A Sermon by Pastor Tom Lacey . . .

Luke’s Gospel: Let There Be Mercy

Luke 7:36-50, Preached at the Congregational Church of Boca Raton, March 25, 2007

An Irishman in a wheelchair enters a restaurant and asks the waitress for a cup of coffee. The Irishman looks across the restaurant and asks, "Is that Jesus sitting over there?" The waitress nods yes, so the Irishman tells her to give Jesus a cup of coffee on him. The next patron to come in is an Englishman with a hunched back. He shuffles over to a booth, painfully sits down, and asks the waitress for a cup of hot tea. He also glances across the restaurant and asks, "Is that Jesus over there?" The waitress nods, so the Englishman says to give Jesus a cup of hot tea, "My treat." The third patron to come into the restaurant is an American on crutches. He hobbles over to a booth, sits down, and hollers, "Hey there, honey! How's about gettin' me a Coca Cola with plenty of ice?" Then he, too, looks across the restaurant and asks, "Is that God's boy over there?" The waitress once more nods, so the American says to give Jesus a Coke also. "And put it on my bill."

As Jesus gets up to leave, he passes by the Irishman, touches him, and says, "For your kindness, you are healed." The Irishman feels the strength come back into his legs, gets up, and dances a jig out the door. Jesus also passes by the Englishman, touches him, and says, "For your kindness, you are healed." The Englishman feels his back straightening up, and he raises his hands, praises the Lord, and does a series of back flips out the door.

Then Jesus walks towards the American. The American jumps up and yells, "Don't touch me! I'm drawin' disability!"

Our text for the day is about mercy and our need for God to extend it to us. If God wasn’t truly kind, we would be in a lot of trouble. But God is good, all the time. However, this isn’t necessarily the case with us, like the older man who’s standing on a crowded bus. A young man standing next to him asks, "What time is it?" The old man refuses to reply. The young man moves on. The old man’s friend, sensing something is wrong, asks, "Why were you so discourteous to the young man asking for the time?" The old man answers, "If I had given him the time of day, then he would’a wanted to know where I’m going. Then we might’ve talked about our interests. If we did that, he might’ve invited himself to my house for dinner. If he did, he would’ve meet my lovely daughter. If he met her, they would have both fallen in love, and I don’t want my daughter marrying someone who can’t afford a watch." Hey, he’s gotta good point: Where will kindness lead you?

You know what I really, really like about our scripture, and it is one of my very favorites? It’s a true story. Jesus told stories, parables, like the story of the prodigal son, but they didn’t actually happen. But this one did. Jesus really did it, which is so much more powerful, at least to me it is. A woman enters a room, filled with powerful men. Jesus is also an outsider. The most powerful man in the room, the host, Simon, and Jesus, the weakest, face off over her religious status. They respond to her in completely opposite ways. Jesus sees in her the search and need for forgiveness; Simon looks at her with eyes of condemnation and judges her guilty. But let’s take this out of the past. After all, this isn’t just a historical drama, this is everyday life. If people don’t meet our standards, out they go. I ask it simply: Are we Pharisees or are we Jesus’ disciples? You know, it’s not good enough to hand people over to God’s mercy; we need to show some ourselves. As Scripture says, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” Luke 6.36 Choose Jesus, not judgment.

What we want to see this morning is that when sitting in the strongest position it takes the highest character to be merciful.

What I mean is that when you’re in command, that’s when it is tough to be kind. Where you “know” you’re right, it is very easy to be righteous, or should I say, self-righteous. When you won’t be hurt by taking a pound of someone else’ flesh, that’s when the person of Christian character acts mercifully, not menacingly. Where you’re free to act as you desire to act, and yet you forgive, the spirit of Christ is within you. So don’t tread on the downtrodden. Lift up the lowly. God doesn’t need another judge or jury member, nor a prosecutor or persecutor. God wants advocates for absolution and counselors of compassion. Be a person who extends olive branches of peace. If Jesus can declare to this woman of her social status and lifestyle: “Your sins are forgiven. Your faith has saved you; go in peace,” then this is true of others. And according to Luke this declaration is for all people. It is for Zacchaeus, the despised tax-gatherer who cheats his own people by taking the side of the hated Romans and gaining a personal fortune. It is for the prodigal son who must return to the father he insulted by taking his fortune, the story that only Luke tells. When Jesus sends out his disciples, according to Matthew, they are not to go to the Samaritans or the gentiles, but Luke omits that altogether. All four gospel writers quote from Isaiah 40 when they give the message of John the Baptist, “Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God;” but only Luke continues the quotation to its triumphant conclusion, “And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” Of all the gospel writers, Luke sees no limits to God’s love. Wm. Barclay, p.5-6  Just as the shepherd doesn’t accept losing a single lamb, the Lord rounds us all back in with the staff of his mercy: “For the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” Even though we aren’t perfect, God is perfect in mercy, unlimited in kindness, and accepting of his children.

