churches in our society as defined by whom they exclude. The sad truth is that when we demonstrate our religion by excluding people, we’ve fallen into same trap as the people of Jesus’ day. Our “religion” has stifled our ability to practice mercy. If we want to renew this church, if we want to renew our faith, if we want to reinvigorate the Christian faith in this society, if we want younger people to come back to church, it seems to me the way to do that is to get back to what Moses, the Prophets, and Jesus taught is the heart of what it means to truly love God. That means learning to “make mercy our first concern,” and sharing it with everyone.

[2] I’m alluding to the famous line in William Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” Act IV, Scene 1: “The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.”

Wednesday, November 19, 2025

Pleased With Ourselves?

Luke 18:9-14[1]

As you may recall, I’ve spoken occasionally this year about some of the criticisms of religion. Especially those people who avoid church use to justify that choice. And you may recall that I’ve mentioned that Luke’s Gospel, which is the foundation for the Lectionary readings this year, lends itself to this topic. Like the other Gospel writers, Luke recounts the conflicts Jesus had with the Jewish religious leaders. Because of this, many have concluded that the Jewish leaders of that day were just bad people. Beyond that, some throughout history have used these passages to conclude that all Jewish people are corrupt. But those who do so read into the Gospels something that’s not there. To be sure, Jesus exposed the flaws in the Jewish religious leaders’ traditions and the way they selectively observed them. And they attacked him for it. Some of them even engineered his death. But that was more about a grasping for power that is a human trait than anything inherent to Jewish people.

In fact, if you read the Gospels thoughtfully, you have to recall that they were not only written to record Jesus’ life and teachings, but also to instruct early Christian churches about the practice of their faith. What most Gospel scholars like myself conclude from this is that the attention paid to the flaws of the Jewish religious leaders was, at least in part, meant to serve as a warning and even a rebuke to Christian leaders. It’s likely that Luke, like the other Gospel writers, already saw the same behaviors emerging in early Christian churches. They called attention to Jesus’ conflicts with the Jewish religious leaders of his day in order to correct the missteps of the Christian religious leaders of their day.

I think what we have to acknowledge is that all the criticisms and shortfalls of religion that we’ve been discussing don’t just apply to certain groups of (other) people. That would be much too convenient for all of us. No, the truth of the matter is that all of the flaws in religion we’ve addressed are pitfalls we all can fall into. “Religion,” as some theologians like Karl Barth have often pointed out, is a human endeavor. Faith, on the other hand, can be a spiritual matter, something that God brings about in and through us. But the ways we express our faith are all inherently human. And because we are all flawed people, the pitfalls of religion apply to us all.

I wanted to say all of this as part of my sermon today because it deals with a topic that can potentially be offensive. And I think it’s important from the outset to recognize that all the pitfalls of religion can apply to all of us. None of us are immune. I would say that one of the reasons why some people avoid church is because they have encountered Christians who are really quite pleased with themselves. Often you see it in a kind of “humble bragging” about one’s faith and how thankful a person is for the “perfect” life that God has “blessed” them with. It can come across as a kind of smugly condescending look, a pity-filled smirk that basically communicates to those “outside” the church that it’s just too bad they haven’t made all the right choices (like we have). At times, it can come across as outright arrogance. Like when someone asks you, “if you died tonight, do you know for sure you would go to heaven?” The very question assumes that they do! And it comes across as if they’re assuming the person to whom they ask the question doesn’t!

Our Gospel lesson for today presents us with two men. One man, a Pharisee, would have been a respected member of the community. He was respected because of his devotion to studying and obeying God’s word in all aspects of their lives. Now, in and of itself, that’s what we’re all called to do. But the problem was that this particular man was very satisfied with himself. I like the way Gene Peterson puts it in The Message: Jesus told this parable about some who were “pleased with themselves over their moral performance” (Lk. 18:9). Judging from his prayer, this fellow was very pleased with himself. It’s hard not to think that he was bragging about himself to God![2] But perhaps more importantly, his spiritual arrogance translated into looking down on the other man who had come to pray as inferior. I would say that’s a clue that there’s something wrong with his religion. Again, we’re not talking about a uniquely Jewish problem. It’s a problem we all can have with our religion.

The other man in the Gospel lesson is the exact opposite. In fact, as a tax collector, he would have been despised by more than just the Pharisee. He would have been viewed as a traitor to his people and a thief. That’s because of the way taxes were collected in that day and time. It was an inherently corrupt system. Whoever was in control gave the right to collect taxes to the highest bidder. As long as the tax collector paid off his “bid,” he could keep anything else he could extract from people. And so he would hire a whole team of people who would work under him, each collecting a portion of the taxes. And as long as they paid their quota, each of them could keep whatever they could get. and it’s not hard to imagine why people despised tax collectors in that day.

Two very different men came to the temple to pray. The one had become a respected leader of his community by following the letter of the law. The other had thrown virtue and decency to the wind, and was basically robbing his own people, taking the fast-track toward getting rich. But the point of the parable was that the first man was quite convinced that his life was right and righteous and even pleasing to God. The other man came to the temple not satisfied, or pleased, but broken.

And while the people to whom Jesus told this story would have expected him to say what a good man the Pharisee was and what a rotten scoundrel the tax collector was, he surprised them. In fact, he shocked the living daylights out of them. Speaking about the tax collector, he said, “I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other” (Lk 18:14). That was the exact opposite of what they expected. But he was pointing them to something important: when we are “pleased” with ourselves and our religion, it raises a huge red flag regarding the genuineness of our faith. Biblical faith, the kind of faith that actually makes a difference in our lives, comes from experiencing the healing power of God’s mercy in response to our brokenness. And when we experience God’s mercy that way, our faith will look more like the humility of the tax collector than the smugness of the Pharisee.

