Be merciful as your heavenly Father is merciful

1 Samuel 26.2, 7-9,12-13,22-23 ‘The Lord gave you into my hand today, and I would not put out my hand against the Lord’s anointed.’

1 Corinthians 15.45-49 ‘Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.’

Luke 6.27-38 ‘Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.’

 

‘Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.’ (Luke 6.36)

 

+

 

This morning’s gospel invites us to deep reflection on the nature of mercy and of love, two words that show the face of God.

 

But what do we do with a gospel text like the one we’ve just heard? ‘Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you’. (Luke 6.27,28)

 

It’s crackers.

 

Isn’t it?

 

And as for, ‘To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either.’ (Luke 6.29)

 

It’s just not practical.

 

Surely?

 

***

 

Jesus’ words are shocking, even when they are very familiar.

 

Our era, with its global turmoil, tribulation, aggression and war, is not the first to have to grapple with what Jesus teaches: the human condition remains constant.

 

Taking a glance back, we should be mindful that these words have always been perplexing to the point of being regarded as irrational.

 

After all, Jesus spoke them in a time of occupation and guerrilla warfare.

 

The occupying Romans for whom ‘might is right’, thought sayings like these both incomprehensible and, even more, contemptible.

 

What weak religion these Christians have: they and their teachings are beneath contempt.

 

Similarly, groups like the Zealots and those actively opposing Roman rule thought these words to be precisely the wrong way to deal with an oppressive, occupying force.

 

We’re left with a choice: take these words literally or just ignore them.

 

But neither approach works: one means the aggressor triumphs; the other means aggression is multiplied.

 

Where is the triumph of Christ? Where is the triumph of love, mercy and justice?

 

So where do we go with them?

 

It’s been noted before, and is a good insight, that these words are not words of weakness as might be supposed.

 

They are words of virtue and of strength.

 

This is about the inner strength of the one who resists evil without being captured by it.

 

We’re often told that the natural response to violence and threat is ‘fright, flight or fight’.

 

The logic of Jesus is to adopt none of those instincts.

 

To declare love for your enemy or offer your offer cheek to be struck when already struck is not the reaction of fright, of a person paralysed by fear; it is certainly not flight, absenting yourself from the battle; and it is not fight, the reaction of hitting straight back.

 

It is in fact the virtuous, strong way to face evil and vice: beat it the evil, don’t join the evil.

 

The aggressive, hostile person is the human face of inner turmoil, torture and grievance.

 

Jesus’ teaching sees beyond the presenting situation, someone’s aggression, and sees to the heart of the person.

 

It is in the human heart that these spiritually corrosive emotions fester and then break out in violence.

 

So, retribution is not the path of Jesus Christ.

 

But Jesus’ sayings press this further: not only is retribution wrong, the measure of love goes beyond the transaction.

 

In other words, love is not a form of currency where if you love me this much I’ll love you back that much.

 

Likewise, love is not a finite resource: we’re not given a dollop of love at birth that we have to eke out through life.

 

No. Love is not something that you can trade or withhold.

 

True love is endlessly abundant, ‘good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over.’ (Luke 6.38)

 

When you measure love or ration it, you limit what you can receive in return.

 

St Paul writes so powerfully about this in 1 Corinthians 13.

 

***

 

‘Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.’

 

First then we need to be alert to the mercy of God.

 

The Gospel of Luke, which is the principal gospel this year, relentlessly speaks of the mercy of God.

 

…In Mary’s song, the Magnificat: ‘and God’s mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation’. (Luke 1.50)

 

…In the Parable of the Good Samaritan when the true neighbour is revealed as ‘The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.” (Luke 10.37)

 

…In the Parable of the Prodigal Son the Father shows loving mercy to the wayward son who he could have rebuked and treated as a hired hand. (Luke 15:11–32)

 

So when Jesus says, ‘Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful’ he asking us to go beyond retribution and getting our own back, and to extend our love, compassion and mercy beyond our normal capacity so that we reflect the mercy of God.

 

Questions follow for each one of us here this morning.

 

How do I know the mercy of God? How do I show the mercy of God?