During a British conference on comparative religions, experts from around the world debated what, if any, belief was unique to the Christian faith. They began eliminating possibilities. Incarnation? Other religions had different versions of gods' appearing in human form. Resurrection? Again, other religions had accounts of return from death. The debate went on for some time until C.S. Lewis entered the room. "What's the rumpus about?" he asked, and heard that his colleagues were discussing Christianity's unique contribution among world religions. Lewis responded, "Oh, that's easy. It's grace." After some discussion, the conferees had to agree. The notion of God's love coming to us free of charge, no strings attached, seems to go against every instinct of humanity. The Buddhist eight-fold path, the Hindu doctrine of karma, the Jewish covenant, and the Muslim code of law—each of these offers a way to earn approval. Only Christianity dares to make God's love unconditional. Philip Yancey

So stop trying to get good enough to get on God’s good side. God is already on your side, which means we don’t have to prove to God we’re worth his time and effort. The Lord is already invested. Although, now that I think about it, there is the fairly feminist joke that goes: What did God say after creating man? “I can do so much better.” And then there is the one that goes: What should you give a man who has everything? A woman to show him how to work it. Or how about: Why does it take 100 million sperm to fertilize one egg? Because not one will stop and ask for directions. Ok, so, perhaps to certain others we first have to show some all around improvement, but not first to God. Just so you men don’t feel left out: Someone once observed that a woman has the last word in any argument—anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.

The principal characters in today's text, apart from Jesus himself, are Simon and the woman. Again these are portraits in contrast. It is easy to portray Simon unfavorably, yet his reaction to this woman and her actions is both reasonable and religiously and culturally appropriate. Indeed, Simon is everything we might expect that God wants us to be: hospitable, a student of God's word and scrupulous about issues of morality. Indeed, Jesus suggests that there was little in this man's life which needed divine forgiveness. The woman, on the other hand, who is cast in a favorable light in this account, is clearly not viewed in such a light by her peers. She is a woman, a fact which culturally limits appropriate behavior, a limitation she does not observe. The two worst things to be in Jesus’ day were poor or female; and of course the worst of all was to be a poor woman. In the Jewish morning prayer, a man thanks God that he has not made him “a gentile, a slave or a woman.” And while this particular woman is not poor, she is a "sinner," a veiled reference to sexual immorality, and is a disruptive, uninvited party-crasher. Her brazen and emotional behavior is off-putting to those who have gathered for dinner. The difference, then, between Simon and the woman? Both these people need forgiveness to some extent but only one knows she does.

Haddon W. Robinson tells of being attracted to a wonderful line in the Book of Jonah: "Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time ..." (3:1) God gives us all a second chance; God's word never fails to come a second time, and a third and a thousandth. And this is the difference between Simon and Jesus. You see, Simon fears the power of mercy, the second chance. What he thinks is if people don’t have standards to live by, and if no serious penalty exists when people do not live up to them, then who knows what will happen to us. Simon is looking out for society, the whole community, and rejects being a caretaker of any one individual. This is why the woman loses with Simon. She hasn’t made the grade and that’s it. For Simon, the answer to the question, “Where will kindness lead you,” is nowhere good. If you lower the bar for one, you have to lower it for everyone, and that leads to trouble.

“Well, now, he doesn’t sound so radical,” you might be thinking. “There’s some truth to that.”  Look, to be a Pharisee is not to be bad; it’s to be a concerned individual trying to preserve society’s status quo or perhaps even fighting against the disintegration of values. It’s definitely not to be radical. Fact is, Simon isn’t the radical. The Pharisees weren’t radicals. Guess what. That’s right: Jesus is the radical. He’s the extremist. He’s, you might say, indulgent. So when you answered at the beginning of this message that you wanted to be a disciple and not a Pharisee, you answered that you wanted to be a radical indulgent or an indulgently radical person.

You see, Jesus doesn’t fear extending mercy. Jesus doesn’t avoid the power of love. Jesus doesn’t deny the need for forgiveness. When he looked at the person in front of him, he saw that one person. He didn’t theorize in dominoes that if this person got away with something, then the next one would, and so on until the whole set would come crashing down. Instead, he looks at you and says, “Your sins are forgiven. Go in peace.” He looks at those who are avoided by others and says, “I have called you my friends.”

So don’t be afraid to forgive, or to be forgiven.  Take the lead in being kind. Be gracious to others, especially when you have the opportunity of being less than. And practice radical discipleship of the indulgent Jesus. Going to extremes was never so right. For God is good, all the time, and so should we be. In the name of Luke’s Jesus, be merciful just as the Lord our God is merciful

Return to Sermons (table of contents)

Return to Homepage of the Congregational Church of Boca Raton