Again, it’s too easy for us to walk away from a parable like this and think that those silly Pharisees really missed the point of it all. But the truth is that one man’s self-satisfied arrogance in this story is there to remind us all that we can fall into the same temptation. There was a time when I fell into this temptation. Everything in my life was going just the way I hoped it would. My life was going “according to plan.” A few years later, it all came crashing down, and it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me.

There is room in our faith for genuine satisfaction that comes from looking back over our lives and recognizing how far we’ve come. But for it to be truly genuine, it will always be mixed with generous helpings of humility and gratitude. That’s why religious smugness is so offensive. We might as well be wearing a neon sign that says, “you need God, but I’m doing just fine!” But the truth is that we all need God as much as anybody else. The truth is that at the end of the day none of us are really “pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps.” We all are who we are only by the grace and mercy of God. And anyone who truly knows that will never be “pleased” with themselves, in the smug way that first man in the parable was. Rather, like the other man we will humbly and gratefully acknowledge that God’s mercy is a gift beyond what we could ever deserve.

[2] In fact, although many English Bibles translate the passage to say that he prayed “standing by himself,” and many others say that he prayed “with himself,” there are several that render it with a significant difference: he “stood and prayed about himself” (Lk 18:11, CEB, NET, NASB).There is actually a textual variant in the Greek New Testament that alters the word order to emphasize the latter interpretation. Cf. Bruce Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 143. J. A. Fitzmyer, Luke X-XXIV, 1186, differs from the majority view and supports the variant because it has some of the most important early witnesses to the text of the New Testament in support.

Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Simple Actions

Colossians 1:1-14, Luke 10:25-37[1]

My Grandmother’s sister, Ruth Jackson, was the first woman to become an orthopedic surgeon. Anywhere. In fact, the association of women Orthopedic Surgeons is called the “Ruth Jackson Society.” She was quite a gutsy lady—just becoming a doctor was hard enough for a woman in those days. Her passion combined with her compassion for people led her to break into one of the most elite “men’s only” clubs in that day. In fact, Orthopedic Surgery is still that way to this day, a century later! When my aunt Ruth was treated for a neck injury, she was unhappy that orthopedics in that day was a “hands-off” discipline. They took x-rays, used neck braces, and prescribed traction for patients without ever actually touching them. So she pioneered a “hands-on” approach to treating neck injuries. She literally wrote the book on the treatment of neck injuries—a book that went through 4 editions and was translated into various languages and was the standard text around the world for many years.

Growing up with Aunt Ruth was both wonderful and difficult. She taught me to shoot, to fish, and to drive, among many other things. She could be incredibly demanding of a boy who she wanted to follow in her footsteps. I still remember the time at her dining table when she insisted that any nephew of hers was going to learn proper table manners! I was 6 years old! Obviously, it stuck with me all these years. In fact, the whole family expected me—both implicitly and out loud—to do something “spectacular” just like Aunt Ruth. They didn’t insist that I go into medicine—though she applied a great deal of “arm twisting” to get me to do just that. But whatever field I went into, it was clear that I was expected to do something “spectacular.”

We live in a world where it seems more and more that you have to do something “spectacular” in order to make a difference. I think this is in part due to the fact that instant communications have made our world much bigger for all of us. With access to news about so many problems that are so widespread all over the world, it can be so easy for us to think, “I’m just one person,” and “I can’t really make a difference.” I think this is especially the case in our culture where we almost worship “celebrities.” How many of our kids at certain ages dream not of becoming doctors or lawyers or teachers, but rather famous actors or musicians or athletes? To some extent, that’s just youthful exuberance. But I think some of it comes from our near obsession with people who are “famous.” And for some, that notion that you have to do something spectacular or even become famous can be linked to feeling valued by those you love.

I think that our lesson from Paul’s letter to the Colossians this week gives us some help at this point. In his letters, Paul talks about the Christian life in a way that is pretty down to earth. It’s a matter of “bearing fruit” and doing “good work” (Col. 1:10). I would remind you that “bearing fruit” in the Bible is a metaphor for the quality of your character, not “getting results.” It’s about who we are, not what we accomplish. Here and elsewhere in his letters, Paul talks about the Christian life as a matter of simple actions, like “walking the walk,” and not just “talking the talk.” These and other incredibly ordinary activities are what it means to live in a such way as to “honor and please the Lord” who redeemed us (Col 1:10-14). It sounds like the life that Paul envisions for those of us who would follow Christ is really nothing spectacular at all. It’s a matter of focusing on simple actions in our daily living.

That might seem too cliché to merit our attention, until you think about the Parable of the Good Samaritan. After all, what did the Samaritan do that was so “spectacular”? All that kind soul did was to notice the one who was wounded, actually take time to stop, and care enough to bind up his wounds. And then he saw to it that this wounded man could have the time he needed to recuperate. It’s a story of simple actions: mercy put into practice, compassion that goes the second mile. Stopping, caring for him, putting him up at the inn, were all simple actions. Nothing spectacular. But they made all the difference in the world to “the one who fell among robbers.”

It seems to me, contrary to our culture that is obsessed with all things “spectacular,” it is when we are engaged in simple actions that we make the most difference in another person’s life. I’ve studied with world-renowned theologians and Bible scholars. But the most influential person in my life was my brother, Douglas, who was mentally and emotionally handicapped. It was just the gentleness of his soul that impacted me so deeply. To paraphrase one of my favorite spiritual writers, Henri Nouwen, the Christian life is “mostly hidden in the ordinariness of everyday living.”[2] It’s not something that makes headlines in the news.

