The One Who Showed Mercy
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Stories
Stories
Jesus loved to tell stories. Regardless which of the canonical Gospels you are reading, one thing that is clear in each of the Evangelist’s portrayal of Jesus is that Jesus loved to tell stories. Stories are how we make sense of the world. We do not actually live by a rigid set of facts that we hold to be true. The facts that we know to be true make sense to us because they fit within the stories by which we make sense of the world. We understand them to be true because they fit within our individual and societal narratives and metanarratives. Our lives makes sense to us and sometimes don’t make sense to us because they either fit or don’t fit within our storied understanding of world.
In a moment, we’ll dig into our Gospel reading and take a look at the story Jesus told and the context in which he told it. But for right now I want to commend to you the power of story telling. Jesus is asked a question: “Who is my neighbor?” And I am wired to answer that kind of question with a definition. “Well, your neighbors is yada, yada, yada.” But Jesus doesn’t do that. Jesus instead answers with a story because stories have a way of not just communicating information but of inviting people to dwell within a new narrative, within a new storied world.
What I’d like to suggest is that one of the reasons Christians have been ineffective in recent years in sharing the Gospel with the world around us is that we have forgotten how to tell stories. We’ve answered questions with facts and definitions rather than with stories, and so we’ve stopped inviting people to take a moment from their regular lives and step into a narrative filled with the grace and mercy of God. They may not choose to stay in that narrative, but they can’t stay if we aren’t inviting them.
It used to be that Christians were well known for sharing their testimony, that is, our individual stories of God’s mercy and grace in our life. But some how we lost this, and it’s too our detriment. The Church needs to learn to tell better stories, that is, better and truer stories that make better sense of the world. It’s not enough for us merely to be conveying facts and and information, regardless of how true they are. Because those facts and that information will only fit for a person if they fit within their storied understanding of themselves and the world. So evangelism isn’t merely about conveying information; it’s about providing opportunities for people to step out of their stories and into new, fresh stories filled with the grace and mercy of God, stories in which those facts now fit. If we aren’t telling people stories, we are only doing one part of bringing the message of the Gospel to the world.
If you want to understand the power of stories, just look at our reading from the Gospel this morning. Most people are familiar with the parable of the Good Samaritan, but I suspect not everyone is immediately aware of the context in which Jesus spoke this parable. Jesus is confront by an expert in the Law who decides to but him to the test.
And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”
The man wants to know what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus answers turns the question back on him.
He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?”
As an expert on the Law, Jesus asks him what the law says, and the man remarkably responds with what we now know as the Summary of the Law.
And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”
It’s remarkable because usually we find this summary on the lips of Jesus. But here someone else says it and Jesus affirms it.
And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”
The man then seems to shift his reason for this interlocution. At first he wanted to put Jesus to the test.
But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
But now Luke tells us that the man desired to justify himself, and so he asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” He’s not seeking information for information’s sake. He’s more like the student raising his hand to ask the professor, “Will this information be on the final exam?” He wants to now how to pass the test. He knows who God is, and presumably has some idea of what it might mean to love God with all of your heart, soul, strength, and mind, but he wants clarification about who exactly he must love at least as much as loves himself in order to fulfill the second great commandment and pass the test. And Jesus tells a story.
He tells a story about a man going from Jerusalem to Jericho who set upon by robber who strip him, beat him, and leave him half dead on the side of the road. Along comes a priest who sees him and passes on the other side of the road. Then comes a levite who does the same. Then comes the despised foreigner, the Samaritan, who saw the man in need and had compassion on him. He not only takes care of his immediate needs, but he gets him to safety and continues to pay for his care even though he can’t stay there with him.
At the beginning of this story in the Gospel, Jesus responded to the lawyer’s question with a question. Now again, at the end of his story, Jesus asks another question:
Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?”
The man replies:
He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”
I said last week that we fulfill the first great commandment by fulfilling the second, and today we get a better understanding of how we fulfill the second, and the answer is basically mercy. You see, the expert in the law wants to understand who he has to love so that he can fulfill the second great commandment. But that is not the answer Jesus gives. The question of “who is my neighbor” is answer almost immediately in the story. My neighbor is the man in need on the side of the road. That question is asked and answered almost immediately. But Jesus is after a different truth. The man wants to know the object of the second great commandment: who do I have to love? Jesus wants to talk about the subject: Who proved to be a neighbor to the man? And the answer is simple: the one who showed him mercy.
Mercy. In the liturgy we say that it is God’s character always to have mercy, and so he expects the same of his people. He expects us, when we find that person on the metaphorical side of the rode to treat him with compassion and mercy. And that person might be a literal person on the side of the road, he might be an actual neighbor who needs help, he might be someone in our own home or someone all the way across the globe. Our neighbor is anyone we come across who is in need. And the way we fulfill the second great commandment, and thereby fulfill the first great commandment, is by showing those people mercy. Mercy. Mercy is what must drives us as we go out from this place with the message of the Gospel and the hope of the kingdom of God. We are not called to bring the kingdom of God through might, nor power, nor even through political machinations. We are called to bring to the kingdom of God by showing mercy. Mercy. Mercy doesn’t degrade. Mercy doesn’t shout. Mercy doesn’t demand. Mercy doesn’t ridicule and mock. Mercy makes the love of God real in a person’s life. Mercy is what drives us to love those who look down on us and even hate us. Mercy is what enables us to love our neighbors as ourselves. You go and do likewise.
Amen.