This morning, I want to offer a brief for compassion and
mercy. In his difficult teaching on
loving enemies, Jesus tells us that if we do this, “Your reward will be great,
and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and
the wicked. Be merciful, just as your
Father is merciful.”[1]
Mercy is a central element, if not the very core, of Jesus’ understanding of
God and what it means for us to be like God.
The most famous teachings of Jesus, found only in Luke’s
Gospel, are the Good Samaritan and Prodigal Son parables. Both are illustrations of this central
teaching. The Parable of the Good
Samaritan expands the notion of loving our neighbor to include being merciful
toward the very people we are taught to hate, and who are taught to hate
us. The neighbor to the man who was
robbed and left to die in the parable turned out to be a member of a group
considered to be his enemy; not someone who was near him, or like him, or liked
by him, but rather, “The one who showed him mercy. Jesus said, ‘Go and do likewise.’”[2]
When the religious leaders complain that Jesus welcomes and
eats with sinners, he tells them the Parable of the Prodigal Son.[3] Even
before his wayward son can utter a word of repentance, the father in the story,
upon seeing his son returning home, is filled with compassion, runs to meet him
and embraces him with a kiss. This
“dead” son is now alive. Mercy means
life, it brings us into alignment with the flow of life-giving love! Like the religious leaders, the older son is
scandalized by such unconditional love.
Will he ever join the party being thrown for his younger brother? Will we? Can we see those who are “dead” to
us as an invitation to become merciful like God and offer life?
In between these two parables of mercy, we find the passage
from Luke we heard today. It is part of
a larger discourse that begins at Luke 12:13, and concludes an extended
treatment of Jesus’ teaching to “Take care!
Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not
consist in the abundance of possessions.”[4]
Following this admonition, Jesus goes on to provide a
counter-example in the parable of the rich fool. We heard this parable last Sunday. The rich man has such an abundance of crops
that he doesn’t know what to do with it all.
In the ancient world, wealth was land turned into food turned into
money. He takes counsel with himself,
and decides to build bigger barns to store all his grain and goods. He says to himself, “Soul, you have ample goods
laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink and be merry.”
But God said to him, and here I follow David Hart’s
translation, “Fool, this night they demand your soul from you; the things you
prepare, then, whose will they be?”[5] It is not God who demands the rich fool’s
soul, but rather his goods! It is the
rich man’s self-centered concern for himself, with no regard for others; his
arrogant assumption that he is in control of his future, and the illusion that
his wealth can protect him; all this consumes his soul.[6] “So
it is,” says Jesus, “for those who store up treasures for themselves but are
not rich toward God.” His selfish greed
robs him of genuine life, which is life with others, life for others, in the
flow of divine mercy. Life does not
consist in the abundance of possessions, but rather in the abundance of mercy,
of regard for the needs of others, the web of mutuality that binds life to
life.
Jesus goes on to illustrate this web of life in all its
beauty, abundance and generosity in the poetic images of the lily and the
raven. We are not to be anxious about our
necessities, but generous in sharing them, just as God is with the whole
creation. Life is more than what we eat
and what we wear. The raven does not plant or sow, the lily does not toil or
spin; yet, they live. We are to trust
God’s providential care, for we already have received everything needful for
life. Seek first God’s kingdom, and
everything else will be provided.[7]
This brings us to today’s passage from Luke, concluding
Jesus teaching. Listen again,
Do not be afraid, little flock, for it
is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear
out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth
destroys. For where your treasure is
there your heart will be also.[8]
A few comments about
this passage: First, the command to sell
your possessions and give alms literally means “sell your possessions and give
an act of mercy.”[9] In contrast to the self-centered and isolated
rich man of the parable, we are invited to enter the flow of mercy, and thereby
enter God’s kingdom. This is what life
with God, being rich toward God, is like.
It is when we acknowledge our mutual vulnerability and need, and hedge
it round with regard and care for each other, that we create an unassailable
treasure of enduring value.