When you get right down to it, that’s the only place we can really make much of a difference in the life of another human being. We mere mortals rarely achieve the level of influence that can truly make a difference for hundreds or thousands of people out there. For the most part, we can touch a life here, a life there. And we do that through the quality of our character as displayed in simple actions, not anything “spectacular” we might do. It’s through the way in which we actually relate to people, the way we actually treat other human beings, not through any great “achievement,” that we really have an effect on others. From that perspective, the Christian life is a matter of simple actions that constitute living out the grace and mercy and compassion of God. I see a lot of pain and suffering in this world. When we live in a world of hurt like that, it makes it all the more important for us to live out God’s grace and mercy and compassion in simple actions every day.

[2] Henri Nouwen, Here and Now:Living in the Spirit, 103: “The compassionate life is mostly hidden in the ordinariness of everyday living.”

Tuesday, September 17, 2024

Searching for Goodness

Psalm 146[1]

In some ways, it’s easy to see all that is good in this world. We don’t have to look any farther than the freshness of a beautiful morning, or the vibrant colors of a stunning sunset. The world of nature is so full of beauty we have to make an effort not to see the goodness all around us all the time. And then there’s our human family. Yes, relationships can be challenging, but if we direct our attention to what is right about our relationships, it’s not hard to find plenty of people in our lives who are good and kind and loving. You know, the ones who know us, flaws and all, and still treat us with love and respect. You know me well enough that it shouldn’t surprise you that I find children to be some of the most consistently beautiful people in this world. All of that and much, much more leads us to conclude with Louis Armstrong, “and I think to myself, what a wonderful world!”

But there is another side to life in this world, what one contemporary voice calls the “tragic” side of life.[2] Yes, there are a lot of good and kind people in this world, but there are also a lot of hurt people who hurt people. Right now, at this moment, there are perhaps more people in our world who are affected in some way by war than at any other time in history. So much so that it’s hard to accurately estimate just how far the violence of war extends. But perhaps an even more “tragic” side to our experience with this life is that most of us know that we live in a world where “bad things happen to good people.” Whether it comes from other people or simply from “life,” when this happens it can be hard for us to see any goodness in the world at all.

This can pose a serious challenge to our faith. We believe in a God who is loving and all-powerful. But for some of us, the pain and suffering in this world make it difficult if not impossible to believe in such a loving God. Surely a loving God would intervene on behalf of the innocent who suffer, especially the children. Of course, it makes much more sense to say that much of the suffering in this world is caused by people rather than blaming it on God. But we’re still left wondering, in view of all the pain in this world, whether God is either loving or all-powerful. Some would say God is loving but can’t do anything about the suffering in this world. I don’t think that helps very much. Others would take the darker option and conclude that God is neither loving nor good, precisely because he could do something but chooses not to. Either way, we’re left with a crisis of faith. And questioning God’s goodness can leave us wondering if there’s any good in the world at all! That’s a pretty dark place to be.

I’d like to be able to tell you that the Bible gives us a clear answer to this dilemma. But it doesn’t. What it does do is continue to insist that God is both loving and all-powerful. Take, for example, our lesson from the Psalms for today. The Psalmist affirms that God is all-powerful, saying, “joyful are those … whose hope is in the Lord their God. He made heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them” (Ps 146:5-6, NLT). Throughout the Bible, God’s creation of all the heavens and the earth, along with all that is in both the heavens and the earth, stands as the fundamental witness to God’s power. God alone is the one who had the power to create all the heavens and the earth, and everything in them. That means that God also has the power to “keep every promise forever,” so that we can find joy in life by placing our hope in God. That remains true even in the midst of the confusing mix of good and evil we have to contend with in this world.

I think it’s important here to sort out what God has and has not promised. God has not promised to give us everything we want in life, in the way we want it, when want it. What God promises us is, in a word, justice. That might not sound very appealing. We think of justice in terms of crime and punishment. We think God’s justice is the opposite of God’s mercy.[3] But listen to the promises of our Psalm for today: “He gives justice to the oppressed and food to the hungry. The LORD frees the prisoners. The LORD opens the eyes of the blind. The LORD lifts up those who are weighed down. The LORD loves the godly. The LORD protects the foreigners among us. He cares for the orphans and widows” (Ps 146:7-9, NLT). What God promises is to right the wrongs, to provide for those who have no means to provide for themselves, to show compassion and mercy to those who are the least and the left out and the passed over and the shut out. That’s the kind of justice God promises.

This gives us one way to find goodness in this world. Wherever there is restoration for those who have been wronged, wherever those who suffer want have their needs provided, wherever those who endure oppression find freedom, wherever God cares for the last and the least and the left out, we can see God’s goodness at work in this world, right here and right now. But we have to have the right frame of mind to be able to see these things as the fulfillment of God’s promises and find joy and hope in them. And the frame of mind we need to see God’s goodness all around us is one of generosity, compassion, and mercy. That’s because the essence of the promises that our Scripture lesson says God will keep is generosity, compassion, and mercy. When our mindset is one of selfishness, or stinginess, or criticism, or we’re stuck in fear, anger, or envy, it’s hard for us to even see God’s mercy at work in this world, let alone rejoice in it.

I think Jesus embodies a mindset of generosity, compassion, and mercy. Of course, he was well aware of all the wrongs in the world. And it grieved and even angered him when he saw them. But at the end of the day, Jesus lived with an unwavering confidence in God’s generosity, compassion, and mercy. As a result, he went about extending that generosity, compassion, and mercy to others—even to those who opposed him, even to those who were trying to kill him! That’s what he was doing when he healed a gentile woman’s daughter, even though both of them would have been despised by most of the Jewish people of their day. Or when he cared for a deaf mute, who would have been very easy to overlook and ignore. When we look at people in need with a critical or judgmental mindset, it lets us off of the hook and makes it easier to just walk right past them.

