Hilton Head Island, SC – May 1, 2016
The Chapel Without Walls
Luke 10:25-29; Luke 10:30-37
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. – Matthew 5:7
Blessings For The Merciful
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity” etc, etc, etc. Thus did Charles Dickens begin his famous novel A Tale of Two Cities with its equally famous opening line. The two cities referred to in the title were Paris and London during the years leading up to and during the French Revolution.
As in all Dickens novels, the plot has many twists and turns, and into them we shall not go, you will be pleased to know. But there are two men in the story who could pass for twins, the dissolute Englishman Sydney Carton and the cultured aristocratic Frenchman Charles Darney. In a typically Dickensian irony, they are both rivals for the affections of a beautiful young woman, Lucie Manette, whom Charles Darney ultimately married. Once the Reign of Terror began after the Revolution started in France, thousands of high-born citizens were guillotined. Charles Darney and his wife and daughter were slated for execution. Sydney Carton, wanting to spare the life of the woman he loved and her daughter, managed by subterfuge to take Darney’s place in prison, thus sparing the life of all three of the Darneys, who escaped France for England. Thus the Englishman died in France, and the Frenchman and his family lived on in England. Sydney Carton’s last lines, which end the novel, are as well known as the opening lines. As he is led up the stairs to the guillotine, Sydney Carton declares, “It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.”
In The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare, Portia utters the memorable lines, “The quality of mercy is not strain’d/ It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven/ Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest/ It blesseth him that giveth and him that takes.”
By doing what he did for his adversary, his wife and their daughter, Sydney Carton bravely and selflessly displayed the truth that the quality of mercy indeed is not strained, and instead drops as the gentle rain from heaven. Whoever could have imagined Carton would be so extraordinarily generous? When mercy is offered, especially in circumstances where it might not be expected, as it was not in Charles Darney’s perilous position, it can have a life-changing effect on those to whom it is offered.
Mercy is not normally considered to be a requirement in the behavior of anyone who seeks to live a Christian life. Instead it is thought of more as a bonus, an add-on, a second-mile gift to someone who may not deserve mercy, but who nonetheless would benefit greatly from it.
In last week’s sermon on the 4th Beatitude, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied,” I referred to an incident in Mark, chapter 12. Jesus was disputing with some Sadducees about whether or not the resurrection from the dead is a valid belief. Sadducees did not believe in the life after death, but the Pharisees, of whom I think Jesus may actually have been one, did subscribe to the notion that God shall raise us from death. The argument went on for some time. According to Mark, a scribe interrupted the endless theological kerfuffle. Apparently he wanted to rescue Jesus from his adversaries, which was a kindness on his part. So he asked Jesus which of all the commandments should be considered the most important. Jesus answered the scribe by repeating what is called the Shema, a Hebrew word which means “hear” or “listen”: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.” Then Jesus said that the second-most important commandment is to love our neighbors as ourselves.
Luke 10 presents an episode similar to Mark 12, but the context is depicted quite differently. Instead of “a scribe” wanting to divert the attack on Jesus by the Sadducees, we are told that “a lawyer” stood up to put Jesus “to the test.” In Mark someone identified as a scribe is trying to help Jesus out, and in Luke someone who is called a lawyer is trying to trick him. When the Gospels refer to lawyers, they do not mean what we mean by the term “attorney-at-law.” In Jesus’ day, “lawyers” were men schooled in biblical law, which in Hebrew is known as the Torah. They spent their lifetime trying to discern what God’s law required in every conceivable human situation. They were, in the other term used in the Gospels, “scribes.” Thus Mark and Luke both may have referred to the same incident, but the context between them is different.
If we want to study the Bible carefully, especially the Gospels, we must be prepared to admit that the Gospel writers may or may not have the proper context for reporting what Jesus said about anything. The writers believed they were certain of what Jesus said, but they were not certain of the context in which he said it.
This is the case in Luke 12, because a “lawyer” (a scribe) wanted to try to trip up Jesus. Instead of asking what is the most important commandment, this man asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus asked him what he believed the Torah would say. And in Luke, the lawyer (not Jesus) said what Jesus said in Mark, that we should love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Luke then tells us that Jesus said to this man who was steeped in the religious law, “You have answered right; do this, and you will live.”
Then comes the scribe’s response which prompted what the Church has always called “the Parable of the Good Samaritan.” Luke writes, “But he” (the lawyer), “desiring to justify himself, said, ‘And who is my neighbor?’”
This story is so powerful because it is so counter-intuitive to everything we have been taught and we naturally think! It could be preached by every preacher in every church everywhere in the world twice a year and the riches of its theological meanings would never be totally exhausted. So let us turn to the parable.
There are still parts of the actual Roman road from Jerusalem to Jericho that exist in modern Israel which travelers walked in the time of Jesus. The distance is only a little over fifteen miles as the crow flies, but the road does not run straight, because there are hills and valleys and rocky outcrops and deep gullies. And the road runs almost entirely through a desert in which there are no wells or waterholes.
