Sermon - June 8, 2008 - Ordinary Time: Sunday 10

Pastor Heisley

Guido Brunetti is my favorite detective, right now. He’s the brightest in the Venice police department, according to his creator, fiction writer Donna Leon. Commisario Brunetti spends his days fighting bureaucracy with a purpose. There are several people who work with him that are highly competent. But most of the people on the force, especially his superiors, are fools. Most stand in the way of justice. Most have no idea of what it means to be down and out and in need of help. 

Guido does. It was just born in him. People seek his counsel on all sorts of matters. Ironically, a murder happens very soon after every time someone asks him to help them. Every single time. I can’t figure it out. 

But murders give Guido more opportunities to show his strongest character trait: mercy. He knows how to show mercy. He understands people and is willing to give them a break. Leniency. And he’s compassionate. He tries to save people from their pain, from their suffering, by solving mysteries of their lives, by bringing the truth to light. 

When you read the Guido Brunetti mysteries you have to ask yourself where he gets the strength to keep doing what he does. Every story includes a comment like, “Of course, Brunetti is not a religious man.” 

So where does his strength, his wisdom, his compassion, his mercy come from? It’s all about relationship. He has a brilliant, beautiful, university professor wife and two highly intelligent and loving teenage children. Brunetti has family, relationship, he eats lunch with his family almost every day. He apologizes when he can’t get home. He has dinner with them every evening. He calls on the rare occasions when he can’t make it. He lives in the heart of rich relationships. 

Jesus sat at dinner with tax collectors and a wide variety of sinners. It was a rarified sort of gathering. First, because most people had barely enough to survive, let alone to entertain strangers. Second, because this particular meal was populated with unsavory characters, the kind of people that you just don’t eat with, even if you have the money to do it. Jesus sat at dinner with them, sat and developed relationships with them, sat with them, showed them mercy. 

It was a hectic time for Jesus. If you look at everything that is going on in the ninth chapter of Matthew’s gospel, you see that people just won’t let Jesus alone. He’s just come from driving demons out of people and into swine; he’s just come from a boat trip; he’s just called Matthew to follow him, Matthew, a much-despised tax collector, someone who took from poor Jews and gave to rich Romans. Everywhere he goes he heals people. And for all of this, the Pharisees criticize him. He says to them, “’Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.’” 

I am reminded of a now sainted member of this congregation. Philip Lowe died last week at the age of 40. But even when he was fighting severe pain, even when he was afraid because of the cancer that was destroying his body, he came to church. He served as a member of the altar guild or he counted money. Or he just worshipped. I think it was because he understood that church is a place where God’s mercy is given in community. 

Healing is given in community. Wholeness is given in community even in the midst of our dying. Guido Brunetti how to show mercy. Philip knew where to find it. Dining at the table with Jesus and with all of the other tax collectors and sinners. 

It seems like I’ve been saying this too often in sermons, but here goes again: I have a confession to make. I often run out of mercy. I too often feel mean and spiteful. And I fight these feelings. I pray for healing and wholeness. I pray for the ability to look at each of you with compassion and I pray to be able to show the mercy that is shown to me in my brokenness. And every single time, every single time that we gather around the table together, celebrating the meal that is given to us as the ultimate gift of mercy, eating bread and drinking wine together, I taste mercy and I am refueled and I can go on with my struggle. 

Jesus went on and on. He left the dinner with the tax collectors and sinners and suddenly was following a leader of the community to his home where his daughter had just died. On the way, walking behind this very prominent man, this fine upstanding man in the community, Jesus was touched, physically touched by an unclean woman. She had been bleeding profusely. Unclean. She was shunned by the community. Left to her own devices. Probably left to die. But Jesus didn’t shun her. He healed her and in doing so compromised his own status. He became unclean. 

Mercy and compassion can cause us, can require us, to compromise our standards. But we nevertheless are called to be merciful, to show leniency when people around us are at odds with life. We are called to be compassionate, even when we don’t know what to do. 

It’s frequent that when we open the doors here, for a wedding or for a funeral, for example, people show up who need help. It’s also frequent that our neighborhood ministries coordinator, Donna, is not here when the needy appear, because she’s taking care of so many other needs. What do we say to these people? What do we do for them? I often come up short. They want to talk to the pastor because they think they know that he’ll give them money. But I can’t. So, I do what I can. I Listen. Affirm. Give counsel. Give food, if we have any here. Most of all, give spiritual support. 

Mercy is not easy. Compassion is not easy. Both are attributes of God, personified in Jesus, and even though they are not easy, we are asked to show them, to demonstrate them, to live them. Mercy has been shown to us in the waters of Holy Baptism. Mercy is shown to us over and over in Holy Communion. 

Now, and in every now, we are to show mercy, leniency, compassion. But we are not Brunettis. We know where our supply of mercy comes from. When your mercy tanks are running on empty like mine sometimes does, know that here there is mercy. When you feel like you can’t be compassionate, you can’t forgive, you can’t understand, know that here there is a supply of compassion that is waiting for you, there is a relationship that beckons you, there are tax collectors and sinners who understand you and long to share life with you. 

Together we are deeply in need. And in the power of the Holy Spirit’s outpouring of grace and mercy through the love of Jesus our Savior, our needs are met. 

Amen

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