But as our lesson from James puts it, “Mercy overrules judgment” (Jas 2:13, CEB). In our reading from the New Living Translation we heard that verse rendered, “if you have been merciful, God will be merciful when he judges you.” But most other versions translate it more like the Common English Bible: “Mercy overrules judgment.” That’s a principle that relates not only to God’s judgment, but also to our attitude toward being judgmental. “Mercy overrules judgment.” Always! One reason for that is because exercising mercy not only opens our hands so that we share with those in need, but it also opens our eyes to see how God is keeping his promise to show mercy and compassion to us all.[4] I think that’s the key to being able to see what is good in this world, even though a lot of bad things happen. When we learn to see God’s mercy at work in this world, we can also see the good all around us.

[2] Cf. John Caputo, On Religion, 1^st edition, 118-25, where he defines the “tragic sense of life” in terms of the question “Does anyone know or care that we are here?” (118), a question he suggests we must ask “In this world of time and happenstance, of good fortune and bad, of pleasure and pain, of surpassing joys and nightmarish cruelty and unhappiness” (119). In the context of this unavoidable dimension of human life, he defines faith as “faith that there is something that lifts us above the blind force of things, a mind in all this mindlessness” (125). It is faith “That there is something … or someone … who stand by us when we are up against the worst, who stands by others, the least among us” (125), which amounts to saying “yes” to life “for what it is, neither more nor less, without any additions or subtractions” (120).

[3] Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith, 127: “The opposite of God’s justice is not God’s mercy, but human injustice.” He goes on to define the “passion for justice” on God’s part reflected in the Hebrew Bible as directed toward human social structures that are “politically oppressive,” “economically exploitative,” and “religiously legitimated” (130). The answer to these unjust social structures is the Kingdom of God, which represents “what life would be like on earth if God were king and the rulers of this world were not” (132)!

[4] Cf. Hans Küng, The Christian Challenge: A Shortened Version of ON BEING A CHRISTIAN, 295-97: “man [sic] can accept the identity, value, and meaningfulness of reality and of his own existence in particular only with a ‘basic trust.’ … if man [sic] wants to realize himself at all, if as a person he wants to gain freedom, identity, meaning, happiness, he can do so only absolute trust in him who is able to give him all this.” This basic trust is defined as “trust in God, inspired by faith, as it was made possible by Jesus Christ.”

Tuesday, September 19, 2023

Forgiveness Doesn't Count

Forgiveness Doesn’t Count

Matthew 18:21-34[1]

We have a saying about forgiveness. Or, at least, we used to: “Forgive and forget.” The idea is that when you forgive someone, you wipe the slate clean and forget that they ever wronged you in the first place. I think there’s a reason why that “used” to be a saying for us. If we’re honest about it, we have to admit that there are some things we really can never forget. Last week I told you the story about the decades-long process by which I forgave my father. And while I certainly don’t dwell on the things he did to me, I can never forget them. I just can’t. It’s what happens to us when we experience trauma, especially at a young age.

These days it seems that our attitude is more one of “Forgive, but never forget.” It’s okay to forgive someone when they harm you. But in this day when taking care of ourselves takes priority over everything else, we tell ourselves that it’s best never to forget what others have done to harm us. There is some wisdom in that. If someone is still harming you, you need to remember that they aren’t safe, even if you’ve forgiven them for what they’ve done. But I’m afraid “Forgive, but never forget” too easily turns into keeping track of what others have done to us. Holding a grudge and harboring bitterness basically amounts to counting up the wrongs that have been done to us.

Our Gospel lesson for this week talks about forgiveness that doesn’t count up the wrongs done to us. You may recall that our lesson for last week was about how forgiveness calls us to take the first step in making things right when our relationships are broken. This week our lesson begins with a question from Peter: “Lord, if my brother keeps on sinning against me, how many times do I have to forgive him? Seven times?” (Mt 18:21, GNT). I like the way the Good News Translation puts it here: “how many times do I have to forgive?” Peter assumed there was a limit to how many times a person could reasonably be expected to forgive. And in Peter’s mind, forgiving someone “as many as” seven times would have been considered generous. The implication is that no one should “have” to forgive someone more than seven times.

But Jesus answered Peter in a way that pushed him way beyond what he thought was “reasonable” or even “generous.” Jesus said, “No, not seven times, … but seventy times seven” (Mt 18:22, GNT). I think it’s safe to say that Peter and the others were shocked. This went beyond anything they could imagine. The idea is that forgiveness doesn’t count. When we really forgive others, we don’t “keep score” of what they’ve done against us. As St. Paul said, when we love someone, we “keep no record of wrongs” they’ve done to us (1 Cor. 13:5, NIV). And since Jesus commands us to love others, it sounds to me like he calls us all to “keep no record of wrongs”. We can’t truly “love” our neighbors unless we also forgive them.

To help us understand what it looks like to forgive without counting, Jesus tells a parable. Because of the way Matthew arranges his Gospel, it’s easy for us to think that Jesus meant this parable to be about God. But it’s not. It’s a story about a cruel and heartless tyrant, one who wouldn’t hesitate to sell someone into slavery or even resort to torture. It’s a story the people would have been all too familiar with, since they had been ruled by cruel and heartless tyrants for centuries. Kings in those days were by definition tyrants. Their word constituted the law of the land, so whatever they wanted defined right and wrong. The people of Jesus’ day had lots of experience with that.