 

God’s mercy is found in knowing you are a person, who, despite your sharp edges, stubbornness, fragility or harshness, is loved.

 

God’s mercy is found in knowing you are a person, who, despite what you get wrong in life, when you turn back to God you are forgiven.

 

God’s mercy is found in knowing you are a person, who inside is lonely, bruised or sad, yet is healed.

 

Showing mercy is reflecting all that in your own life and dealings with other people.

 

Drink deeply from the wells of God’s mercy so you can be merciful to others.

 

Showing mercy is about being a loved person who loves; a forgiven person who forgives; a healed person who heals.

 

And showing the mercy of God means setting aside judgementalism and the hyper-criticism that demands of other people standards you would never expect of, or demonstrate in, yourself

 

***

 

The first place we must look to see what mercy looks like in human form is to Jesus.

 

He exemplifies all the words of today’s gospel in his manner of facing the baying crowds who wanted his death.

 

The prophecy of Isaiah anticipates this of him:

 

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,

    yet he opened not his mouth;

like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,

    and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,

    so he opened not his mouth. (Isaiah 53.7)

 

If ever there was a moment of fright, for flight or to fight it was then, but Jesus adopted the strong way of facing down evil not becoming possessed by it.

 

He allowed himself to be judged but did not judge in return, indeed he prayed from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23.34)

 

May we resist evil, not succumb to it.

 

May we know mercy and show mercy in our lives.

 

May we do so to others, as we would wish them to us.

It is time to seek the Lord

A sermon preached at Gonville & Caius College Chapel – Choral Evensong, 16^th February 2025

 

Hosea 10.1-8, 12 Israel is a luxuriant vine

Galatians 4.8-20 Has my work been wasted? I wish to be present with you.

 

‘Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground; for it is time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.’

 

+

 

The basic premise of the book of Hosea, from which our first reading came this evening, is that if the relationship between God and his people, Israel, can be likened to a marriage, then Israel has committed adultery and been relentlessly unfaithful.

 

Unfaithful in a thoroughly promiscuous way.

 

Who said the Bible is dull?

 

In the face of that infidelity we see the face of the faithful God, who continues to yearn for his spouse who has turned away.

 

It’s not just in Hosea: Israel’s unfaithfulness is a recurring theme in the Hebrew Scriptures.

 

There’s a pattern of covenant made, covenant broken, yet always marked by God’s grace and mercy to restore that broken relationship, albeit with palpable exasperation at times.

 

This nuptial theme continues into the New Testament where Christ is portrayed as the bridegroom coming to his people, hence his first sign in St John’s Gospel is at the Wedding Feast at Cana in Galilee.

 

Ultimately, the fulfilment of all things, in the Book of Revelation, is at the Marriage Banquet of the Lamb, something prefigured in the Eucharist.

 

That sweep of the Biblical narrative and Christian practice is compelling in so many ways, for it reminds us of Hosea’s message of the faithfulness of God in the teeth of human infidelity.

 

Within the overarching sweep of the narrative, Hosea has a particular take.

 

Hosea sees how easily our heads are turned by those things that we find more attractive or seductive, things that are less demanding of commitment than the ongoing paying of attention, and relinquishing of self-obsession that a stable, faithful and committed relationship demands.

 

It was true of Israel and it’s true of individuals.

 

***

 

The Israelites - those living in the Northern Kingdom, sometimes also known as Ephraim, politically, but, not religiously, distinct from Judah, the Southern Kingdom – had their heads turned by the worship of Baal.

 

Baal was an agricultural god with a mythology that on an annual cycle associated the seasons and climate with his life and death.

 

The seasons apparently turned as a result of Baal being rescued from the underworld by his wife, Asherah.

 

Their reuniting was, in the eyes of the Hebrew prophet, a debauched fertility festival and worship of the calf god representing Baal.

 

That’s where the reference in our reading to ‘the calf of Beth-aven’ comes in (Hos. 10.5).

 

In a land and climate where crops could easily fail Baal had a bit of a pull.

 

But Hosea asserts that ‘the people shall mourn for [the calf], and idolatrous priests will wail over it, over its glory that has departed from it’. (Hos. 10.5)

 

Its time is up; its glory has gone; return to the Lord of glory.

