GOD’S MERCY FOR THE ‘OUTSIDER’...
ISAIAH 56:1-8; MATTHEW 15:21-28; ROMANS 11:25-36
Introduction:
The story is told of two university students who got into a bit of a debate about the existence of God... The one student was a fervent atheist and eventually blurted out in desperation, "Well, if there is a God, then may he prove himself by striking me dead right now." Of course nothing happened and he responded by saying to the other student. "You see, there is no God." The second student replied, "You haven’t proven that there is no God, you've only proved that He is a merciful God."
Now arguments and quick-fire responses such as these may be amusing and cute and strike us as being rather clever and sharp-witted; but the fact is that when it comes to the mercy of God (which this atheistic student apparently illustrated) we would do well to steer clear of slogans and smart answers – for the mercy of God shown to us in Christ is something so overwhelmingly glorious and so incredibly vast that we would be better served to pause at the thought of it and attempt to reflect more fully and seriously on what it means to say that God has had mercy on us.
So this is precisely what we will do today – we are going to spend the next few moments reflecting on the mercy of God, especially insofar as his mercy is extended to those of us who are most unworthy to receive it in the first place, and as much as this mercy is revealed so perfectly for us in who Jesus was and what he did, and why on earth God would have mercy on us at all.
Considering the readings we heard earlier (and again the lectionary has provided us with three rather challenging and difficult readings) the theme of God’s mercy may sound a rather odd choice at first, but I believe that when we pay careful attention to the readings we will begin to see that the theme of God’s mercy is indeed one that shines through as the undercurrent, the over-arching theme, that binds our three readings together.
I would put to you this morning that in each of our readings a vitally important aspect of God’s mercy is revealed and we need to come to terms with each one of these aspects if we want to understand God’s mercy more fully. These three aspects I will call the nature of God’s mercy, the shape of God’s mercy, and the reason for God’s mercy. We will take a closer look at each of these aspects by exploring the readings individually, highlighting in each case that aspect which we see present in the text and then at the end we will draw all these aspects into one solid image that will help us understand God’s mercy more fully.
But before we begin with any exploration of these texts we need to know where we will begin our exploration from – our vantage point, as it were – and there can be no better place to begin than with the simple confession that when it comes to the mercy of God we have, not a single one of us, been deserving recipients of it. We have not earned God’s mercy, we have not done anything that would stand as an achievement worthy of God’s mercy and this is the most fundamental truth to understanding God’s mercy, albeit a truth that we more often than not pay only lip-service to. We did not deserve God’s mercy – but in Christ he gave it anyway and he gave it generously!
Legend has it that a certain mother once approached the great military conqueror, Napoleon, seeking a pardon for her son who had committed a crime and would be hanged for it. The emperor replied that the young man had committed this particular offense twice and that justice demanded his death.
"But I don't ask for justice," the mother explained. "I plead for mercy."
"But your son does not deserve mercy," Napoleon replied.
"Sir," the woman cried, "it would not be mercy if he deserved it, and mercy is all I ask for."
"Well, then," the emperor said, "I will have mercy." And he spared the woman's son.
See friends, this is the greatest and most fundamental truth of mercy – it is not based on whether we deserve it or not, for heaven knows we don’t – it is given freely and generously by the sovereign decision of God himself. Mercy is not based on who we are and what we have done or not done; it is based on who God is, and what he has done in Christ.
Message:
So, with that core principle firmly established, let’s begin our exploration of our texts and see what we can learn about the nature, shape and reason for God’s mercy...
1. The Promise of God’s Invitation to the Outsider - Isaiah 56:1-8
The Nature of God’s Mercy:
In this brief but beautiful passage from Isaiah we hear God issuing a remarkable invitation to the most extraordinarily undeserving folk – or at least so we would call them, if we were in the shoes of those ancient Israelites that would have heard the prophet speak these words.