Second, the Greek text reads “it was (not is) your
Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” – past tense.[10] We’ve already been given the kingdom. Creation and redemption are one divine movement. The whole creation is a tremendous gift of infinite
life, generous beyond measure, that already is ours. We are awash in divine mercy. Will we grasp it, or let it flow? That may be the great spiritual question of
life, and why Jesus is so preoccupied in his teaching with issues of greed and
hypocrisy, which dam the flow of mercy and bring death.
Third, it is important to emphasize that the “you” in “where
your treasure is, there your heart will be also,” – indeed, throughout this
chapter of Luke – is plural.[11] The flow of mercy is not just a matter of
personal choice but of collective responsibility. We are our sister and brothers’ keeper; and
they are ours. How else is life to be
nurtured? This means that questions of
mercy, like questions of justice, are political and not simply private
matters. Personal security is an
illusion in the absence of communal well-being. Only the flow of mercy gives life.
Finally, I want to note that if greed obstructs the flow of
mercy and robs us of life, so, too, does fear.
“Do not be afraid” is the counterpoint to Jesus’ continuous plea to be
merciful. Fear makes us small, and it
can make us mean. The spiritual and
moral challenge of our time is to break through the greed and fear that
preoccupy our common life so that mercy can flow again; perhaps this is always
so. It certainly was the challenge for
prophets, like Isaiah, who harshly criticized the veneer of worship that masked
violence and greed.[12] It was true of Jesus, whose death and
resurrection confirms our hope that nothing, finally, can overcome God’s
mercy. It is this hope that gives us the
courage to be merciful people in a cruel and selfish age.
The Letter to the Hebrews reminds us that our spiritual
ancestors died in faith – trusting God’s promises without having obtained them;
“but from a distance they saw and greeted them.”[13] It may be hard for us to see the heavenly
country, the city, that God has prepared for us; a world in which mercy once
again flows unhindered. The writer of
Hebrews encourages us to trust the flow of mercy, to trust that God is bringing
all things to their perfection, their wholeness, in the fullness of time.[14] We wait for that day awake with hope; not
surprised as if by a thief in the night.[15]
In the meantime, we are to live with our hearts set on the
great treasure of divine mercy, courageously allowing ourselves to be carried
on its deep and powerful current. In
the 7th century, St. Isaac of Syria described such a merciful heart
in this way,
It is a heart that
burns with love for the whole of creation – for men and women, for the birds,
for the beasts, for the demons, for every creature. When a person with a heart
such as this thinks of the creatures or looks at them, his eyes are filled with
tears. An overwhelming compassion makes his heart grow small and weak, and he
cannot endure to hear or see any suffering, even the smallest pain, inflicted
upon any creature. Therefore, he never ceases to pray, with tears, even for the
irrational animals, for the enemies of truth, and for those who do him evil,
asking that they may be guarded and receive God's mercy . . . he prays with a
great compassion, which rises up endlessly in his heart until he shines again
and is glorious like God.[16]
Only mercy can save us.
[1]
Luke 6:27-36.
[2]
Luke 10: 25-37.
[3]
Luke 15: 1, 11-32.
[4]
Luke 12:15.
[5]
Luke 12:20 in David Bentley Hart, The New
Testament: A Translation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), p.
136. See also Thomas D. Stegman, S. J.,
“Reading Luke 12:13-34 as an Elaboration of a Chreia: How Hermogenes of Tarsus Sheds Light on
Luke’s Gospel,” Novum Testamentum 49
(2007), p. 343.
[6]
Stegman, p. 341-342.
[7]
Luke 12:22-31.
[8]
Luke 12:32-34.
[9]
See Mark Davis’ translation at http://leftbehindandlovingit.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-coming-of-lord-or-maybe-thief.html.
[10]
Davis, ibid.
[11]
As Paul Nuechterlein observes at http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper14c/.
[12]
Isaiah 1:10-20.
[13]
Hebrews 11:13b.
[14]
Hebrews 11:39-40.
[15]
Luke 12:35-40.
[16]
Quoted in a sermon by The
Most Rev. Frank Tracy Griswold III, preached at St. Paul’s Church in
Knightsbridge, London, July 23, 2006.