 

Hosea is telling us that Baal, and his like, is an attractive fantasy on which to pin your hopes, but the Lord your God is the one to whom you, people of Israel, are pledged.

 

There are echoes here of the prophet Elijah in his feats against the priests of Baal in the first book of Kings. (1 Kings 18.20-40)

 

And what happened when the priests of Baal were destroyed by Elijah? It rained after years of drought! (1 Kings 18.41-46)

 

This was to demonstrate that it is the Lord God of Israel who gives the rains, not Baal, hence a verse in Hosea:

 

And in that day, declares the Lord, you will call me ‘My Husband,’ and no longer will you call me ‘My Baal.’ (Hosea 2.16).

 

***

 

The agricultural and fertility gods of human imagining have never really gone away, but have new forms.

 

Tempting though it is to worship the creation, the climate, the seasons, the trees – which are the golden calves of Baal and Asherah - we are called to worship their Creator, the God of Israel.

 

It is what the great canticle Benedicite, omnia opera asserts:

 

⁸    O ye Showers and Dew, bless ye the Lord :

praise him, and magnify him for ever.

¹¹  O ye Winter and Summer, bless ye the Lord :

praise him, and magnify him for ever.

¹²  O ye Dews and Frosts, bless ye the Lord :

praise him, and magnify him for ever.

²⁰  O all ye Green Things upon the Earth, bless ye the Lord :

praise him, and magnify him for ever.

(from The Song of the Three Holy Children 35-66)

 

Created things, however beautiful, are just that, created, and not the Creator.

 

Calling us back to a consummated relationship with the Living God, Hosea says,

 

Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground; for it is time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.

 

There’s an echo in St Paul who reminds us that, ‘neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.’(1 Corinthians 3.7)

 

Fidelity to the God of Israel, sees us in a right relationship with him - faithful, committed, permanent - that is what we are to sow on the seedbed of our hearts.

 

Hearts and lives, like the fallow ground, need tilling ready to receive the potential of the seed that will take root, grow and bear fruit, thirty, sixty and one hundredfold. (cf The Parable of the Sower: Mark 4.1-9)

 

***

 

What does that look like?

 

I don’t know if you were a Valentine’s Day person or a Palentine’s Day person last week, but every relationship, between husband and wife, parent and child, two friends or companions, needs nurturing and fostering in tangible ways.

 

So it is in the life of faith.

 

As with any human relationship it is not enough to love God in the abstract, simply as an idea, for then God becomes an object, a golden calf.

 

Love needs concrete expression.

 

The consummation of our relationship with God is found in the sacramental practices of baptism, Eucharist, confession: where created matter -water, bread, wine - becomes a channel of grace, not an object of worship in itself, and reconciliation is expressed in charity.

 

Hosea is cautioning us away from a life turned in on itself, the ‘Incurvatus in se’ as St Augustine puts it.

 

When we fail to pay attention to the other then we become self-consumed, ultimately self-destructive, as was Baal.

 

Prayer, adoration, devotion, the sacraments, turn us away from self and to mystical union with God, and that is surely Hosea’s aim and call.

 

…it is time to seek the Lord,

that he may come and rain righteousness upon [us].

Going out into the deeps

Isaiah 6.1-2a, 3-8 ‘Here I am! Send me.’

1 Corinthians 15.3-8, 11 ‘So we [reach and so you believed’

Luke 5.1-11 ‘They left everything and followed him.’

 

 

‘Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch’

 

+

 

There’s something a bit fishy about today’s gospel reading.

 

Yes, it features fishermen: but they’re commissioned to become fishers-of-men, not catching fish anymore, but saving souls.

 

And isn’t it a bit odd that the Galilean fishermen need the direction of a carpenter’s son from Nazareth, which is not by water, to tell them how to do their job effectively?

 

And what of that most remarkable catch of fish, so much so that two boats were almost sinking under their weight?

 

And perhaps most bizarrely, the fishermen, who are effectively small businessmen, leave their lucrative catch and walk away!