Imagine being part of a select group, a privileged club, that only allows certain people entrance and that the prime draw card of this group is its exclusivity – then the next time you come round for lunch you notice that there are all sorts of ‘unsavoury’ characters sitting at the table where you normally do... Shocked at the unacceptable state of things you walk over to the manager to ask what on earth is going on here; only for him to tell you that the owner of the club gave these people the invitation to come and enjoy lunch. What a radically generous invitation!
This is similar to the scene playing off before us in Isaiah 56 – God tells the people that he will invite the most unexpected people to draw near to him in worship, to come and experience his most awesome presence in the temple and that he will welcome their offerings and sacrifices with pleasure... we would have understood if God made this invitation the most upright of local people, the priests and the religious leaders, maybe a few others, but not the type of people we see listed here, not eunuchs – who were despised for their abhorrent and perverse sexual disposition – not foreigners – who were reduced in status to those who are unclean, unacceptable and not worth even being seen in their company, in fact, it was considered sinful for Israelites to associate in any meaningful way with foreigners because they were so despised!
Yet these are the very people that God invites to come and share in his salvation, he promises that he will give them a name (in other words, he will restore their dignity and heir personhood), he says that he will welcome them into his family (which, had always only been the privilege of the Israelites) – this is a radically generous invitation made purely on the grounds of God’s goodness and not in any way compelled by who these people were... This is mercy; God’s mercy!
It is in this passage then that we encounter the first aspect of God’s mercy that is vital to a deeper understanding of it – the nature of God’s mercy – that is that God’s mercy is radically generous and gracious. So much so that we would be astounded by the ‘class’ of person, the ‘type’ of individual, that receives God’s mercy.
See friends, as we’ve mentioned before from this pulpit, we are all too good at creating categories of people and labelling individuals, thereby determining whether or not they are good enough for this or that; judging whether people are worthy of our acceptance and invitation; and we have become increasingly talented at excluding people on all sorts of superficial grounds. But God will have none of it! He’s not interested in labels or categories or class or any other box that we tend to group people into – his mercy is for all! (And we’ll come to see this more clearly as we continue)
The nature of God’s mercy, this first aspect so vital to our understanding of it, is that it is radically generous and given to all – even, and perhaps especially, to those who we would consider undeserving, which is a rather rich judgement to make when we consider honestly our own position in this regard, but we’ll get on to that in a little while.
For now we have to move on to the second aspect of God’s mercy that we come to see more clearly in our gospel reading – that being the Shape of God’s mercy...
2. The fulfilment of God’s invitation to the Outsider - Matthew 15:21-28
The shape of God’s Mercy:
You might recall from our Isaiah reading that the passage began with these words: “Maintain justice and do what is right, for my salvation is close at hand and my righteousness will soon be revealed.” Now we turn to our gospel reading, in which we see Jesus engaging in an extremely dramatic and frankly rather controversial encounter with a Canaanite woman – and we would do well to remember the opening words from our Isaiah reading because it is in the very person of Jesus that God reveals his righteousness and offers his salvation. Jesus is the fulfilment of the promise made in Isaiah 56 and so he becomes the personification of God’s mercy – and I would call this the ‘shape’ of God’s mercy.
God’s mercy finds it’s shaping, it’s forming, it’s being made real and accessible for all those unsavoury characters we read of in Isaiah 56, in the person and work of Jesus, and we see this played out for us in the scene of Matthew 15:21-28.
