JESUS WANTS HIS CHURCH TO BE THE HOME OF MERCY
Prayer: Lord, let mercy make me ever willing to bear my lot and not to fret. While You my restless heart are stilling, may I Your mercy not forget! Whatever comes my heart to test, Your mercy is my only rest. Lord, help me stand on this foundation as long as I on earth remain; Your mercy guide my meditation while I the breath of life retain. And then, when face to face with You, I’ll sing Your mercy great and true. Amen. (CW #386 v. 5-6)
St. Luke 10:23-37 (v. 34-37). “And he … brought him to an inn, and took care of him. On the next day, when he departed, he … said to the innkeeper, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I come again, I will repay you.’ So which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among the thieves?” And he said, “He who showed mercy on him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
Lord, this is Your Word and these are Your Words. Sanctify us by the truth. Your Word is truth. Amen.
Dear people loved by God in Christ, who bandages and heals our wounds in His Church: Grace, mercy, and peace be with you in Jesus’ name.
“Whatever comes my heart to test, Your mercy is my only rest.” If you want to know what’s the subject of the whole Bible, we often answer: It’s about Jesus, the only way of salvation. Another way to say it, and it’s really a more comprehensive answer: the Bible is about mercy – the mercy of God.
Mercy isn’t exactly the same thing as forgiveness. Forgiveness is more specific; it’s included in mercy. Mercy is God’s pity, or compassion. It’s that He doesn’t make you measure up, earn His respect, or make up for wrongs that you do, before He is loving toward you or does good to you. His mercy comes first. Mercy is His kindness – “loving-kindness” – toward all people.
Mercy is one of the attributes, or characteristics, of God, that’s part of His nature and essence. This is amazing, that God’s mercy existed before He created. Mercy is part of God before there was ever a person to receive it or someone who needed mercy. But it’s important, that this is what God is like even apart from us. Mercy must be universal – mercy for all, mercy from eternity – if we are to trust that the mercy of God is personal, that it’s for me and comes to me in a specific time and place, where I am.
It’s the mercy of God that caused Him to send His only Son down from heaven into this world, for our salvation. It’s also the mercy of God that He comes to you right where and when you need Him. It’s also the mercy of God – mercy for someone else besides you – that He put someone in front of you who needs mercy. So the Bible is about the mercy of God in Christ.
Now we see that Jesus tells a story to illustrate this for us. It starts with a question – questioning Jesus. “And who is my neighbor?” This question is so timely for us. The man who asked this was really asking, “Who isn’t my neighbor?” – in other words, “Who can I take off the neighbor list?”
Don’t we live in a divisive atmosphere? That’s what everyone says. Do Republicans treat Democrats as their neighbors? Do Democrats treat Republicans as their neighbors? When someone’s being victimized by a crime, people stand around taking video. Online mobs jump on every comment. We just had an event this week, an assassination of a political influencer, that people are calling a “turning point.” I don’t know. We seem pretty good at crossing people off the neighbor list.
If there’s anything we learned in the past week, or relearned, it’s that the world isn’t the home of mercy. It’s a place where people ask: “What does this person deserve from me?” And they deal out death and judgment; they mock, humiliate, seek revenge, have no heart, count the offenses, make you earn everything. Mercy, instead, exists first of all with God in heaven. Here Jesus reveals that mercy has come down to earth.
He shows us a man going on a dangerous road that went through a deserted mountain region that was extremely unsafe. Men attack and beat him up, strip him of clothes and money and leave him “half dead.” He’s all alone, helpless to get up, left without any dignity or strength. A priest and a Levite come by but don’t help him – likely because they were on the way to serve in the temple; if they had contact with a man who had sores they’d be ceremonially unclean. Their outward cleanness according to the Law outweighed everything – it overruled mercy.
But a Samaritan who by race was a natural enemy of the hurt man, comes along. Crazily it says he “had compassion on him.” He went to him, probably got down in the dirt next to him, ending up spattered in blood and sweat, but he applied healing medicine, bandaged the man’s wounds, then put the wounded man on his own donkey. When they got to “an inn,” a hospital, he paid for them to “take care of him” fully.