 

Well, as in all reading of scripture we are called, like the fishermen on the Sea of Galilee, to push out away from the shallows, to see beyond the surface and let down our nets deep.

 

To use a different image, Gregory the Great, the Bishop of Rome who, in 597, sent St Augustine of Canterbury to England to evangelise afresh, once said ‘Scripture is like a river again, broad and deep, shallow enough here for the lamb to go wading, but deep enough there for the elephant to swim’.

 

We can fish the surface of faith or cast our nets deep.

 

On the surface it’s about Jesus helping out some fishermen who are having a tough time; that’s amazing and miraculous in itself, but where does that take us?

 

Is Jesus just a bit of a wonder worker, an impressive guru figure who can do remarkable things so that people follow him?

 

Gregory speaks of different senses by which we read the gospels: the surface and the deeper.[1]

 

So, when we look again at this gospel we can see there are deep things going on.

 

Peter unlocks this for us, ‘…he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” (Luke 5.8)

 

This is an act of awe-filled devotion, falling to his knees as one would only before God: Jesus is Lord, sovereign now in Peter’s life.

 

We can’t, then, read this passage as an interesting fisherman’s tale, but as something that has direct bearing on our life of faith as individuals and for the Church as a whole.

 

When we cast out into the deep and put down our spiritual nets we find there is much we can draw from those waters.

 

This gospel is about the fruitfulness of daily life, of calling, of decision, of response and of commission.

 

We see that the fishermen’s daily tasks are made fruitful at his word.

 

Their fishing efforts were literally fulfilled – filled full – by Jesus’ word.

 

Can his word for you, to go out into the deeps? What holds you back from doing that?

 

We can always go deeper into faith and into the life of the Holy God.

 

Are you ready, like Peter, flaky as he was, to say, ‘at your word I will let down the nets’? (v5)

 

Peter is awestruck by what Jesus can do, not just on the surface level, but going deeper too.

 

Peter’s words echo Isaiah’s reaction of inadequacy and awareness of his personal sinfulness in the majestic presence and power of God in the temple: ‘Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips.’ (Isaiah 6.5)

 

Reverent awe is the response proper to the call, and word, of Jesus Christ.

 

This text, alongside our first from Isaiah, tells us not to think that faith in Jesus Christ is a self-help technique, rather one of faith and trust in Him.

 

The encounter with awe, majesty is converting: the immediacy and impact of what the fishermen did is shocking when you think about it.

 

‘And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him.’ (v11)

 

They put  aside their own priorities and came, in St Benedict’s words, to ‘prefer nothing to Christ’.

 

They say in effect the words of Isaiah, ‘Here am I! Send me’ (Isaiah 6.8) and the words of Mary, ‘Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word’. (Luke 1.38)

 

Those are words of going out into the deep in love and trust, facing down fears through faith in Jesus Christ.

 

If you push out into the deep, you want to know your boat will float and be buoyant: this is the spiritual move Peter, James, John, you and me are called to make: ‘do not be afraid’ (v10) says Jesus.

 

When we do this our nets filled, our lives are full-filled, we are nourished spiritually so that we cannot keep the Good News to ourselves, but to bring it ashore to a hungry world.

 

As he calls them, Jesus is coaching, training, shaping, these fishermen to a task that goes well beyond the shores of Galilee.

 

There’s purpose in what we are called to as Christians, not solely for ourselves but for the sake of the world.

 

And what feeds the world is Christ, the Living Bread from heaven, who takes the ordinary loaves and fishes to multiply them that all people may know salvation.

 

As with the teeming fish, which is an image of the life of the Church and all her people throughout the world, so the task falls to us by our faith, our hope, our love and our devotion to Christ to share the Good News and draw others to Christ.

 

The fishermen found their lives repurposed in Christ; Isaiah found new purpose in the presence of the same Living God, you are called ‘to shine as a light in the world to the glory of God the Father’: are you ready to say, ‘Here am I! Send me’?

---

[1] Gregory uses a method typical of his era, and valuable today, a fourfold way of reading scripture, the Quadriga: the historical sense (plain sense), the allegorical sense (typological), the moral sense (tropological), and the anagogical sense (pertaining to the last or ultimate things).