We need to understand the dramatic nature of this encounter between Jesus and this Canaanite woman to truly appreciate the extent to which Jesus shows her mercy – the extent to which Jesus becomes the shape of God’s mercy for her... Firstly, it is no small matter that Jesus even bothered to speak to this woman in the first place. Now I know this might sound strange, I mean; why would Jesus not speak to anyone? Well, we need to bear in mind who the Canaanites were to the Jews, and that Jesus was after all a Jew, sent for and to the Jews primarily. The foreigners in Isaiah 56 had not become something different over night, they remained foreigners and despised at that too, it was only in Jesus that the promise of God’s invitation made in Isaiah 56 was fulfilled. So for Jesus, and his Jewish disciples, to be harassed by a foreign Canaanite (not to mention the fact of her being a woman and that it was frowned upon for woman to address men in public), was completely unacceptable and they were completely within their rights to show her away. Secondly, foreigners did not worship the God of the Jews, they had their collection of deities, and this foreign woman presumed to call upon Jesus as the one promised by the God of Israel for the people of Israel; in verse 22 we hear the woman crying out to Jesus, “O Lord, Son of David” a designation clearly reserved for the Messiah and used only in Jewish worship and speech of God. What gave this woman the right to presume to use this most holy name? Jesus did not only have good reason to ignore her, but also had good grounds on which to rebuke her for blaspheming!
Now, to be fair, there are some controversial commentators that point to Jesus’ handling of this situation and accuse him of upholding certain social and cultural biases that were clearly wrong – for example that he seems to condone using the descriptive term of “dogs” for foreigners and that he implies she is not worthy to receive what was sent for the Jews, etc. But nothing could be further from the truth and, though we don’t have time to explore this train of thought fully today (this might have to take place in a Bible study or another sermon on this text), it will suffice to point out that to hold this view of Jesus’ actions is utterly ridiculous simply by virtue of what we find elsewhere in the text – for example the very fact that Jesus was deliberately on his way to foreign territories to minister, in verse 21 we are told that Jesus was travelling to Tyre and Sidon to continue his ministry there and these were not Jewish cities. Moreover, throughout Matthew’s Gospel, and the other Gospels as well, Jesus has a consistently positive approach to the so-called foreigners, we need only remember Jesus’ encounters with the Samaritan woman at the well or the Roman centurion, we need only recall Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, and countless other instances in the Gospels where Jesus’ approach to foreigners reveals his acceptance of them, and serves to reject the theory that Jesus was acting unacceptably at this point.
However, if Jesus was not being deliberately racist, sexist, culturist or any other ‘ist toward this Canaanite woman, then there must surely be another reason for Jesus’ apparently rude and dismissive, if not insulting, behaviour – and I would put to you that there is indeed.
When we observe what takes place as the story unfolds, we notice that it was the disciples who came to Jesus and asked him to send the woman away. [You would remember that when we considered the feeding of the 5000 two weeks ago it was the disciples who, on that occasion also, asked Jesus to send the crowds away – and Jesus took it as an opportunity to teach a lesson that went deeper and stretched further than the miracle itself – this particular story is a continuation of the same method.] Jesus embraces this as an opportunity to teach the disciples that God’s salvation is for more than just the Jews (even though it is primarily for and from the Jews – and that must never be forgotten) and that the mercy God shows, the mercy that takes shape in Jesus, is vast enough to include – and in fact does include – all of humanity, it does not even exclude this most despised foreign Canaanite woman whom they derided by calling a dog.
For this reason Jesus played the cultural card and showed up the glaring short-comings of our human tendency to label and reject and categorize and exclude – and he proceeded to reveal the true nature and full shape of God’s mercy as that which is sufficient for all and given in Him.
But there is another very important dynamic at play in this encounter; and that is the response of the woman to Jesus’ remark. Jesus pushes the boundaries, and no doubt tests the woman’s desperation by telling her that it would not e right for him to give to her, or to the dogs, what rightly belonged to the Jews, or to the children. At this point anything can happen – she can walk off in a huff cursing him for insulting her so, she can confront him and accuse him of prejudice and lack of compassion, or she could maintain he desperate claim and continue to plead for his help (which would have certainly been the more humiliating option to take); and this is exactly what she does... she doesn’t demand an apology or defend her dignity, she doesn’t assume a position of pride and refuse his help, she accepts his words and humbly requests that he grants her mercy, even though she does not deserve it. Listen to her words in verse 27, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the children’s table”. WOW!