This tyrant decided to settle accounts with those who owed him money. That would also have been a familiar scene. When we’re told that one of his debtors owed him 10,000 talents, we may not realize we’re talking about a fortune beyond imagining. These days it would have to be measured in billions of dollars. The shocking part of this story is that when called to account, the debtor asked the tyrant king for more time. It must have been a painful scene to watch. There was no way he could have ever repaid such a huge debt. His life and the lives of his family were hanging in the balance. The real shock came when this cruel and heartless tyrant “felt sorry” for the man. He went beyond giving him more time to pay; he forgave the entire debt! That kind of thing would have been unheard of. No one would have expected this tyrant king to show such generous mercy.

That part of the story is all preparation. The real story is about this man who owed a fortune beyond imagining, and who begged for more time to pay but instead walked away a free man. It would stand to reason that anyone who was handed such a generous gift would walk away a changed man. But as we see, the story goes on to tell us that the first thing he did was go find someone who owed him money and try to force him to pay! What kind of person would do that? Didn’t he learn anything from the mercy that had been shown to him?

It was outrageous. And it outraged not only his peers, but when they reported it to the king, it outraged him as well. It outraged him enough to call the man back in, revoke his earlier mercy, and consign him to punishment and torture until that whole unimaginable fortune he owed was repaid, in all likelihood, for the rest of his life. That’s why we know this isn’t a story about God, but about a cruel and heartless tyrant. God’s mercy never fails, he never revokes his forgiveness. The point of the story is that even a cruel and heartless tyrant knows that it’s only reasonable for those who benefit from mercy to pay it forward to others. As the tyrant king said, “You should have had mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you” (Mt 18:33).

This story reinforces Jesus’ shocking demand that we forgive one another “seventy times seven” times. That’s the kind of mercy God has shown us. As the Psalmist said in our reading today, “He has taken our sins away from us as far as the east is from west” (Ps 103:12, NCV). The prophet Isaiah declares in the name of the LORD that God doesn’t even remember our sins any longer (Isa 43:25)! That’s who God is: merciful and generous beyond our ability to imagine. And because God forgives us without counting, Jesus teaches us to forgive each other in the same way. We who have received the gift of God’s incredibly generous mercy are called to forgive each other without counting.

If you’re thinking that’s impossible, I’m sure you’re not alone. In fact, from the time Jesus spoke these powerful words the Church has struggled with them. It doesn’t seem practical: won’t unlimited forgiveness encourage people to go right on doing whatever they please? But Jesus isn’t looking at things from a human point of view. He’s talking about the way things are meant to be from God’s point of view. Forgiveness received is to be shared freely as forgiveness given to others. And those of us who know God’s incredibly generous mercy in the complete and irrevocable forgiveness he has given us are to forgive each other in the same generous way. We’re to forgive without counting.

Tuesday, June 13, 2023

My Religion is Kindness

Matthew 9:9-13[1]

Even though most churches were full when I was growing up in the 1960’s and 1970’s, I wouldn’t say it was a time when people were particularly devoted to following Jesus. Because of that a lot of people were jaded by the gap between the words people were saying in church and the lives they were living outside the sanctuary. Without the “walk” to back it up, many saw all the religious “talk” as just a lot of words that didn’t mean much. Instead, a lot of the people I grew up with decided to find their lives in slogans like “if it feels good, do it.” When I look at where some of those people are today, I must confess I’m more than a little surprised. Some of the people who “partied” the hardest back then have turned into some of the most staunchly religious people today. But the irony is that they don’t seem to be any more committed to actually following Jesus now than they were back in the day. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that a whole new generation is turning away from church. Or that a major factor in their leaving is because they believe that the church is out of step with one of their most important values: treating all people with kindness and respect.[2]

You’d think that would be something that Christian churches would excel at. As our lesson from the Gospel of Matthew for today reminds us, Jesus modeled a life of treating all people with kindness, compassion, and dignity. Here Jesus demonstrates that fundamental orientation of his life by calling “Matthew,” a man who was a tax collector. As I’ve mentioned before, tax collectors in Jewish society were hated by the people in general and despised by the religious leaders. In fact, the phrase, “tax collectors and sinners” in that day was one that pretty much included everyone who was viewed as immoral, dishonest, tainted, or in any way “undesirable.” And there Jesus was, calling this man to be one of his hand-picked apprentices in carrying out the ministry of the kingdom of God!

That created a dilemma for the “religious” people of his day. On the one hand, his proclamation of God’s grace, of God’s kingdom of peace and freedom, and of the realization of God’s promise to show them mercy must have sounded like the best news they’d ever heard. It excited them and inspired them. Kind of like us. But on the other hand, the fact that he offered all that to the destitute, the undesirables, the down-and-out, and the sinners alongside the “religious” people raised serious objections. They’d been taught that God blesses those who obey and punishes those who disobey. Like us they’d probably spent a lifetime of trying to live up to God’s expectations. And Jesus told them that the reward they expected was going to be handed to those who never even expended one iota of effort to gain it! That offended them. Kind of like us!

That’s the backdrop for Jesus’ shocking statement, “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’” (Mt 9:13). Jesus didn’t just pull that out of thin air. He was quoting Scripture. Specifically, Hosea 6:6. The irony is that he was talking to the Jewish religious leaders, who spent all their time studying Scripture! But Jesus told them that in spite of their efforts they had missed the point: putting the mercy they had received from God into practice in the way they treated others—all others.

