To the Saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Kilgore: Grace to you and Peace from God our Father.
Jesus says, “greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” (St. John 15:13) God describes His love with words like Compassion. God’s Compassion leads Him to do things no fair minded, reasonable person would. Love… true love is not fair. True love… God’s love, while it is Just, is, above all, merciful and full of grace and truth. (St. John 1:14) His Love is certainly not reasonable. If His love were perfectly reasonable, none of us would exist. If His love was perfectly fair, Adam would have surely dropped dead the moment He tried to take for himself the one thing not meant for him from the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil.
But our Lord’s Compassion leads Him to show His love for us in that while we were still sinners, -- not His friends, but while we were still His enemies, -- He gave His Son to death for us. (Romans 5:8) God loves and forgives His enemies; He also commands us to love and forgive our enemies. What’s reasonable about that? What’s fair about a father sending his son to die for everyone else’s sin? What father does that to his son? Why, the Father Who wants to show His love for you and all mankind and to glorify His Son Whom He loves.
The Father who cannot die, has sent His Son, the Son Whom He always loves and glorifies, to do what must be done to save those whom He created in His image and still loves, despite their sinful rebellion. That’s not fair or reasonable; THAT is true love. True Love suffers all things.
The Father could not die, but His Son, when He became a Man in every way, when, as a Man, He took sin onto Himself without ever having sinned Himself, God’s Son could and did die. Death, the unavoidable consequence of Adam’s sin, came for Jesus. With the death of this One Perfectly Righteous Man, Death has been, once and for all, completely satisfied. The debt of all sin, paid in full, by Jesus. That’s not fair; that’s not reasonable. But That is the kind of love with which your heavenly Father loves you. He loves you more than you’ve ever hated Him. He loves you more deeply than any sin or stumbling block you’ve ever put in His way. He loves you and holds onto you more tenaciously than any grudge you’ve ever held against anyone. He helps you when no one else can or will, when everyone else just walks on by.
The Compassion of our Lord Jesus, the Christ, is the basis of our prayer, today. With His Compassion, He rescues us from whatever may hurt us. Whatever may hurt us includes everything that hurt Jesus both while He walked the earth and when He went to Jerusalem’s cross. He warned His disciples that the hate and persecution directed at Him would also be directed at His disciples. (St. John 15:18-25)
God defines love as giving your life for your friends, and His Word shows us, it’s also something He does when He lays down His life for His enemies that He may take it up again. (St. John 10:17) This world does not care much for God’s definition of love. Even to the wisest people under the sun, it does not make sense; it’s not fair. It results in the strong being made weak, the truly wise looking like fools, the wealthy realizing they’re only rich when they are poor. The meek inheriting the earth; the poor in spirit and those persecuted for Righteousness sake receiving the Kingdom of Heaven; those who mourn are being comforted; those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are being satisfied; and those who are suffering for Jesus’ sake are rejoicing in the midst it.
Love is something this world keeps trying to redefine as something completely different from what it is according to God’s Word. This world speaks of love as something couples fall in and out of. To this world, love is something you have to keep alive or else it dies; many, who believe their love has died, expect they should go their separate ways rather than live and work together as God would have them, learning to confess their sins to each other and forgive each other’s sins in Jesus’ Name.
Others in this world, speak of love as though never telling a loved one living in unrepentant sin he needs to live each day like all Christians do: in repentance and faith that God’s Way is higher than our way, that His Son forgives us and transforms us through His Word and Spirit. But, if you love someone according to this world’s idea of love, then you can never tell anyone what they like is bad or what they want to be is wrong. But none of that describes the love which God shows us in His Son, Jesus. If you believe what scripture says about sin, and eternal death and hell; if you believe how Jesus describes hell as the outer darkness where there is nothing but weeping, unquenchable fire, and gnashing of teeth, along with eternal hunger and thirst. If you believe God, that He has provided The Way to avoid all this torment forever; if you believe Him, how much do you have to hate someone to not tell them about Jesus and what He has done and continues to do for them despite their sin? When it comes to sharing with them the perfect Righteousness of Christ, how much more do you fear unbelievers than you do God? How much do you really love God, if you desire the affection of unbelieving friends, neighbors, and family members more than you desire to share with them the favor and righteousness of God in Christ?
Unrepentant sin is deadly. Even the little sins are deadly when not repented of. What unrepentant sinners are doing or saying is something God has called evil; unrepentant sin will keep them from inheriting the Kingdom of Heaven, unless they repent and believe in Christ crucified for sinners.
We’re all sinners born into sin, (Psalm 51:5; Romans 3:23) who need to be born again from above. (St. John 3:3, 7) We need what God gives in His Word and in baptism. We’re all sinners in need of being transformed by the renewing of our minds. (Romans 12:2).We needs what God gives in His Word and in His Supper.
So, Jesus gives us a parable to help transform us (and those who, like the lawyer, are trying to justify themselves) to understand what our duty to our neighbors is and what God’s love is. As Jesus tells the parable, the Samaritan had compassion on the half-dead man along the side of the road between Jerusalem and Jericho. The priest and Levite no doubt both had important business to attend to at the Temple in Jerusalem. Their duties required them to remain clean. Touching a man covered with unclean blood would have rendered the priest and the Levite unfit for duty. So, they shamefully ignored the life-and-death need of the half-dead man. They had no compassion for their fellow traveler. They were more concerned with getting all their work done rather than helping a brother along the way. Their glory was in the work they had planned to accomplish, not in their undeserved help of a neighbor in need.
But Jesus shows us what mercy looks like. He shows us how to be a good neighbor as we go about our business in this world. He shows us what His compassion looks like.
His compassion sees someone suffering and His compassion leads Him to join the one who suffers in his suffering. That is what the Samaritan we call good did for the half-dead man. The no-good-Samaritan joined the half-dead man in His suffering. He considered the suffering of the man who was half-dead his own. This is what it means to have compassion for someone. This is what it means for God to have compassion on us.
By sending His Son into the human flesh of the Virgin Mary, God Himself has seen and joined us in our suffering. That is what it means for God to be with us. He is Immanuel: God with us. He has joined Himself to your suffering. He has taken the cause of your suffering (your sin) onto Himself. Like the Samaritan we call good, God has become what is despised by this world. But despite how the world despises Him, He joins us in our suffering along the way. He joins us, binds up our wounds, and sets us on His own beast of burden; He brings us here to this holy place, this place of holy hospitality, where we can be fed good food, recover and grow strong, and he continues to provide everything we need to get well soon.
Love covers a multitude of frustrations and hurt feelings. Love covers a multitude of sins. (1 Peter 4:8) God’s love in Christ covers them all.
Lord Jesus Christ, in Your deep compassion You rescue us from whatever may hurt us (Collect); You show us mercy that never ends; You do not bear grudges against those who trust in You; You publish peace and bring good news of salvation to all,
In Jesus’s Name, Amen.