“Surprised by Mercy”
Proper 10 C (6 Pent C) –
Luke 10: 25-37
Brothers and sisters in Christ, Grace and Peace to you from the Triune God: Father Son, and Holy Spirit.
It was a crazy Saturday night in the hospital emergency room -- actually early Sunday morning, Actually, it had been a crazy day, too. The hospital chaplain had been working since
The latest to come in were victims of a drunk driver that had plowed into group of a dozen motorcyclists about
In the midst of this, out of the corner of her eye, the chaplain saw an elderly lady being wheeled in on a gurney from an ambulance. Her adult son is close behind, following the EMTs. But just then, on the other side of the ER, the police bring in the drunk driver from the motorcycle incident for a blood alcohol test.
Unfortunately, next to the chaplain are family members of the injured bikers. He has spoken with them earlier and knows that anger and rage toward the driver are coming to a boil.
They spot the woman in handcuffs and the cop. Their fists are already clenched as they asked each other “Is that her? Is that her?” and began to move toward the woman and the officer. But the chaplain moved faster. He literally pushed the officer and the drunk driver into the last unoccupied exam room and slammed the door behind just ahead of one of the bikers’ sons.
After explaining the situation to the officer, the chaplain left the room and spoke to the son and other family members and took the brunt of their frustration and anger and worry. It wasn’t until a half hour later -- about
The man explains that his Mom was transported from a nursing home with chest pains. She is in the room behind the curtain. But he says no one has had time to do much with her except check her vitals and make sure she was comfortable. The chaplain explains about the serious trauma injuries that came in ahead of here and have to be attended to, and he says he understands, but he is still very worried.
So the chaplain stands up and invites the son to come in the room with his mother, After some conversation, the chaplain asks if she would like a prayer, and if so what would she like the chaplain to include in the prayer. To the chaplain’s surprise, she reels off a very specific list of about five or six things. And at the conclusion of the prayer, she is careful to tell the chaplain, “You forgot to include my dog.” Even at two-thirty a.m., scared and helpless, this is still a pretty sharp old woman.
The chaplain couldn’t help but chuckle as she prayed the one petition she had forgotten. She remembered also that the importance and power of prayer transcends time or schedule or memory. And she gave thanks to the old woman for that gracious reminder.
It may seem like a long way from the emergency room of a Level 2 trauma center to a ditch on the side of the road from
We think of mercy as something gentle: a softly murmured word. A gentle embrace. Something that is easily understood and accepted. But mercy, especially the kind of surprising mercy we hear about in the story of the Good Samaritan, can be tough. It challenges our expectations and reason; such mercy is hard to receive or to recognize.
It’s hard to forget being surprised by mercy. It stays with us -- both the surprise and the mercy. It changes us. Having been surprised by mercy we cannot easily live as if it had never happened -- unless we want to live the rest of our life as a lie by denying the gracious reality we have experienced.
We must be ready to be surprised by the tasks that God sets before us today. And that surprise means that we may have to throw out our notions of who we think is our neighbor, and accept the neighbor that God has placed in front of us -- whether it is a nit-picky old lady or a drunken woman facing jail time, or an enraged son a gnat’s eyelash away from doing violence to his father’s assailant.
We are going to have to improvise, not on the basis of knowledge but of relationship. Doesn’t it always seem that we come upon the men and women in the ditch at the most inconvenient times? At one and two in the morning? When we are on our way to something really important?
Thank goodness for cell phones! If the Good Samaritan had had one he could have just called 911 and left and never missed that important meeting in
But if the Samaritan had phoned it in, as it were, what would be missing? Well no risk, for sure. He wouldn’t have to have touched the man, smelled his festering wounds. There would be no surprises. There would be no sacrifice. There would be no mercy. There would be no extraordinary and even foolish expenditure of time and wealth and personal commitment -- those facets of our modern existence that we cling to for dear life.
The artist Vincent Van Gogh painted the Good Samaritan at the moment from the story that illustrates the surprise in mercy. It is the instant when the Samaritan lifting the man out of the ditch and on to his donkey
Even what many think to be the central question of this parable, the question of the lawyer to Jesus, the question “Who is my neighbor?” As if we need to know that before we can love the neighbor?” The question might also be asked, “To whom am I a neighbor?” In other words, to whom do I act, do appear to, as a neighbor?”
Some commentators claim that Christ is the man in the ditch -- bleeding, broken, abandoned just as he was on the cross. And by extension, then it is we also who are the man in the ditch. And our challenge is to love this neighbor, this stranger, this Samaritan so we might receive the surprising mercy he gives without conditions or boundaries.
The story of the Good Samaritan is the story of our saying yes to Christ the Reconciler and Redeemer in the mystery of the cross. We see Christ and ourselves in both the man in the ditch and in the Samaritan.
Nothing about that night in the emergency room went as expected. It was a 16-hour workday like any other 16 hour work day. People were in the ditches everywhere. But if you listened closely to the story of that night, you heard that we are called by God’s mercy to go into those ditches, to touch, to care, to heal, to be God’s mercy.
There are people in the ditches now. Maybe waiting for you at home. Every road we travel on has ditches of some kind along side. Who are in the ditches of your life? And to whom in those ditches are you a neighbor? Or perhaps you are lost, lying in the ditch
Amen.
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