So what is Jesus saying? He reveals that we’re traveling on a road, on which – because of our sinful nature and the devil’s temptations – you can only be robbed and hurt, attacked and beaten up. You don’t get from here to there without being wounded. Your wounds are your sins. One way to look at the commandments is to see that they show you your wounds, they identify you not as victorious heroes who obey them successfully, but they reveal you to be the wounded. Go through all ten commandments, they show how you’ve hurt a brother or offended God. But also these wounds aren’t only the sins you do. They’re also the sins that are done to you; those are wounds too. We are the wounded.
But especially, your sins rob you of something. The devil persuades you in his temptations that you’ll get something for yourself, you get to take what you want, you can be more free – but after you sin you find out he’s taken something from you, you aren’t free at all but locked in the prison of guilt. Then Satan, who convinced you that the sin didn’t matter, wasn’t a big deal, now takes out a magnifying glass and makes the sin look so big, and through having you hear only the accusing Law, tells you you’re really bad, unworthy and unacceptable to God, totally damaged goods. He robs you of your good conscience and clean heart.
There you are, lying in your sins helpless. The Law – represented by the priest and Levite who give no help – tells you what to do, but in the end can’t help you do it and only condemns you. So Jesus is definitely not being a life coach here telling you to do more good, or try harder.
Then He shows Someone coming down your road who gives the help that you thought you’d never get. That’s what the Samaritan represents. This is Mercy in the flesh. The Mercy of God is contained in Jesus’ body. He comes to the person with wounds – not only the sins you’ve done that are piled high, an unbearable burden, you’re an unsightly mess – but also the sins done against you that hurt you. The helpless person, helpless to get up or clean yourself up. Left without dignity or strength.
This One who has perfect compassion, His compassion led Him to come so close that He shared our human flesh and became subject and vulnerable to everything we’re tempted by, to get spattered with blood, to take our sins and our whole burden to be His own and carry that on His own back as He rode in on the donkey to die, and to be wounded for our transgressions, to shed His holy, innocent blood for all people.
He received the worst wounds of all Himself. On the cross, when He was forsaken by God and the sun went dark, He was receiving the full measure of God’s wrath and all the punishment that our sins deserve – way worse than the world can ever give – but it was so you wouldn’t receive any of it. He received no mercy. Imagine that. To be completely without God’s mercy is to be in the darkest dark, in the deepest, worst, most unbearable anguish. But He bore it. For you. So that you won’t.
He paid the full price. Just like the Samaritan paid for two days’ care, promising to come back the third day, Jesus promised to come back on the third day. He rose from the dead, He lives and is able to be present with us in His Church: He’s present speaking His word of forgiveness, present in baptism with His cleansing blood, present with His body and blood forgiving all your sins, healing your wounds, making you clean completely of the sins you do and from sins that have been done to you. He sets you free from the prison of guilt, frees you from condemnation.
He is the Mercy of God in the flesh, come to earth, come to you. But He does this in His Church. It should be obvious then that this is what He wants His Church to be: the place of mercy, the home of mercy.
In His Church, in the means of grace, as His Word is proclaimed and His Sacraments are given, this is where He sets you free from the prison of guilt, sets you free from your sins so that you aren’t condemned and don’t stay in the darkness but by means of the Gospel you receive a good conscience and a clean heart again so you may serve Him in joy.
He wants His Church to provide His care. This is what happens in the liturgy. From beginning to end, the liturgy, with the highest points being the sermon and the sacrament, is taking care of the wounded. What the Samaritan said, “take care of him,” Jesus says to His Church and its pastors: “Take care of him. Take care of her. Take care of them.”
The Church is “the inn,” the hospital, the place where His mercy is, the home of mercy. It has the means of healing. Why does the Lord want you in church? Because of your wounds, your sins, for Him to heal you with His forgiveness. For others to come for this. To receive it together.
His Church isn’t a place for us to judge how fit everyone is, how much progress everyone makes in godly living, and when are people going to catch up or get themselves right. No, His Church is where we have healing medicine by which Christ heals the wounds and cleanses the conscience. He shows His power chiefly in showing mercy. We invite all our fellow wounded – not neglecting to say to ourselves:
This world is loveless, but above what wondrous boundlessness of love!
The King of Glory stoops to me, my spirit’s life and strength to be. (ELH 309:2)
Amen!