{"id":276,"date":"2012-09-12T12:44:08","date_gmt":"2012-09-12T17:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/?p=276"},"modified":"2017-10-26T22:20:32","modified_gmt":"2017-10-27T03:20:32","slug":"sermon-the-quality-of-mercy-sept-9-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/2012\/09\/12\/sermon-the-quality-of-mercy-sept-9-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Sermon: The Quality of Mercy Sept. 9, 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

Texts: \u00a0James 2:1-10, 14-17; \u00a0Mark 7:24-37<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Most of us here are old enough to remember the televised Billy Graham crusades and the lovely, touching song sung by the great booming baritone, Cliff Barrows, \u201cIt Is No Secret What God Can Do.\u201d\u00a0 The song spoke to our own needs for hope, for help with our problems.\u00a0\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t until much later in my life that I began to be aware that it wasn\u2019t what God wanted to do for<\/span> me so much as what God was going to do with<\/span> me.<\/p>\n

Mark\u2019s Gospel reveals much of that same kind of progression for the disciples.\u00a0 Most of us are not aware that for many years, the Aramaic word, \u201cEph-pha-tha\u201d, \u201cbe opened\u201d, was spoken at the baptism of new Christians.\u00a0\u00a0 Be opened\u2026to hear God\u2019s word.\u00a0 Be opened, to receive the Holy Spirit to live within you to replace that old crippled spirit of self-centeredness that drags you down, that causes you to hurt others when you don\u2019t want to, and even when maybe you do, that adds to the world\u2019s woes.\u00a0 Be opened\u2026to see the world around you in new ways.\u00a0 Be opened, so that you will see the poor, see sorrow, see hunger\u2026instead of acting dumb.\u00a0 Be opened, so that your tongue will not drip with acid and cynicism but with kindness and laughter.\u00a0 Be opened, so that you will not speak lies, nor tolerate hearing them.<\/p>\n

Be opened, so that you will not be silent in the face of twisted logic and corrupt business or political behavior. Be opened!\u00a0 Eph-pha-tha!<\/strong> Let down the shield you keep around your stony heart so that it may feel your own anxiety about life\u2026and maybe death.\u00a0 Be opened from the stultifying prejudices that clothing makes the man or woman, that wealth is an indicator of virtue or worth, that poverty is a sign of immorality.\u00a0 Be opened to see that initiating a war to save a nation is as crazy as believing that violence against terrorists will somehow prevent more terrorists from attacking our neat and safe and sometimes boring little lives.\u00a0 Be opened to see that the trivial obsessions of religion and denominations are keeping others from hearing and receiving God\u2019s mercy, God\u2019s grace.\u00a0 Be opened to receive the simple things of bread and wine, not as a ritual venture in right opinion or right methods of delivery and acceptance, but as a sacrament of tears and hope, a banquet that makes us into a community of mercy.<\/p>\n

At the heart of this pairing of stories about the Syro-Phoenician woman that I read last week and the healing of the man who was deaf and mute, we find Mark\u2019s continuing message:\u00a0 Jesus accepted everyone indiscriminately.\u00a0 God loves without discrimination.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy brothers and sisters\u201d, the writer of James, says:\u00a0 \u201cJudgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.\u00a0 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith, but do not have works?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Mercy triumphs over judgment.\u00a0 Mercy triumphs over judgment.<\/p>\n

These words always prompt me to remember the great lines of Shakespeare from the Merchant of Venice that I was made, thankfully, to memorize when in high school, but have to admit that I can no longer spout them off\u2014but at least they come to mind:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe quality of mercy is not strain\u2019d,<\/em><\/p>\n

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven <\/em><\/p>\n

Upon the place beneath:\u00a0 it is twice blest;<\/em><\/p>\n

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018Tis mightiest in the mightiest\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

And then it goes on to say:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026That, in the course of justice, none of us<\/em><\/p>\n

Should see salvation:\u00a0 we do pray for mercy;<\/em><\/p>\n

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render<\/em><\/p>\n

The deeds of mercy. \u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

It is easy, in this time of tweeting and social media, and in an election year when the differences between political ideologies are so stark, to be judgmental, and if we don\u2019t say so in so many words, to assume that our <\/span>position is that of virtue and good, and that the other side will lead us straight to the depths of Hades.\u00a0 If we good progressive souls \u00a0think we don\u2019t judge people based on their race, their economic status (even though we will go to the other side of the street to avoid a homeless person\u2014gee, I think that Jesus told a parable about some people like us), or their clothing, the fact is that we do discriminate a lot based on politics.\u00a0 And rarely are we open to other points of view.<\/p>\n

Last week, in response to my sermon, Martha told me of an encounter she had at the Farmers\u2019 Market the day before, with a homeless person who had, shall we say, left some of his or her bodily business right there in that crowded market place.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s a Christian who has also to be smart about safety to do? Believe me, I get it.\u00a0 Sometimes it is easier to say we should follow Jesus than to actually bend down and help up a person who stinks to high heaven from their own bodily lapses.<\/p>\n

