Mercy for Enemies
Grace to you and
peace from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
The Lord does not give His mercy to those insist they ought
to have it. He gives His mercy solely from His fatherly, divine goodness,
without any merit or worthiness in us. “His mercy is on those who fear Him.”
He gives mercy to those who see no way out. He gives it to lift up those who
have been laid low—the penitent sinner, the hopeless parent, the blind, the
leper, the unloved and disrespected and despised and guilty. These are the
people who fill pews. These are the people who pray, “Lord, have mercy.”
The young lawyer was blinded by his pride. He would not see
that he was in need of the Lord’s mercy. It was pride that drove him to stand
up, believing he was better than others—even better than Jesus. It was pride
that caused him to think that he could trap Jesus. It was pride that urged the
lawyer to believe that he had already succeeded in loving God with all he was.
So it was the man’s pride that Jesus used to trap him.
To omit mercy in dealing with neighbors; to omit mercy by
refusing to forgive as the Lord has forgiven you; to omit mercy by insisting
that others meet your conditions; to omit mercy by shoving aside those who
don’t please you; to omit mercy by refusing to see that anyone you come into
contact with is your God-given neighbor—that is where this young lawyer
stumbled, where his pride threatened his inheritance of eternal life. So did
the lawyer beg for mercy? He would never stoop so low.
But we cry out for mercy. So when we go down on our knees and
plead for the Lord to overlook our sins, when we sing, “Lord, have mercy upon us”—do we let the Lord’s mercy stop with us?
Do we let it die within our hearts by storing up anger or resentment? Do we
live only for ourselves? The Lord gives His mercy for only one reason: so that
it has its way with us, so that His mercy is lived in through us toward
everyone—without demands, without conditions, without envy, without pettiness.
That is what the Good Samaritan does. And this Good Samaritan
is none other that our Lord Jesus. Just as the Samaritan poured on his enemy the
healing medicine of oil and wine, so our Lord pours over us His watered blood
in Holy Baptism and then nurses us back to spiritual health with His Body and Blood.
Just the Samarian carts the man off to the inn so that he might safely be cared
for, so our Lord compassionately and willingly sets us within His holy Body,
the Church, so that His preaching and sacraments would see us safely to the
kingdom of heaven.
The Good Samaritan is the very picture of our Lord Jesus. Yet
with this parable, Our Lord is also telling the young lawyer—and us—that the
Samaritan is equally the very picture of our life in God. For we are to “be
merciful, just as our Father also is merciful.” “For if you will not love your
brother, whom you can see, how can you love God, whom you have not seen?”
So we are to love all people, even our enemies. You are to “bless those who curse you, do
good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and
persecute you.” So we show
mercy to our brothers and sisters in Christ who sin against us, to the atheist
who wants us to keep our mouths shut, and even to the radical Muslim who wants
us dead.
And let us remember why we cry out for and rely upon our
Lord’s mercy: He is truly “ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, slow to
anger, abundant in kindness and great in mercy.” Even to sinners like us who deserve from Him nothing but
punishment and hell, Our Lord readily and mercifully gives us His Holy Spirit so
we live in Him and His abundant mercy, even as He lives His love in and through
us toward all men. In the name of the Father and of the Son (†) and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
The
peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in
Christ Jesus always. Amen.
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