| Note: No sermon is quite the same when you read it. You miss the inflections, the expression that you gain in the hearing. The words below are only a close approximation of the sermon, taken from handwritten notes. Nevertheless, the words (as best as can be deciphered!) are shared with you here. The Webmeister |
Second Sunday in Lent Lent is tough on me. My birthday is always in Lent and I am 55 today. I was 35 on Ash Wednesday one year. Many things in the church service change in Lent. Not just the color of the hangings or the age of the priest but also the music, the prayers, the order of the service. Some of the changes are very subtle; sometimes what is added is what is taken away. An opening hymn, a word in Hebrew that means "Sing to God." "Alleluia," by no official rule but only by common custom we do not use the word during Lent. Part of the reason is that when you use something always it ceases to have power, so we do without the word briefly so that it may have new potency on Easter morning. Another small but important change is the phrase with which the Priest begins the service. Normally we say, "Blessed by God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit." In the Easter season we say, "Alleluia, Christ is risen." But in Lent we say "Bless the Lord who forgives all our sins." And the people respond, "His Mercy endures forever." God's mercy endures forever. Today I want to preach about mercy and God and us. "God's mercy endures forever." What does that mean? What is mercy? Does it mean to "forgive someone?" If so, why do people say when your dog is put to sleep or after someone dies who has been in a lot of pain the words, "It's a mercy?" Is mercy doing a kindness for someone that they can't do for themselves? Doing them a favor? Is mercy "compassion" or sympathy or empathy or pity? The ability to put yourself in someone else's place and feel what they feel by proxy? Frederic Buechner writes that "compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what's it's like to live inside someone else's skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too." Mercy in the compassion sense would seem to imply the need for fairness and even judgment and truth. What does mercy mean in the Bible? When Jimmy Grace opened the service by saying "Bless the Lord who forgives all our sins," you responded "His mercy endures for ever." You were echoing the words of a congregation 3000 years ago who stood in Jerusalem as the Ark of the Covenant which contained the stone tablets of the original Torah was carried up from the old city of David, up onto the Temple mount, Mount Moriah where Solomon had built the first Temple. And as the priests brought into the Temple the Ark of the Covenant and placed it down in the inner shrine, the most holy place and then they came out into the courtyard scripture says trumpeters and singers all joined in unison to praise God and sang, "It is good, for his 'mercy' endures for ever." (Did you know you were repeating the lyrics of a 3000 year old song?) The Hebrew word used in II Chronicles that we translate "mercy" was "chesedh." But there are other Hebrew words and they paint a complex picture of God's caring for life that we call "Mercy." Sometimes as in the Book of Job God's mercy is seen as rain that falls on parched ground; sometimes "protection" that surrounds like for the shepherd boy who wrote that even "in the valley of the shadow of death" God's mercy followed him. In the Book of Hosea the prophet speaks for God saying "I desire mercy not sacrifice." There is a prayer in the Rite I service which we don't use much any more. It is called The Prayer of Humble Access and was used to emphasize the importance of the Eucharist. We will use it during this service today. Many modern liturgists don't like it because it seems full of "groveling." "O Lord we are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table…." (And of course now days we are all much smarter and evolved than our backward ancestors and we realize how worthy we all are. NOT) We make fun of any prayer that seems too penitential as if being penitential is bad or a sign of poor self esteem. But as Garrison Kielor says, "Guilt is good for you, it's called a conscience." I've always treasured this strange old Elizabethan English Prayer for one line. It is the other end of that sentence that begins "we are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table, but thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy." Whose "property" is always to have mercy. It's almost as if God is like an element on a chemical periodical table and the "property" of this element is mercy. You cannot separate God from mercy. It's echoed in today's Collect: "O God whose glory it is always to have mercy." It seems the Bible and our Prayer Book see mercy as a basic attribute of God. So what does this mean for us? What do we do with God's mercy and his demand for mercy? Does it mean that we can do whatever we want to people and God will always take us back if we say we're sorry. Or does it mean something else entirely? Does it, could it possibly mean that we might really have some shot at beginning again even if we have really screwed up our lives or other people's lives? And does it mean that we can really receive forgiveness without being resentful of the giver? I'm not sure we know how to truly be merciful because I'm equally not sure we know how to receive it. There is an old Irish saying that goes: "We love those whom we benefit but hate those who benefit us." I think it means we like to extend charity to others but we don't like to be beholden to anyone else's charity. Maybe the truth is that when you "give," you can control what you give, but when you are desperate you have to give up any illusion of control except the power of resentment. So how can any of us hope to receive the sacred promise of Jesus, the blessing, the beatitude, "Blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy?" How can we receive naturally, without any poison of resentment? like receiving rain falling on our upturned faces after a long drought? or receiving a sense of "protective presence" even when we can see the "shadow of the valley of death" ahead of us on the road? And when will we understand that until even those we call our enemies know joy and peace, we will never know joy and peace? My mother's father grew up in central Texas before World War I speaking German. I have inherited an old Sunday School book that he possessed as a child written in German. But German disappeared publicly from central Texas during World War I because it was the language of the hated enemy. Who is the enemy we hate now? Russian? Iraqi? Osama Bin Laden? Who is the enemy of Israeli or Palestinian? Who sees us as the hated enemy? They curse and wish ill upon? And where does any "mercy" begin? Was it this "despair" for the human heart ever really being able to receive mercy that pulled the cry of anguish out of Jesus in today's Gospel reading? It is so hard to read this passage. How would you interpret the cry of anguish from Jesus? With a tone of resignation and hopeless disgust or with a real cry of pain? Scripture says some of the Pharisees came to warn Jesus that Herod Antipas the Roman puppet King of Galilee wanted him killed. And Jesus turns on them and tells them to go tell Herod that he was a day of destiny yet to come in Jerusalem. And here on this second Sunday of Lent in the year 2007 we turn with Jesus from Galilee and face south to Jerusalem where human greed and cruelty are waiting, the valley of the shadow of death and yet Jesus goes trusting God's mercy will follow him even there. And yet he utters a cry of pain for humankind that echos through all times and places. "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not let me!" If anything in scripture ever struck me as the anguish of God revealed, it is this cry. Where is Jerusalem now? It is all around us. It has always been all around us. Bless the Lord who forgiveth all our sins: His mercy endures forever! How do we begin receiving and giving God's mercy. We begin right now at the exchange of the peace and then when we get up off our knees and walk out that door in the back of the church. Jesus told his disciples Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy. I would add one word, Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive God. Amen. The Reverend James T. Tucker March 4, 2007 *Past sermons may be found here. |
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