But back to the matter of mercy vs. judgment:\u00a0 Martin Luther always insisted, like Shakespeare, that if absolute justice were to be applied, none of us would come out unscathed, unjudged, or, more directly,\u00a0 none of us could be saved by our good deeds. \u00a0At the same time, Luther liked to quote the Roman playwright Terence, who said:\u00a0 \u201cHomo sum.\u00a0 Humani nil a me alienum puto.\u201d <\/em>Or in English, \u201cI am a human being.\u00a0 Nothing that is human is alien to me.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 In other words, we can look at every human being and see ourselves. Again, Shakespeare says that if we pray for mercy for ourselves, then we must be merciful to others. \u00a0And likewise, Maya Angelou says that \u201cEmpathy may be the hope for humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

I included the little cartoon Kudzu in your program today not so much because it illustrates the point, but to tell you a story about a most interesting man, the Rev. Will Campbell, who was the real person behind Doug Marlette\u2019s character in the comic strip Kudzu, the Rev. Will B. Dunn, whom you see praying there for the Lord to smite his enemies.\u00a0 Rev. Sloan in the Doonesbury cartoon strip represents Bill Coffin in a similar way.\u00a0 \u00a0Marlette, for many years the political cartoonist for the Richmond, Virginia Times-Dispatch newspaper, <\/em>and who was killed in an auto accident in 2007, met Will Campbell at Ole Miss, and kept up with him for some years.\u00a0 Will Campbell, one of the earlier recipients of the Yale Divinity School\u2019s William Sloane Coffin award in whose company I am but a \u00a0pale shadow, was born and raised in rural Mississippi.\u00a0 He was ordained by family members at a\u00a0 country Baptist Church at age 17.\u00a0 After WWII, he went to school at Tulane, Wake Forest, and then Yale Divinity School, after which he took a job as the director of religious life at the University of Mississippi in the mid 1950s, which he had to leave after 2 years because of \u00a0his stands on racial issues.\u00a0 He went on to be one of the few and one of the key white people in the civil rights campaigns of the late 1950s and early 1960s.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not the whole of his story:\u00a0 eventually, Will Campbell began to realize that he enjoyed thinking that God must surely hate all the people he hated.\u00a0\u00a0 Campbell\u00a0 realized he had made God in his own image, politically and personally. Campbell came to admit that after twenty years in ministry he had become little more than a “doctrinaire social activist,” which was different than being a follower of Jesus.<\/p>\n

Like Will Campbell, the tempting danger for many of us may be the subversion of God\u2019s indiscriminate love for everybody, without exception, into an ideology of \u201cliberal sophistication.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0If this shoe doesn\u2019t fit you, I am well aware of how often it pinches my toes, which is why I keep that cartoon front and center on my desk at all times.\u00a0 It forces me to pray:\u00a0 Mercy, mercy!<\/p>\n

In his book, Brother to a Dragonfly, <\/em>Will Campbell describes how he decided to become friends with the KKK, even becoming close to a grand-dragon.\u00a0 He did their funerals and weddings, he took care of them when they were sick. \u00a0\u00a0Where once he got hate mail \u00a0and death threats from people opposed to his fight against segregation, after this particular twist in his ministry, he began to get hate mail from people on the left.\u00a0 Much like Jesus, Will Campbell, committed to human reconciliation, confuses the powers and principalities.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Will Campbell still lives and ministers to one and all at his farm outside Nashville.<\/p>\n

Like many others, I don\u2019t know that I could befriend a member of the KKK, or pick up that stinky homeless person at the Farmers\u2019 Market, but I do know that Will Campbell, the writer of the book of James, Terence the Roman playwright, Shakespeare\u2014and thousands of others from Dorothy Day to Martin Luther to Martin Luther King, Jr., keep inspiring me with their convictions and subsequent actions based on the non-discriminating love of God.\u00a0 I know, like the Rev. Will B. Dunn there on his knees in that cartoon, that my own worst enemy is myself, and that I am always in the need of God\u2019s mercy.\u00a0 Like the deaf man who could not speak very well, I too need to hear \u201cEph-phatha\u201d, be opened.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I suspect that it is true for you as well.<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s the final truth:\u00a0 empathy, growing out of our own need for mercy,\u00a0 may be the greatest and only hope for humanity, not to mention our political systems, and for global peace.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The quality of God\u2019s mercy is not strained, but droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven\u2026It blesseth him that gives and him that takes\u2026It is an attribute to God himself.\u00a0 Thanks be to the God of mercy.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n

[Thanks to Daniel B. Clendenin, The Journey with Jesus:\u00a0 Notes to Myself, <\/em>\u201cPlaying Favorites:\u00a0 What Will Campbell Learned\u201d, posted 3 September 2012, for his reflections about the Rev. Will Campbell]<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Texts: \u00a0James 2:1-10, 14-17; \u00a0Mark 7:24-37   Most of us here are old enough to remember the televised Billy Graham crusades and the lovely, touching song sung by the great booming baritone, Cliff Barrows, \u201cIt Is No Secret What God<\/p>\n

\"Share<\/a>Share on Facebook<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[6],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":538,"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276\/revisions\/538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}