They would have known Hosea 6:6. They would have also known that in the Hebrew Bible, the word translated “mercy” was a “loaded” word. It referred to both God’s unfailing love and also the abiding commitment to love that God’s love calls forth on the part of those who receive it. And they would have known that Scripture defined that commitment in terms of loving God “with all your heart” (Dt 6:5) and loving “your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18). Unfortunately, they had convinced themselves that they only “had” to put that love into practice with their Jewish neighbors. And in fact, they only had to put that love into practice with some of their Jewish neighbors. But in the Old Testament, “mercy” is the equivalent of “love.” It’s a fundamental life orientation toward treating all people with kindness, compassion, and dignity. In the Scripture passage from Hosea 6:6 that Jesus called on to answer his critics for the fact that he extended kindness even to “tax collectors and sinners,” “mercy” is the equivalent of “love.” The word in the Greek New Testament that we’re used to hearing for that kind of approach to other people is “agape.” It’s the love that Jesus showed for all of us by dying on the cross!

All of this makes me wonder what it says about the church in this day and time that a growing number of young people are leaving, and one of the main reasons they give is the fact that they find the church to be lacking in the one quality that Jesus said would demonstrate that we’re his disciples (Jn 13:35). There’s so much division going on these days, so much disagreement, so much conflict. People are going take different stands on social and political issues, hopefully respectfully and with civility. But when it comes to how we treat people, there is no “alternative” for those of us who claim to follow Jesus. There is only one option: we who have received the unconditional love God has shown by claiming us forever as his beloved children are commanded by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to show that unconditional love to everyone we meet.

Many of you may know that the Dalai Lama is famous for saying “My religion is kindness.” He’s said it many times and in many places. I have a lot of respect for the Dalai Lama, but I find it sad to think that many young people in our day may be more familiar with the Dalai Lama’s devotion to kindness than they are with Jesus’ devotion to kindness. If that’s the case, I’m afraid we’re responsible. Jesus lived out the command to “love your neighbor as yourself” by showing kindness, compassion, and respect for everyone he encountered. His “religion” was kindness just as much as the Dalai Lama’s. Perhaps more so. Not only in his words, but also by the way he treated people, he offered God’s mercy to the destitute, the undesirables, the down-and-out, and the sinners—as well as the “religious” people.

None of this is anything you haven’t heard before. None of this is anything you haven’t heard from me before. But I think we have to go beyond just talking about it. I think we have to take a hard look at ourselves to figure what’s missing in our efforts to put our faith into practice. More than that, there’s something to be said for living a life that’s consistent with what we say we believe. At least as consistent as possible for flawed and fallible human beings. That makes it possible for us to look ourselves in the mirror and know that, at the end of the day, we’ve done our best. All of us who have lived much of life are going to have some regrets. The reality is that we all fall short. But when we can say with the Apostle Paul that our “conscience is clear” before God (1 Cor 4:4), it frees us to move past our hurts and fears and the petty and sometimes selfish ways of living our hurts and fears can bring out in us. It frees us to love all our neighbors: our neighbors who don’t look like us, think like us, love like us, speak like us, pray like us, or vote like us. It frees us to make kindness our religion—not just as a slogan, but for real.

[2] Cf. “Exodus: Why Americans are Leaving Religion—and Why They’re Unlikely to Come Back,” Public Religion Research Institute, 22 September 2016. Accessed at https://www.prri.org/research/prri-rns-poll-nones-atheist-leaving-religion/ .

Monday, September 26, 2022

All About Mercy

Luke 16:14-31[1]

I’ve mentioned recently that we live in a world divided. That may be an understatement. I would say that our world is more divided today than perhaps at any time in most of our lives. We’re divided by race, divided by class, divided by politics. We’re divided by national allegiance, divided by language, divided by whole outlooks on life. We’re divided by our sources for the news of what’s happening in the world. We’re divided by what we believe constitutes “truth.” Many have observed that what we once believed was a “social contract” that held our world together has dissolved. In a world such as that, it’s no wonder that people are going their separate ways, positively angry toward those who differ with them on a whole list of issues.

When that division spills over into our faith, it creates some problems. Perhaps the most serious of them is that we presume to know what is in another person’s heart. Because of that we think we have a right to criticize them for their actions. That kind of backbiting is out of place in the Body of Christ! The Bible makes it clear that it’s only God who knows our hearts (Lk 16:15)! Any effort on our part to stand in judgment of another person is at best premature, and at worst we are usurping a role that belongs only to God. As St. Paul said, God is the one who “will show the real reasons why people do what they do” (1 Cor 4:5, NIrV).

It may seem like a stretch to relate all of this to our Gospel lesson for today. But the reason why Jesus told the parable of the rich man and Lazarus was because the Pharisees’ hard-hearted attitude toward those they judged to be “sinners.” Jesus had “proclaimed the good news of the Kingdom” to them and had spelled out its implications for their lives. He told them that living for the kingdom of God meant being faithful with their wealth, it meant showing mercy to “sinners,” and it meant sharing generously with all people. He ignored their petty rules about what should or shouldn’t be done on the sabbath and used the day to extend God’s mercy to those who needed it most. And they ridiculed him for it, and ultimately had him killed.

The reason for this response was that they saw Jesus’ kindness and mercy toward “sinners” as breaking God’s commands and therefore dishonoring God. Their whole outlook on what it meant to be faithful to God was centered around who was “clean” and who was “unclean.” Of course, in their own eyes they were not only “clean,” but they were also “righteous” before God because of the way they rigidly kept their own rules. Anyone who didn’t keep those rules just as strictly as they did was a “sinner” in their eyes. And they believed those whom they labeled as “sinners” were unfit for God’s grace, or mercy, or love.

