[Machine transcription]
Brothers and sisters, looking at the Gospel reading tonight, the healing of the lepers,
please be seated.
And especially on Thanksgiving, when this Gospel lesson is read, the usual focus is
on the one thankful leper, fitting with the Thanksgiving theme.
But my focus tonight, I want to look at that request that the lepers made of Jesus, Lord
Lord have mercy.”
Really it wasn’t a statement, a request, it was a prayer to Jesus asking for mercy.
And really mercy is one of those words that to me anyway doesn’t seem to get mentioned
much in worship, or it just doesn’t seem like it anyway.
I mean as Lutherans we like words like grace, forgiveness, justification, and mercy kind
I think it’s left out a little bit, but in the Bible, it’s there a lot.
Depending on the translation, it’s close to 300 times the word mercy comes up.
And of course, mercy, a way to define the word mercy is not getting the punishment or
consequence that you deserve.
Example, you’re speeding, you get pulled over, and the police officer gives you a warning
or leaves you off completely, right, mercy, right, y’all have been there, you know, guilty
is charged here.
I tell the students at University of Lutheran Church, it’s a professor could have deducted
points on a test, but he didn’t, that’s mercy.
Now, in the Jewish culture at the time, lepers, they didn’t get too much mercy.
In fact, they didn’t get much of anything because they really didn’t deserve anything.
According to their law, lepers were considered unclean, and they were shunned, and kind of
for good reason.
They were shunned and avoided because they had a contagious disease, and it was at that
time pretty much fatal. The law had, they had a distance rule that lepers were
required to keep a certain distance from people and even give them a warning to
say to people, unclean, unclean, like to say, don’t come here, you know, warning,
disease, here. And that’s why these lepers are standing at a distance, it says, and
why they had to lift up their voices. I mean, basically they had to yell to Jesus,
master have mercy on us according to Jewish law their leprosy their their
skin disease that was their total identity to all the other people so they
they cry out to Jesus and Jesus pretty much breaks the law he doesn’t shun them
He doesn’t avoid them. He closes the distance between him and them and he deals with them.
And he, most importantly, he hears their prayer. He healed them. He had mercy on them
by their faith in him saying that they were healed. No, they didn’t deserve it.
But, there’s lots of people in the Bible who didn’t deserve any mercy, David, Jonah, Paul,
just to name a few people who didn’t deserve mercy from God because of their sin.
Instead, they deserve to be shunned and avoided by God, and us too, we’re no different.
we don’t deserve anything because of our sin. In fact, our sin is kind of like
leprosy, except we don’t have a skin disease, we have a sin disease, and it
makes us unclean. It makes us distant from God, and we should be shunned and
avoided by Him, and maybe that’s how some of your sins make you feel, unclean,
diseased, distant from God, and even shunned and avoided by Him, not deserving
anything from God. Maybe your sin has you feeling that way, but if you’re sorry for
them, and you confess those sins, you confess that sin disease to God, and you
lift up your voice, and you cry, Lord have mercy. He hears that prayer, and we
do that together in worship several times actually. I say that mercy doesn’t
seem to come up much, but it’s there in worship a lot. In fact, the Kyrie
Kyrie, that we sang, basically is we say, Lord have mercy several times, right?
Kyrie means Lord, Kyrie eleison, there’s your Latin for the evening, means Lord have mercy
on us here.
And then in the Gloria, when we sang, Lord God, Lamb of God, you take away the sin of
the world, have mercy on us.
And also in the confession, we prayed, most merciful God, right?
And then we confess that we justly deserve your present and eternal punishment, but for
the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us.
And then in our prayers, in our corporate prayers, the pastor prays and the response
of the people, the pastor says, Lord in your mercy, we respond, hear our prayer.
So mercy is there corporately in worship when we lift up our voices and cry for
that, but no, none of us deserves it, but God gives it. Again, if you’re sorry for
your sins, if you confess your sin disease and you cry out to the Lord, Lord
have mercy. He hears that prayer. He doesn’t shun you. He doesn’t treat you as
unclean. He comes to you. He hears you and forgives you and heals you. God gives
mercy to you in the same way as the lepers through faith in Jesus. Faith on
faith in his death on the cross and his resurrection from the dead to give you
that mercy you get that mercy in confession as you confess most merciful
God you know that have mercy on us then the pastor responds with in his mercy
God has forgiven you again it’s not nothing you deserve but it’s something
God freely gives, because through Christ, you see, God doesn’t just see you as a sinner.
