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Let me start with an aphorism. Aphorisms at Epiphany are short sentences that have deep theological underpinnings. Our prime example, of course, is: Wherever you are on your spiritual journey you have a place at Epiphany.
We have a whole page on the Epiphany website dedicated to aphorisms… it explains them. Check it out.
The one I want to introduce today is this: Mercy is God’s go to response. You see, if God’s nature is love, then mercy must be God’s go to response, even when judgment and condemnation are justified.
We meet this aphorism – mercy is God’s go to response – on the road to Emmaus.
We find two disciples leaving Jerusalem for Emmaus. It is a 7-mile journey, which is a lot of time to reflect on just how badly they had gotten it wrong.
For 3 years they had been around Jesus, and never had they witnessed such power. Parables that flipped the paradigm, and not theirs alone, but entire crowds of people who, in a moment, would share a collective “aha.”
Jesus could walk for days and fast for months, it seemed. Demons ran from him; illness bowed to him. There were fish and loaves. There was walking on water. He raised people from the dead: Lazarus, 4 days in the tomb… What the heck! And then, there was his power over the hierarchy, the Sadducees and Pharisees, rendered mute by his logic and scriptural insight.
That was power – and it died so easily, withering unexpectedly at the first serious pushback by Rome. The Messiah, literally meaning the one chosen by God… and now they can’t even find his body. How could they have so completely overestimated his power? How could they have so fully convinced themselves that he was from God? And if he was from God, what did that say about God? What did that say about the power of God? And so, as they walked they were spinning out.
Then a guy comes up from behind them on the path, probably a speed walker like some of the Epiphany pilgrims. His presence breaks them out of their perseveration as they turn their attention from the death of their movement, and the Messiah who led it, to the life of a regular guy walking down the road.
We know who he is. They don’t. The author tells us: “Their eyes were kept from recognizing him” (Luke 24:16). They could see, of course; they just couldn’t see rightly, because they beheld the wrong paradigm of power. A paradigm that put the body first and missed the presence of the soul.
What they didn’t see walking next to them in that moment is the same thing they didn’t see walking next to them when Jesus was walking next to them prior to the crucifixion… the very soul of God.
And that is because they didn’t know what God looks like – even after all that time. They did not recognize Jesus on the road to Emmaus, not because he was hidden, but because mercy is harder to see than power.
And that is the point, the through line of this sermon: as I said at the beginning… It is mercy, and mercy above all other attributes, that represents the nature, the essence, the very soul of God. Which is why mercy is God’s go to response.
And so, back to the road. Jesus joins them as they walk. He listens, and then responds to their despair by unfolding for them how the mercy of God has been the very nature of God from the beginning: from the Garden of Eden, to Mount Sinai, as sung by the psalmist, and lamented by the prophets… Mercy is God’s go to response.
Genesis chapter 3, the fall, begins the story. There is relationship rupture, then exile. Adam and Eve are cast out of the garden (Genesis 3:23–24), barred from ever going back by an angel with a flaming sword.
They wander into a new realm… the realm of freedom, now bracketed by birth and death. To cover their shame, they safety-pin fig leaves across their loins.
They are cast out of the Garden as a consequence of their actions… actions do have consequences. And yet even so, God decides to join them in exile, mercifully clothing them with animal skins (Genesis 3:21). Judgment does not have the final word. God’s response to the first human disobedience is not annihilation, but mercy: because mercy is God’s go to response.
Next the story takes us to Mount Sinai when Moses comes down with the Ten Commandments only to find the people of Israel worshipping a golden calf. In anger, he shatters the tablets and grinds the golden calf into dust, mixing it with water and making them drink it.
Then back up the mountain he goes to get a new set of tablets. This time, however, God reveals God’s full identity: “I am the Lord your God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love…” (Exodus 34:6–7 para).
The sequence of this Sinai story is important. This revelation of God’s full self comes not before human failure, but after. It is after humanity screws up that God identifies God’s self with mercy. Which means mercy is not something God does occasionally. It is who God is. Mercy sits at the center of the soul of God.
The Psalmists have sung this truth into the worship life Israel for thousands of years. In the Psalter mercy is mentioned more than 150 times; repeating over and over again the claim: “His mercy endures forever” (Psalm 136).
Mercy is the rhythm of worship. It is the language of faith; a faith too often forgotten.
And it was this forgotten faith that frustrated the prophets, Hosea in particular. He recounts God’s response to Israel’s unfaithfulness: “How can I give you up (Ephraim)?… My heart recoils within me; and yet, my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger” (Hosea 11:8–9).
God has every right to judge… God does know the difference between right and wrong. There are consequences for actions in the kingdom of God. And yet, God resists judgment, because God’s instinct is not to condemn. God’s instinct is to restore. In fact, God is willing to let God’s own heart break before enforcing right retribution for humanity’s actions – because God is merciful.
And what makes this mercy irritating is that it is universally applied. We want God to be merciful when it is good for us, and judgmental when our frenemies screw up.
We observe this frustration through the prophet Jonah. God asks him to go to the city of Nineveh and tell those pagans that if they don’t change their ways they will die. He tells them. They change. They live. And Jonah is oddly incensed, screaming: “I knew that you were a gracious and merciful God…” (Jonah 4:2).
And so, we see that God’s mercy even extends to our enemies; to outsiders, to those we would rather see judged.
On that long walk to Emmaus this is how Jesus interpreted for them the things about himself revealed in scripture, rounding out a character sketch that pattern matches to the cross, and then, logically, leads to resurrection.
The cross – to the tomb – to resurrection is the sequence that ultimately allows us to understand the aphorism that mercy is God’s go to response.
You see, when Rome taunted Jesus “to come down off the cross” he could have. No one to ever live was as personally powerful as Jesus.
Instead, God chose to break the rule of death, to break a core principle that sits at the center of all created things… that everything dies.
God broke this rule to express an even deeper truth: that mercy is the core expression of love and God is love, and God is in charge. God rules. God reigns. Love wins. Resurrection punctuates this point: for love, as the Psalmist sings, is a mercy that endures forever.
And yet, even with their hearts burning within them, even sensing the truth that their God is a merciful god, those folks on the road to Emmaus could not see it- until the breaking of the bread.
Then, everything shifts. “When Jesus was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it… Then their eyes were opened, then they could see- suddenly Jesus was everywhere.
Recognized through relationship. Through presence. Through encounter.
That is where love lives – in the space in between everything: like water for fish, or air for us, except even more so. Love lives in between electrons and protons and neurons; in between neuro-synapses; in between the sun and the moon and the stars; in between seeds and saplings and trees; in between the clicks on a clock and across all time; in between you and me and our worst enemy.
Mercy is the most powerful force in the universe and when expressed even over a simple meal, maybe especially over a simple meal it reveals the very presence of God- everywhere, in everybody, which is why the communion table sits at the center of worship, and everyone is welcome.
God doesn’t treat us as we rightly deserve. God, instead, by God’s preference, by God’s nature, by God’s compassion invites us to a meal.
And when God does, like those folks on the road to Emmaus We stop. We turn around, returning, knowing that we no longer need to run from Rome. We no longer need to dodge the angst of death- because Jesus has risen there is something more powerful… mercy; there is something more enduring… mercy; there is something more fundamental… mercy; mercy endures forever.
Which is why mercy is God’s go to response.