“YOUR MERCY”
SAINT LUKE 6. 36-42
The Fourth Sunday after Trinity: 19 June Anno Domini 2005
Fr Watson
"Be merciful....just as Your Father is merciful." That's the sermon right there. It's a perfect God-inspired two part Law/Gospel outline. "Be Merciful" says the Lord. God commands you clearly not to just show mercy, do mercy, but to be mercy to your neighbors. What is this but the unbreakable demand to love all others as found in the second table of the Law. His order is to be mercy for all the miserable souls that so desperately need mercy.
This of yourselves you cannot do; not in the least; not in even the tiniest amounts: "all our righteousness are like filthy rags." [Isaiah 64.6]
Instead of lifting heavy burdens off the back of our weak and wounded neighbor, we instead pile high obligations, further hurts and additional hurdles. You sin by judging the hearts of others. Now to be sure, your Christian witness to speak the "truth in love," requires you to warn others of their sinful actions and words (i.e. their conduct and its affects) only God judges. Christians may well serve the role of prosecutor, counselor and grand jury, but only God passes final judgment. You sin against your friends, family, and all other neighbors by condemning others. You condemn when you consign other souls, souls made in the image of their Holy Creator, to the "salt mines" of your unbridled will and imperious ego. Mercy is love for the miserable, for those who don't even deserve mercy. Mercy is giving oneself in self-sacrifice. For in pardoning that which is un-pardonable, the giver of mercy is taking upon himself, that burden, that crime, that hurt which has laid low the miserable.
You sin when you stubbornly refuse to acknowledge your own blindness apart from He Who is the only Light. You sin when you misinterpret the clarity of vision which comes only in Holy Scripture, Ecumenical Creeds the Lutheran Confessions, and the stewardship of your own shepherds with the "dazzle" "heat" and the "warm feelings" which come from your own desires to have things your way. Even the followers of the Lord, or especially the followers of the Lord, need to be reproached for stumbling blindly after man-made loyalties and "comfort levels" instead of following the appointed Shepherd. When one is called by the Lord into His flock, one is not promised earthly peace, community approval or self-satisfaction; one is promised the Cross. The sinful self is blind yes, but the Lord of the Church, the Redeemer Christ Jesus, is not! In Him you will always be lead, not where you want to go, not where all the "people in the know" tell you where you, "the Consensus" should be, but into the Fathers' luscious pasture.
Christ is in the Father and the Father is in Christ. One who has Jesus as Savior has God as Father. That is the Good News this morning, and every morning.
"Be merciful....just as Your Father is merciful." We've seen what you are, by nature, apart from your Light and Life, Jesus. But thanks be to God, you're not apart from the Christ; you are Christians! Your Father is merciful. Your God is loving and giving. He in His infinite Grace sent you Grace. He sent His beloved, only-begotten Son, to be for you, with you and in you. Jesus is mercy; not in "concept," "metaphor" or "theory," but in the flesh. Jesus has had mercy upon you by coming into the blindness of your sinful condition and healing you of your darkness, of your sin. He didn't just heal you with a wave of the hand and a snap of the fingers. He restored you by taking care of all your unfinished business. He kept all the Laws of God that you break. He put in, His life of labor, servitude and work, to keep the full counsel and command of God. He gave all the pay-out, all the benefit, all the riches to you. He didn't just forgive you by saying "you're forgiven" (all though to be sure, He does say it, in Scripture, in Baptism & Absolution and in Supper), but He forgave you your trespasses by becoming your sin. He showed you the supreme mercy by taking your place at the Cross. Your Father is merciful toward you because He loves you, but also because God has judged your lack of obedience. God has condemned your sins; and He has done it through Jesus, on Jesus, in Jesus. At the Mount of Calvary the judgment and condemnation took place. On that dead, lifeless tree, the "Fruit" that is Good, Pure, Holy, Spotless, and Eternal, was nailed down. It was "there" that your fate, your death, your deserved punishments were nailed down and taken away; bled away. There on that hillock, the original tree of "knowledge of Good and Evil" was overcome by the Tree of only Good: Christ's crucifix.
In this, in Jesus' Blood, in His Water, in His Word, you are merciful in the eyes of God.
You appear before God, as you have been dressed by God! Because you wear Jesus in your Baptismal regeneration you are merciful. You are what you eat. Because you feast on the Body and Blood of God incarnate you are merciful. Christ for you. Christ active in you. Christ your Light, your Vision, your Way, and your Mercy.
In the Name of The Father and of The Son + and of The Holy Ghost