He doesn’t see the sin that you’ve done, said, or thought, no matter what it is or how bad
you think it is, God doesn’t see you as unclean.
He sees you as His child by the death and resurrection of His Son for you. You
see, your sin disease is not your identity. Through Jesus, God sees you as
His own child, and He gives mercy to you and heals you of that sin disease. Lord,
have mercy.” To be honest with you, I pray that prayer quite a bit. I mean not just
as some quaint little saying like, Lord have mercy, sort of thing. No, I pray it
for me, but also for others, especially when I don’t know what else to pray.
Especially as you just look at this world that we live in, read or hear the
news of just how messed up things are and you’re left with nothing else to
pray but Lord have mercy on us what are we doing to ourselves Lord have mercy
when you don’t know what else to pray there’s this it’s a great prayer it
seems so like I said so quaint or so simple but it’s loaded with the prayer
for God to have mercy, to forgive, to heal, to don’t shun or avoid us in this
world, but to have mercy on us. And perhaps you could pray that too, because
you probably know people who need mercy, need mercy from you in particularly.
really, they’re facing bad situations, bad consequences, in life they can’t get out
of the trouble that they’re in, and they really need mercy, and you can pray for them.
Lord have mercy on them, and where you can, you should show mercy too.
Even for those who disagree with you, or even consider your enemy, these people need mercy
They, too, are victims of the leprosy of sin.
They’ve got a sin disease, too, and they need mercy.
No matter what your relationship is with them, they may need mercy from you.
Let me remind you of some words of Jesus.
In Luke 6, 36, Jesus said to His disciples, be merciful even as your Father is merciful.
And I know, that’s hard.
being merciful to people that you disagree with may really put mercy to
the test sometimes right yeah maybe now you’re you’re dealing with people who
you differ with politically religiously professionally philosophically they’re
your friends they’re your neighbors they’re your family they’re your
co-workers, this is happening at work, at school, at home, on Facebook.
When you have these difficulties with people, maybe look at the situation this way, that
every negative interaction you have with somebody, or negative circumstance or situation
that you get into, see it as an opportunity to show mercy.
That’s a test on I-35 at times, I know.
now think of it as an opportunity that you can show mercy or at least lifting
up in prayer Lord have mercy because others we encounter may maybe even be
seeking it wanting mercy and we can we can pray it for them their healing of
stress, or illness, maybe even sins, we pray, Lord, have mercy on them, that they
may know that mercy. We know the wonderful mercy of God, right? We know it
in his death, in his sacrifice for us, in his resurrection from the
that we know it, we see it, but others need to know it, and we’re those
deliverers of mercy. You know, these lepers’ lives in the story were
completely changed, right? Really, they’re physically, emotionally,
spiritually, they were completely changed by Christ’s mercy, and there may be
others you know that need that too, and that can be completely changed by that same mercy.
Mercy for all kinds of trouble, problems, adversity in life.
So again, perhaps every conflict you have with someone can be an opportunity to have
mercy.
God has mercy on us, and we give great thanks for that today on Thanksgiving Day, but may
this also be a day of mercy giving not just Thanksgiving because you know how
it is when there’s adversity in life or conflict with others with when your sin
disease is is overwhelming we cry Lord have mercy there’s a jazz song that
really fits this really well I think and I came across a quote by a famous jazz
saxophonist, Cannonball Adderley, extra points if you know who that is, okay, so
and he said before the performance of this song, he said to the audience, he
says, you know, sometimes in life we’re just not prepared for adversity, he said,
and when it happens we get caught short, and when adversity happens we don’t know
exactly how to handle it when it comes up. Sometimes we just don’t know what to
do when adversity takes over. And he says, I have advice for all of us. And he says,
I got this advice from my piano player named Joe Zawinul. Extra, extra points if
you know who that is. He wrote this song and the name of the song sounds like
what you’re supposed to say when you have the problems of adversity and
trouble in your life and you don’t know what to say and you don’t know what to
do and the name of the song is mercy mercy mercy may the Lord have mercy on
us all amen now may the peace of God which passes all
understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus our Lord amen
Thank you.