In their eyes, Lazarus would have been one of these “sinners.” He was not only “poor,” he was destitute. Very likely, he was “laid at the gate” of a rich man because of some physical disability. The contrast between the two men couldn’t have been more striking. The rich man wore the finest of fine clothing, while Lazarus was covered with sores. The rich man feasted extravagantly every day, while Lazarus only longed for the scraps from his table. The rich man would have been seen as a “pillar” of the community, while Lazarus would have been judged as a “sinner” who must have done something to deserve his fate in life. And he certainly would have been excluded from God’s mercy in the eyes of self-righteous people.

But we have to remember that Jesus had announced at the beginning of his ministry that he had come to proclaim the “good news” of God’s kingdom precisely to the “poor” (Lk 4:18). It was about setting “the burdened and battered free” (Lk 4:18, MSG). It was about calling sinners to turn to God, not so-called “respectable people” (Lk 5:32, TEV). It was about being kind and merciful to others, all others, just as God is kind and merciful to us (Lk 6:36). It was about seeking and saving those who were “lost” (Lk 19:10). And, above all, it was about hearing God’s word and obeying it (Lk 8:21, NLT).

You may be wondering why I haven’t said anything about “heaven” or “hell” in connection with this parable. I’ve done that because the point of this parable isn’t about the afterlife. It’s about the way the “religious” people of that day, like the rich man and his brothers, had ignored “Moses and the prophets” and their clear teachings about showing kindness and mercy especially to the destitute. This parable is about the fact that in the kingdom of God the lowly are lifted up and the rich are sent away empty-handed (Lk 1:52-53). As Jesus said, “all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (Lk 14:11).

Jesus told this story to confront the religious people of his day for their hard-hearted, mean, and stingy attitude toward those they had judged to be “sinners.” This attitude was a direct result of the fact that they “justified themselves in sight of others” (Lk 16:15). And because of that, they believed Jesus’ actions toward the poor, the outcasts, the unwanted, and the rejected were an abomination in God’s sight. But Jesus was “showing the real reasons” for their attitude: their own hypocrisy. And he turned it all around on them: he said that it was their self-righteous and stingy hoarding of God’s mercy for themselves that was the true abomination! But when it comes to the kingdom of God, Jesus said, “everyone is urged to enter it” (Lk 16:16). Everyone. The kingdom of God that Jesus preached is all about mercy for the poor, the outcasts, the unwanted, and the rejected. It’s for everyone!

[1] ©2022 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 9/25/2022 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE. For a video recording of this sermon, check out my Pastor Alan YouTube Channel: https://youtu.be/r76nVDKjMmU

Monday, March 28, 2022

God's Mercy Never Fails

God’s Mercy Never Fails

Luke 13:1-9[1]

How we view “salvation” makes all the difference in how we view God. When we make it about sorting out who goes to Heaven and who goes to Hell, it’s hard to see a loving and merciful God in that. In fact, that whole way of looking at salvation seems to fit more with a God who is “jealous” and “angry.” When we make salvation about where we’re going to wind up in the end, we make God out to be a God whose anger “devours” all who provoke him, a God whose “wrath” wreaks “vengeance” upon those who go astray. That’s the God of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” I would say that version of “salvation,” and the view of God that goes with it, inspires more fear than it does hope.

While you can find plenty of Bible verses to back up that view of God and salvation, I would say it misses the whole point. The essential revelation of God’s character in the Bible is what God declared to Moses in the “cleft of the rock”: “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Ex 34:6). That message resounds throughout the Bible, especially in the Psalms: “O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever” (Ps 136:1). And the message of salvation is that this God whose very character is mercy and grace is working to draw us all into his infinite kindness, and his love that never fails. This understanding of salvation, and the view of God that goes with it, inspires hope!

Once again this may seem like a strange way to introduce the Gospel lesson for today. But I would say that how we view God is at the heart of making sense out of this passage. We hear Jesus saying, “unless you repent you will all perish,” but I think we must do a double take because it doesn’t sound much like Jesus! I believe what’s going on here is that Jesus was confronting the self-righteousness of the people who brought up the fate of the Galileans. In the setting of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus has been talking about the importance of the proper response to the kingdom of God: repentance and faithfulness. These folks came to Jesus assuming that because they agreed with him, they were much better off than the “poor” Galileans who “must have done something to deserve their fate.”

I think that’s why Jesus adopts a rather harsh tone here: “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did” (Lk 13:2-3). I think he was confronting them with the casual way in which they painted those Galileans as “worse sinners” because of what happened to them. God doesn’t work that way. And Jesus was confronting them for thinking of themselves as if they didn’t need to repent. But in Luke’s Gospel Jesus proclaimed that God’s love demands a change of heart from all of us that changes our lives!

The fact that Jesus emphasized the urgency of this change for everyone may still sound strange to us. But I would say that’s why Luke’s gospel combines Jesus’ warning about the urgency of repentance with the parable of the fig tree. It might not seem obvious, but I would say that the parable is meant to balance the demand for repentance with the assurance that God’s mercy never fails. The reason we might miss that is because we tend to think that the owner of the vineyard who came expecting fruit from the fig tree represents God. And we think that the gardener seeking more time represents Jesus. I don’t think that’s the point. In the parable of the fig tree God is both the one who demands that we change our hearts and lives, and the one who patiently draws us toward that change in his kindness, mercy, and love.

There’s a balance to be struck here. It’s true that God’s love demands of us all a heart-felt change that results in a different way of living. But it’s also true that the God who is working to make all things new is kind beyond measure, infinitely patient, and merciful without fail. That means God never stops seeking to draw us to himself. Like the gardener in the parable of the fig tree, God is continually “cultivating” our hearts to produce the “fruit” of living in a way that lines up with God’s love.