How’s that for humility and understanding that she in no way deserved what she was asking for – she appreciated with humility that she had no grounds, not race nor gender nor any other grounds, upon which she could demand that Jesus grants her request. She was pleading for mercy, and did so humbly, because she knew who she was – and she knew who Jesus was. He was the only One who could grant her God’s mercy, who could become the very personification, the actual shape of God’s mercy for her.
If only we would have the same posture before God more often... one of humility, knowing the vast and deep nature of God’s mercy and the fact that Jesus is the shape of that mercy, which only he can give – and will give – not because of who we are and what we’ve done, but because of who he is and what he has done!
This then is the second aspect of God’s mercy that is vital to a fuller appreciation of it – the fact that God’s mercy takes shape in Jesus Christ and in no other person or place. This we can only accept if we are humble enough to acknowledge that God’s mercy is not earned or deserved but is given, in Christ, freely to all.
And this leads us neatly to the final aspect of God’s mercy that we will consider today – the reason for God’s mercy, as we have called it – and this we encounter in our final reading from Romans 11.
3. The foundation of God’s Invitation to the Outsider - Romans 11:25-36
The Reason for God’s Mercy:
One of the most puzzling questions regarding God’s mercy, when we consider the extravagantly generous nature of it, and the wonderful shape it took in the person and work of Jesus, is; “why on earth would God do it?” Why would God show mercy, so extravagantly through his most beloved Son, to such undeserving creatures such as us? In other words, what is the reason for God’s mercy?
Well that reason is seen abundantly clearly in Romans 11:31... Paul, speaking about the position of the Jews after the fact of God’s mercy being revealed in Jesus to the gentiles, i.e. the foreigners whom they so despised, says that we have received God’s mercy in order that “... that they in turn may one day receive mercy...” through us as the sharers of that mercy.
See friends, firstly, the nature of God’s mercy is so vast and deep and extravagantly generous that it must surely be too much for us to keep to ourselves; and secondly, the shape that God’s mercy takes in Jesus is surely far too impressive and beautiful and awe-inspiring for us to not share it with others. And this makes clear the obvious reason for why God has shown us mercy; that is so that we might in turn show it to those who are in need of it – who happens to be every single person in the world – and Paul tells us this also in Romans 11:32, when he says that God desires to have mercy on all men (and women and children) all of us.
We received God’s mercy because He desires for us to share it with others, attempting to do so just as generously as he did to those of us who never deserved it, and attempting to do so just as beautifully as he did in Christ. Maybe not always succeeding, but definitely always attempting.
I believe that, if we truly appreciated the extravagant generosity of God’s mercy, and if we truly understood that his mercy is seen and received only in Christ, we would not hesitate for even a moment to share that mercy with others. It is only when we are fooled into thinking that we have deserved that mercy, or that we have now somehow lived up to its demands by virtue of our commitment to God, that we do not feel compelled to share it and show it to others.
This then is the third aspect of God’s mercy that is so vital to a true and full understanding of it – the reason for God’s mercy is that we might share it with all others.
Conclusion:
Friends, in conclusion, allow me to draw all three of these aspects that we encounter in these three different texts of Scripture into a single picture... God’s mercy is so wonderfully vast and extravagantly generous that it is given even to the most undeserving recipients – yes, even to you and me. God’s mercy is such a gloriously beautiful thing that it can only be seen and received in Christ Jesus, His Son, whom he loved and gave for us in mercy. And God’s mercy is such a humbling yet liberating thing that we could surely do no other than to show it often and show it generously to all those around us – to show it through our love for Christ and to show it especially to those whom we think don’t deserve it.
Finally, if we truly appreciated the truth and wonder of God’s mercy then we would sing with Paul the words with which he ends his discussion of it in this eleventh chapter of his letter to the Church in Rome when he says:
“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
“Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counsellor?”
“Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay them?”
For from him and through him and for him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen.”
