“Son of God, have mercy on me!” So says blind Bartimaeus to Jesus from the side of the road. Jesus, accompanied by a large crowd of followers, stops in his tracks and asks the beggar, “What do you want me to do for you?” When the blind man responds, “My teacher, let me see again,” Jesus rewards his faith and grants Bartimaeus the restoration of his vision. We are told the formerly blind man joins the procession of Jesus’s followers. It may be that he is rejoicing with gratitude for the mercy he has received.
Each of today’s lessons illustrates something about the joy any person might feel when he or she is the recipient of mercy. The prophet Jeremiah prepares the way for the people of Israel when he proclaims, “Sing aloud with gladness...give praise and say, ‘Save, O Lord, your people, the remnant of Israel.” Jeremiah also provides the Lord’s response to the peoples’ request: “See, I am going to bring them from the north, from the farthest parts of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, those with child and those in labor, a great company, they shall return here...and with consolations, I shall lead them back.’” We understand that at this point in the history of Israel, the people have been in exile for many years, largely because of their faithlessness and disobedience. Even so, it is clear that God wants to bring them home, to show them the graciousness of his abundant mercy.
The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews reinforces the Lord’s willingness to rescue and save, as he did for Bartimaeus, any who put their faith in him. He suggests that Christ’s purpose in his status of “permanent priesthood” in heaven is always to intercede on our behalf: “Consequently, he is able for all time to save those who approach God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.”
I wonder if the people of Israel were able to believe they deserved God’s mercy? Do we ourselves trust that we have done enough to earn the Lord’s mercy? Our guilt and shame may sometimes prevent us from believing we deserve forgiveness. Sadly, if truth be told, we don’t always believe others are worthy of our forgiveness, much less the mercy of the Lord. No wonder we have a hard time believing that we deserve forgiveness, especially from other persons we feel we have harmed. If our conscience bothers us, we may ask someone for forgiveness halfway believing we won’t receive it. What a joy it is when the other person does forgive us! That joy is the blessing of mercy.
I am reminded of the time when Corrie ten Boom was placed in the position of offering forgiveness and mercy to someone. You may have read or heard of her book, The Hiding Place, which tells the story of her Dutch family’s efforts to save Jews in Holland from the Nazi death camps. Although they were able to save many people, ultimately their hiding place was discovered, and Corrie and her family were taken to a German concentration camp, where her father and sister were killed by the Nazis. Corrie alone managed to survive, and in 1947 she returned to Germany to deliver a message of forgiveness to the Germans, a message she believed they sorely needed.
As she herself told this story in 1972, Corrie said to the Germans assembled before her, “When we confess our sins, God casts them into the deepest ocean, gone forever.” Just imagine how difficult it must have been for Corrie to say those words, to offer the hope of God’s loving mercy to the people whose nation was directly responsible for the deaths of so many innocent people, including her father and sister. Only her own great faith in God’s love and mercy could have enabled her to do that.
After she delivered her message, the silent crowd dispersed, but one man came toward her. Corrie told what happened next in this way: “One moment, I saw the overcoat and the brown hat; the next, a blue uniform and a visored cap with its skull and crossbones...It came back with a rush: the huge room with its harsh overhead lights, the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes, the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister’s frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin...”
“Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out: ‘A fine message, fraulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!’”
What would I have done had I been in Corrie’s place? What would any of us have done if confronted in this way by someone we knew to be responsible for the deaths of our loved ones? I am sure I would not have had the courage to do what Corrie ten Boom did.
At first, she fumbled with her purse, looking down at her feet. Though the man did not appear to recognize her, he told her that he had been a guard at Ravensbruck, where Corrie and her sister were, but that after the war, he had become a Christian. He said, “I know God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fraulein, will you forgive me?”
Even though she felt frozen in place, unable to raise her hand to grasp the hand of the man in front of her, Corrie ten Boom said she realized that “forgiveness is an act of the will,” not the heart. When she finally took the man’s hand in her own, something remarkable happened. She felt as if a current raced from her shoulder down her arm and into the “joined hands.” She felt the current as a healing warmth and she exclaimed, “I forgive you, brother! With all my heart!”
In that moment, Corrie ten Boom may very well have recalled the words of Jesus from the cross, when he prayed for those who crucified him: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Is this not what we refer to as “Amazing Grace”?
From the wayward children of Israel, from the ones who nailed Christ to the cross, we can learn that God is truly always more willing to grant us forgiveness and mercy than we ever are to ask for it. Even when we are too stubborn to do what we believe we ought to do to earn God’s favor, it is still available to us. Like the Nazi prison guard who sought forgiveness from Corrie ten Boom—and received it—we can put our faith in the lavish mercy of God.
In this time of what has been called bitter division among the various groups in our country, mercy and forgiveness are much in need. We may not agree with one another on every issue, but as Christians, we are called to extend the hand of civility and friendship to each other. Laying our divisions aside, we can begin to find common ground in our love of Christ.
At his first inauguration, on March 4, 1861, just a month before the first shots of the Civil War were fired at Fort Sumter, Abraham Lincoln closed his inaugural address with these impassioned words: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
The Christ we follow is a powerful and generous Lord, as blind Bartimaeus discovered. As the prophet Jeremiah reveals, our God rejoices in every opportunity to shower us with mercy. We pray that the better angels of our nature will enable us to receive the Lord’s mercy and offer it, along with our love, to our neighbors. AMEN.
S
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