Of course, if God is simply sorting out sinners and saints, none of this makes much sense! I realize that view of salvation has been around for a long time. But it’s way too simplistic. And the end result is that people live in fear of their “eternal destiny” all their lives. The biblical view of salvation is that the God whose very character is mercy and grace is always working to “cultivate” our hearts, always working to draw us into his infinite kindness, and his love that never fails. We may have to wait to see the fruit of what God is doing in our lives, but it all flows from who God is. I believe that’s worth waiting for!

Yes, when God’s love takes hold of our hearts, it demands that we all change our lives. I think that’s why Jesus spoke the way he did to those who came to him looking to be congratulated for their “righteousness.” Jesus was reminding them that God’s love demands that we all change our lives. But at the same time, the Bible’s primary teaching about God is that he is infinitely patient, and merciful without fail, giving us the time we need to make that change. I don’t believe we have to live in fear that we may at any moment step over some line that will exclude us from God’s love. Rather, I believe we can remain hopeful as we wait to see salvation fulfilled, because God’s mercy never fails!

Monday, February 21, 2022

Open Hearts, Open Hands

Luke 6:27-36[1]

I’ve mentioned before our natural human tendency to interact with people who look like us, who talk like us, and who live like us. If we spend most of our lives in the company of our “own,” we may feel deeply uncomfortable being around those who are “other.” In fact, it may be difficult for us to even see them as persons. It’s much more convenient for us to assume that they aren’t like “us” and to keep our distance. And that mindset can easily lead us to withhold basic human kindness, even basic human courtesy from those whom we see as “different.” Because they’re “different,” they are outside the line that separates the circle of our family and friends from everyone else. That means we can close our hearts to them, as well as our hands.

“Charity begins at home,” the saying goes, and in this culture, many believe that as firmly as they do the Apostles’ Creed. But there are others who just as naturally want to reach out and give generously to everyone in need, even those who are different. In Jesus’ day, everyone knew the “great commandment”: “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev 19:18). But for the Jewish people, it meant loving those who were Jewish. The real truth, however, is that there were a lot of Jewish people who were excluded from the basic kindness and courtesy of “loving your neighbor as yourself.” And then there was the whole world of people who were not Jewish! They believed they were “off the hook” when it came to showing love to the vast majority of the human family!

Into that setting, our Gospel lesson for today shows us how Jesus completely redefines what it means to “love your neighbor as yourself.” He points us to a love for others that goes well beyond what comes “naturally” for most of us. He knew that we all tend to love those who will love us back. Things haven’t changed much with the human family in 2000 years! We still “do good” to those who are “like us.” We still love “our own.” It’s very human for us to love and care about those who can love us back. But Jesus pushes us to go beyond a love that is limited only to our friends and family, only to those whom we see as “like us,” only to “our own.”

He was really quite blunt about it: he said, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” (Lk 6:27-28). Now, we know that there is a huge problem with abuse these days, especially in the home. That’s not what Jesus was talking about. He was talking about a more general kind of hostility from those who see us as “less than” them. Even at that, I’d have to say that’s just not the way we live! If someone treats me in a way that is hateful, I tend to avoid them. If someone “curses” me, if they hit the right “buttons,” I might get mad and say something not so kind back. But Jesus said that loving our neighbors means treating even those who treat us as “less than” as if they were right in the middle of the circle of those whom we love!

More than that, Jesus goes on to spell out how to love them: he tells us not to “retaliate” by responding in kind. Rather, the measure of how we’re to love “others” our willingness to give freely to them. He not only says, “Give to everyone who begs from you,” which is hard enough. He goes beyond that and says, “if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again” (Lk 6:30)! That one pushes all of us! We believe that our right to our own property is virtually sacred, and we certainly want to get back any possession of ours that may be taken from us. Jesus’ teaching about the command to love pushes us far beyond what we would consider “normal.”

The other side of this kind of love is just as difficult: “love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return” (Lk 6:35)! The way Jesus defines love for our “neighbors,” for our “enemies,” for those who are “different,” is love that “expects nothing in return.” That goes against the grain of everything we have been taught. If someone does something nice for us, we feel obliged to do something nice in return, at the least sending a “thank you” card. That mindset has been ingrained in the human family for millennia: if we do something good for someone else, we have a right to expect them to return the favor.

All of this is difficult for most of us, to say the least. And we might wonder why Jesus defines what it means “love your neighbor as yourself” in this way. I think we find the answer when he points to God’s love for us: “he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked” (Lk 6:35). We “know” that; we believe that God loves everyone unconditionally and irrevocably. But where it gets difficult is when we make God’s love the measure of how we love. Jesus challenges us to “be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Lk 6:36). And that means opening our hearts and our hands to everyone.

It has been said that the true test of any people is the way they treat the most vulnerable among them. There are many among us who naturally reach out to love those who are “different.” We support ministries for a wide variety of people who don’t “look like us.” In many cases, however, we’re still taking care of our “own.” Whether they’re in Haiti or Nicaragua or Cameroon or Kenya, Christian brothers and sisters are part of the body of Christ and therefore are still our “own”! But Jesus challenges us to go beyond even that! He calls us to follow him in extending mercy, kindness, and dignity beyond those who are “like us,” beyond those who are “our own.” And for those of us who may need a reason to do that, Jesus points us to the way God loves us, which goes far beyond anything we could expect or deserve. That’s what it takes for all of us to live as “children of the Most High”: to open our hearts so that we may open our hands in love, mercy, and kindness toward all people.

[1] © Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm, Ph. D. on 2/20/2022 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

The Waking Dreamer