In the 1st century, bandits lurked behind hummocks, looking for solitary travelers or groups of people too few in number to defend themselves from robbers. In his parable, Jesus told the lawyer and the others listening to him that the lone traveler was attacked by thieves “who stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead.” Anyone hearing the parable could easily imagine this happening, because anyone who had ever gone from Jerusalem to Jericho had to take that road, since it was the only one, and it was a dangerous desert thoroughfare, dropping almost four thousand feet in altitude in less than twenty miles.
By chance, said Jesus, a priest came along, and then a Levite. When they saw the injured man, they hurried past him. In contemporary religious terminology, they were clergy, and they deliberated avoided helping the woeful traveler.
Why? Why would they, of all people, do that? Well, they had very good reasons for doing it, as the lawyer of Torah knew who had asked Jesus his question in the first place, wanting to test Jesus. (We may deduce that Jesus, knowing his thoughts, wanted to test the lawyer back.) The Bible said that only certain people under certain conditions could even touch a dead person, and for all the priest and Levite knew, this man might be dead. They could not try to find a pulse without defiling themselves if he was dead. In psychological terms, it was an “avoidance-avoidance” situation. There was nothing to be gained by closely examining the robbery victim, and conceivably a great deal to be lost. So they gave him a wide berth and hurried by.
Then, said Jesus in his parable, a Samaritan came along. Samaritans were Jews who, a thousand years before Jesus, had begun to marry Canaanite women but attempted to maintain themselves as Jews, even building their own temple on Mt. Gerizim in what came to be known as Samaria. (That was the second thing that really irritated the Jews.) First-century Jews despised the Samaritans for being traitors to both God and the Torah. They considered them apostate Jews, renegade Jews. So why would Jesus insert such a disreputable character into his story? Let us hold that question in abeyance for the moment.
Jesus said that the Samaritan “had compassion” for the beaten traveler. He put him on his horse and took him to an inn along the road, where he tended his wounds. He paid the innkeeper money to continue care for him, and told him he would repay him anything extra he spent to help heal the battered victim. At the end of his story, Jesus, the shrewd master theologian, asked the Torah lawyer, “Which of these three” (the priest, the Levite, or the Samaritan), “proved neighbor to the man who fell among robbers?” Hesitantly, he gave the only plausible answer, but the answer he didn’t want to give, “The one, I suppose, who showed mercy on him.” And to that Jesus said, “Go and do likewise.” Who is my neighbor? Anyone who needs my help.
Why would the lawyer resist saying which parabolic character proved to be neighborly to the mugged traveler? It was because he was a Samaritan! A “good Samaritan” is not simply somebody who helps somebody in need, which we Gentile Christians assume. He is somebody who helps somebody whom nobody would expect to be helped! The Torah lawyer equated the Samaritan in the parable with illegal immigrants or members of ISIS or Mafiosi, but the Samaritan is the hero of Jesus’ parable!
Who turned out to be the truest neighbor of the man who was beaten and robbed by thieves? The one who presumably was the least likely to do so. The one who is not a neighbor at all. It is the illegal immigrant, the radical Islamist, the mobster who displays mercy.
Anyone can have mercy, Jesus is telling us; furthermore, everyone SHOULD have mercy. Mercy is what makes humans truly human. If we aren’t merciful, we aren’t what God meant us to be. To grant mercy should not be to go above and beyond the call of duty; it is to be a dutiful neighbor, a dutiful child of God. And we should offer mercy in situations where those who are given it least expect it.
At the end of World War II, GIs gave their C-rations to German women and children who had somehow lived through hell and were starving to death. When the occupying US forces went into Tokyo after the surrender was signed, they did the same thing for Japanese civilians whose lives had been turned upside down and who were close to death. They weren’t required to do it, but they were the only ones who could do it. Billions of dollars of assistance poured into Germany and Japan during the next decade. Germany and Japan have been among our best allies since the end of the war. “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”
The word “mercy” is synonymous with the word “sympathy.” And the word “sympathy” literally means “to experience with or to suffer with (someone else).” In one sense, perhaps those who show mercy are those who previously were shown mercy. But it need not happen in that order. If we are children of God, if we try to be truly human, we must always try to be merciful, whether or not we have ever been shown mercy. And that is a very hard assignment, because mercy doesn’t necessarily come easily; it might be very hard to offer it.
In terms of the parable of the good Samaritan, here is another extreme example of the kind of mercy to which Jesus was pointing us. Let us imagine that a 19-year-old American soldier in Afghanistan has been badly wounded in combat. He is alone in the mountains, and he is certain he is soon going to die. Along comes a 16-year-old Taliban soldier. He sees that the American has no weapon, so he walks up to him and kneels beside him. The American weakly reaches up to the rifle barrel of the Taliban, and touches it to his head.
The Afghan knows in an instantaneous searing realization what the enemy soldier wants. He hesitates, and then he begins to weep. Suddenly he who had been unable to comprehend it before is crushed by the enormity and the savagery of war. He has been raised in a culture of revenge, but through his tears, he realizes there is only one thing Allah would have him do. With all the courage he can muster, the chastened Afghan pulls the trigger. He is the good Samaritan.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” Those who offer mercy are far more likely than many others to recognize mercy when it is offered to them --- from God, from relatives and friends, from neighbors and from total strangers who are also neighbors.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.