Sermon: Mercy in Action
February 24th, 2019 Rev. Betsy Perkins
First Baptist Church, Delavan WI
Scripture passage: Luke 6:27-38, Psalm 37:1-11
I read about a pastor that was talking with a gentleman in his congregation who was struggling with this text from Luke 6 that we heard this morning. The church member didn’t like the “turn the other cheek” idea very much. After a lengthy discussion, the man finally resolved it! With relief, he said to the pastor, “OK, I got it! If someone strikes me on one cheek, I will turn the other. But if he strikes me on that cheek, watch out!” (adapted from Richard Niell Donovan, Peacemaking)
Jesus’ teachings in this passage sound wonderful in theory, but become very difficult when we begin consider what it means for our practical, day-to-day interactions with members of our family, with those we encounter in the community, or when we consider the implications of what it means for how we as a nation should engage the world. How do we possibly take to heart, and practice, Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain in today’s violent and deceitful world?
I think it would be helpful as we begin, to picture the setting for Jesus’ sermon and imagine ourselves there. Jesus had been up above the push and shove of the crowds, in the mountains, taking time for prayer, selecting the 12 disciples he would work with most closely. If you remember, Luke tells us that Jesus went down with the disciples and stood on a level place, a plain. On this level place there was a large crowd of people who had come to hear him and who wanted to be healed of various diseases. People in pain, people longing for something better. It says the people all tried to touch Jesus, because power was coming from him and healing them all. I’m sure this wasn’t a calm, orderly line of people like in a doctor’s office where you are taken in the order in which you signed in or like the deli where you take a number and wait patiently till that number appears on the screen.
There are a number of instances in the Bible where the setting for a story is deliberating described as a level place, as a plain, as Luke does in this story. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, where locals used rape as a weapon of violence against visitors, are described as being on “the land of the plain”. God’s angel instructs Lot and his family: Flee for your lives, don’t look back. Don’t stop anywhere on the plain (Gen.19:17). The Israelites go down to the plains of Moab in order to sit and grieve after Moses dies (Dt.34:8). Nehemiah is invited to meet with leaders of cities around Jerusalem to discuss a truce on the plain of Ono, but is informed just in time that they are actually scheming to harm him there on the plain (Neh.6:2). (the plain of ‘oh, no’) Ezekiel is on a plain, the wide floor of a valley, when he encounters the dry bones of a great many people who had died (Ez.37). A plain, a level place, is a representation of a place of danger and deceit and death, of misery and suffering, a place of conflict and of brokenness.
I sat in a meeting this week with the City of Delavan’s Police Chief, Jim Hanson. In his presentation, Chief Hanson named the 3 biggest challenges facing this community right now. One, is that this community is no different than so many around the nation that are experiencing the effects of the opioid addiction crisis. Drug trafficking through Walworth County is higher than almost any other county in the state. Officers provide emergency treatment to someone in the midst of an urgent drug overdose on the average of once a week. Second, the issue of domestic violence has been a long-standing problem in this community that continues to consume much of their attention and resources. What can seem like a quiet, tranquil small town conceals a lot of conflict within households. And thirdly, and most disturbingly for Chief Hanson, is the explosion of the incidence of sexual abuse of children and the necessity for child protection. This issue is connected to Walworth County becoming a crossroads of sex trafficking. These are the realities down on the plain of this community.
Jesus lived in a time of danger, too. Occupying armies abused the local citizens, marauding bands of criminal gangs took advantage of travelers, women and children had almost no voice. So what does it mean that Jesus stood on the level place with the crowd? What does it feel like when someone who is speaking at a rally comes down on the same level as the crowd? What does it feel like right now as I come down and join you down here?
Jesus joins the people in the midst of the brokenness of the lives, on their level, to share his message and his presence with them. Jesus came to that plain to be with the crowd, to teach about God’s ways not from a high and mighty perspective, telling them what to do from a safe distance. He modeled bringing the presence and power of God into the level place of everyday struggle and pain. From their level place, he taught about how each person can practice the ways of God in the low, level places of life. Jesus, by his example, invites us to not preach to the world about our faith from a high and lofty place, but to join those who need Jesus where they are at and show them mercy in action. When we look at what Jesus had to say in this sermon, it is not fancy, philosophical talk. Rather, he gave them very concrete examples of difficult situations that many of them would have encountered and suggested specific responses.
