The Problem With Mercy

Sermon by: Fr. Bob Wickizer

Liturgical Readings: Malachi 3:1-4; Psalm 84; Hebrews 2:14-18; Luke 2:22-40

It’s great to be back with you, and happy new year, and happy epiphany to you. I must confess to you that I preached this sermon last week.  This is the first time in 25 years I have ever repeated a sermon. It is for good reason… you need to hear this.  

Some will hear this sermon and immediately think that I am veering dangerously close to that thing no one wants to talk about – politics. That is not the subject or intent of this reflection. I want to focus your attention on the central mission of Jesus, the core teaching of Christian faith, and how a heretical ideology that emerged in Christian faith several times over the centuries, now threatens to redefine Christianity and that will make the church political.

I served the Episcopal Church and many good people, in the Diocese of Washington DC.

My bishop for ten of those eleven years was a very fine man, Bishop John Chane.  He had been a drummer in a rock band in Ohio.  I played drums in a rock band until I went to college and the band went on a European tour and gold records.  That is not to imply that all drummers are great people, or that bishop-drummers are something special.  He and I shared something that helped our relationship. I do not know the current bishop there, The Right Reverend Marianne Budde.  But I am proud of her and proud of our church.

As a criterion for whether we are Christians, and a notion of whether we are going in the direction of God’s desire for us, we should consider one, simple concept. Mercy. Mercy can be found in the bible over a hundred times.  Many are familiar verses. Here are a few verses about mercy.

• Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. “Judge not, and you will not be judged; 
• Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
• Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”
• Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
• The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
• He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

You have probably seen images of Orthodox Jews praying loudly at the Western wall of the Temple in Jerusalem.  That area is sometimes called the “Wailing Wall” because faithful Jews beat their breasts and call out “Raq ali” (Have mercy on me) as they insert their written prayer petitions into chinks in the wall of the ancient building. It is exactly the same words the paralytic called out to Jesus as he walked by, “Have mercy on me.” And Jesus healed him.

Mercy is the common theme that runs from Genesis to Revelation. When asked to summarize the Law and the Prophets of the Hebrew bible, Jesus replied, “Love God, Love your neighbor.” But the action required by love, is to be merciful.  I call it “the mathematics of mercy.” We sin hundreds of times.  Some of us do that daily.  We do not deserve mercy, but God gives us mercy anyway. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. It is about our actions towards others we do not know or understand. Christian faith is never all about me. It is all about we.

As I listened to people process the post-inaugural prayer service this week, I realized that many people do not understand some facts about this situation.  The Episcopal Church has held a prayer service at Washington National Cathedral for every president since 1933. I have worked at one of them. Sermons from past bishops reveal that many times, bishops have addressed the president directly, especially in times of crisis like WWII, Vietnam, 9/11, etc. In one situation, President George H.W. Bush (who grew up as an Episcopalian) went to Presiding Bishop Edmund Browning to discuss his plans for what became the Gulf War. President Bush laid out his rationale for this invasion, and the presiding bishop listened patiently.  When he finished, President Bush asked for the support of the Episcopal Church. Without hesitation, Bishop Browning said, “With all due respect sir, two wrongs do not make a right.” President Bush left furious. The bottom line here is that if our bishops and clergy do not speak truth to power, who will?

I am going to be brutally frank here.  The problem with mercy is that Christianity has been personalized and monetized by hucksters selling fire insurance for more than a century.  Mercy is hard to sell. It requires soul-searching and righteous action.  Going to heaven to avoid hell is an easy sell. So easy that the practitioners of this biblical heresy have their own TV channels, private jets, and mansions.  They are really afraid that their big money scam will be exposed for the fraud that it is. 

But the people who are truly afraid in this country and around the world are on the margins. The poor, the immigrant (which the bible refers to as the “sojourner in your land”), the disabled, the elderly, children, women, people with different-colored skin, people of differing sexual orientations, and prisoners. These people are afraid because the path to political power lately has all been about division and demonizing groups and creating hatred along with heaping doses of confusion. But that’s not why we are here today.

The ministry and message of Jesus was all about inclusion of people on the margins. That is why when someone is baptized as a Christian, we all repeat our baptismal vows ending with the vow to “respect the freedom and dignity of EVERY human being.” Jesus embraced the poor, the disabled, women, the elderly. He included them in ways that violated social norms of his time.  He showed mercy to people in all walks of life. He did not judge them.

A real Christian does what Jesus did and not what the guy on television tells you.  We are to show mercy to ALL others including people who might make us uncomfortable. Bishop Budde, in the nicest way possible, asked the President of the United States to show mercy on the people who are afraid right now.                       

And all hell broke loose.

The prosperity gospel consumes the majority of what is called “Christianity” today. It is a transactional proposition wherein people give their money to the church and then God forgives them so they can go to heaven. It is a biblical heresy condemned many times by the church since the first century. Megachurches have grown from nothing because of this religious ideology. But it IS a heresy. Prosperity gospel proponents were offended by an Episcopal Bishop telling the president that the central message of Christianity revolves around mercy and not their scam for money. They felt threatened, and they reacted with loud vengeance. They will now do anything to destroy or discredit our truth-telling bishop.  And maybe that is the highest form of praise.

2/2 Fact check: Now, two weeks after the event, attendance at Washington National Cathedral is higher than it has been in sixty years. Secondly, a recent post on X claimed that Bishop Budde had been removed from her post.  That is false. She is still the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.

I am not telling you this to say anything about the government or the current administration. I am addressing a grotesque distortion of Christianity into a transactional sale of heaven to avoid going to hell. That is not why Jesus appeared to us and died on a cross.  Asking anyone to be merciful and respect the freedom and dignity of other people including people you don’t understand or agree with, is NOT political. 

It is the message of Jesus.