There has been much criticism of Jesus’ words as society has become more aware of victims’ rights, of the damaging effects of trauma, understanding and seeking to end the cycle of domestic violence and child abuse. But rather than Jesus’ words being naïve and misguided, I believe the problem has been with how people, especially people in the church and pastors themselves, have misused and misunderstood Jesus’ message. Unfortunately, Jesus’ message has been twisted to advise victims to continue to endure abuse. It has been used as an excuse to wriggle out of confronting injustice and the brokenness of patriarchal, male-dominated, power structures. Jesus’ message has even been co-opted by the powerful to suppress the rebellion of the weak, as the church in this country did during the practice of slavery and the new kind of slavery that racism has created. But Jesus was not standing above the people advising acts of defeat and compliance. Jesus was standing next to them, among them, describing acts of resistance, offering pictures of mercy in action.
If someone tries to steal something from me, but I respond by freely giving them even more, the weakness of the thief is exposed and I resist being the victim as I respond with agency and dignity. When a cheek is turned, the cruelty of the perpetrator is exposed. That is what happened on the Alabama bridge between Selma and Montgomery in 1965. When we relinquish some belonging of ours to another, we refuse to allow that object to be used as the tug-of-war rope between us. These acts of kindness in response to cruelty are powerful acts of choosing not to be dragged into the tit-for-tat, back and forth cycle of hurt and revenge. These acts of resistance demonstrate the hope that there is a different way to live than to engage in a dog-eat-dog world. These are acts that reject a transactional view of the world, where I will help you only if you can help me in return.
It is like an invisible rubber band that runs between you and someone else. There is only tension in a rubber band if one side starts pulling and the other side moves away, or at least holds firm. But if one side moves closer, or the side refuses to engage in the struggle, then the tension and danger of a tight rubber band vanishes. N.T. Wright, one of my favorite bible study companions, summarized Jesus’ message in this Sermon on the Plain, saying, “The point was to inclulcate, and illustrate, an attitude of the heart, a lightness of spirit in the face of all the world can throw at you. [For] at the center of it is the thing that motivates and gives color to the whole: you are to be like this because that’s what God is like.”
Jesus will go on to add a series of sermon illustrations before he concludes this sermon, but at the center of his message are these words, “Your reward will be great, for you will truly be acting as children of the Most High, for He is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” Or as it’s worded in the Message version on the back of the bulletin, “Live out your God-created identity the way our Father lives toward us, generously and graciously, even when we’re at our worst. Our Father is kind; you be kind.”
How we behave in this world, how we react to the world around us, is really a reflection of the God we believe in. That is the bottom line. Who is your God? What a shame that too often Christians have behaved as if they believe in a God who is keeping score of our mistakes and is going to make us pay for each one. What a shame that we so often live as if we believe in a penny-pinching God, who will only help us out if we do something for God in return. By its restrictions and condemnations the church has a portrayed a God who is mean and judgmental, who seeks to make life hard for humanity to test us.
But Jesus’ God is different! Jesus shows us a God that turns the other cheek even when we take a swipe at him. Jesus shows us a God that continues to give us sunshine and good things even when we grab selfishly and ungratefully. Jesus shows us a God that never sends us a bill for blessings, never demands that we love Him back. Rather, our Heavenly Father pours over us love and love and more love. Jesus stood in the midst of the crowd with healing power flowing out from him to all who were present. There was no vetting process. The guide for life that Jesus preached and lived was all about a glorious, uproarious, absurdly generous God. Is that our God, too?
When we respond to Jesus’ words in this Sermon on the Plain with the doubt and reservations that I raised earlier, wondering how we possibly take to heart, and practice, Jesus’ directions in a world in which there is so much hard-heartedness, such callous cruelness, deception, distrust, manipulation, then we are in danger of allowing the mud of the plain and the push of the crowd to shape and twist our image of God. We need to focus on Jesus; focus on how his life reflects the True God.
And what difference will that make? What will happen when we act in God’s ways of Mercy? When we are merciful simply because the God we believe in is merciful?
First, others will experience what Mercy is. They may have never known that deep kindness, or they may have been hurt in ways that left them doubting it. But when we defy the ways of the world, to act in the ways of our merciful God, God’s very presence is extended and made incarnate.
Next, when you act in merciful ways towards others, you yourself will have a deeper experience of mercy. The day in the city of Kolkata when I was invited to put mercy into action by washing the body of a homeless, injured, destitute woman, was the day that I unexpectedly received the most profound experience of Jesus present beside me.
And finally, when each one of us who claim Christ, go out into the level places of this world looking for opportunities to practice mercy, the level places of life are transformed. The cycle of violence peters out if there isn’t revenge. The importance of making sure your neighbor is all right begins to exceed the importance of property and possessions. The variety of races and languages and cultures can be a joy instead of a threat. The vulnerability of the children of our community becomes an awesome responsibility and gift to us all.
Who is your God? Oh, that we would be filled with the knowledge and presence of our loving, kind, merciful Father, Mother, Parent, Creator God, so that this world may come to know God, too! Amen.
Closing Song: “I Will Sing of the Mercies” # 30
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