The Fourth Sunday after Trinity

“His mercies never come to an end.”

You may have heard me mention before the name Dirk Willems.

Dirk Willems lived in the Netherlands in the 1500s and is a figure who, in certain religious circles, is looked up to as an exemplar of what – I think – we are being urged to think about in our readings this morning.

Willems was an anabaptist, a group that was an offshoot of the protestant reformation at that time which held views contrary to the dominant Roman Catholic church and other protestant groups. The modern ancestors of the Anabaptists are those whom we call the Amish, Hutterites, or Mennonites – here on PEI, those who drive around in horse-drawn buggies.

Willems was arrested in his home town of Asperen in the Netherlands and charged with crimes against the church, the penalty of such crimes was to be burned alive at the stake. Dirk would become one of some 1500 anabaptist to be killed in a similar way during the 16th century. He was imprisoned but managed to cobble together a crude rope and escape over a wall, knowing that if he remained, he faced certain death.

His prison guards discovered his escape and pursued him, eventually chasing him out over a frozen lake. The ice was thin, but Dirk managed to make his way across it, but his closest pursuer, a prison guard, did not. The ice broke and the guard fell into the frigid water.

Faced with the decision to flee to likely safety and let the prison guard die in the water or turn and help him, facing possible recapture, Willems turned around and hauled the prison guard out of the water, saving his life.

Willems was recaptured, returned to prison, tortured, and on May 16th, 1569, was burned alive at the stake. Court records of the time stated that they hoped his death would be an example to others that believed as he did.

There are some fairly obvious things we can say about Willems and Christ and their sacrifice for even those who would go on to kill them, but rather than focusing on his death I want us to instead think about that moment on the ice in which Willems chose to turn; faced with saving his own life at the cost of another’s or sacrificing it for another, faced with the temptation to wield power, to be self-interested, Willems instead chose mercy.

In our Bible study on James this week, and for the last few weeks, we have talked about that portion of James chapter 1 when James talks about what religion ought to look like: first, to take care of widows and orphans, and second, to keep oneself ‘unstained from the world’. And I asked our group what we thought that meant, “To keep oneself unstained from the world”? I think what we came to was that it meant not succumbing to or being too influenced by the ways of the world as opposed to those of God’s Kingdom. In this world the first are first and the last are last, but not in God’s Kingdom; in this world the meek and lowly are seldom rewarded for their humility, and all that stuff about forgiving someone seventy-times-seven times? Dream on.

This is not an age of forgiveness or compassion, but an age of cancellation. Think the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, say the wrong thing – and you’ll never be forgiven, you’ll be cancelled, expunged, and not given another chance.  Now, of course we ought to be held to account for the things we say and do to others, after all we are to love our neighbours as ourselves, but what room is left nowadays for compassion and mercy? For forgiveness 0r for transformation? For the very things of God that God calls us to live out.

The Gospel lesson today begins with the exhortation for us to, “be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” Do not judge, do not condemn; forgive, and you’ll be forgiven; give, and receive. “Can the blind guide the blind? Will not both fall into the pit?” asks the Gospel a little later, a question that’s made a bit clearer when it moves on to talk about eyes.

Sometimes we see things in others that drive us crazy. We experience their sins, or shortcomings, the little frustrating parts of their personalities that tick us off or cause us to judge them or think ill of them – but when, the Gospel asks, is the last time we looked in a mirror? In others we see little splinters in their eyes like seeing a tiny bit of spinach stuck between their two front teeth, but we ignore the fact that we have a giant log in our own eye, or a whole head of lettuce in our teeth. Who are we that we should judge?

This part of the Gospel is a call to self-examination, by thinking, praying, and seeking forgiveness for our own shortcomings. This kind of self-knowledge about us helps us to develop empathy and compassion for others – compassion here being the same word as mercy. If we want to be merciful as our father is merciful then we must first look at ourselves before we judge another. God’s redemptive work in our hearts is the work of mercy, of loving even those who deserve it least (hint: if our minds first think of other people and not ourselves, then we still have a giant piece of lettuce in our teeth).

But this is kind of a simple point, and maybe that’s okay for a sermon – be merciful, don’t judge, take a long look at yourself before you judge another. But I want to go a little further and circle back to Dirk Willems.

Though Dirk Willems’ story is not really about judgement, per se, it is about mercy and it’s a reminder to us that when we strive to live out the pricniples of God’s Kingdom: compassion or mercy, forgiveness, faith, charity, etc, we cannot expect to receive it back in kind. Our temptation is to think that it’s right to be merciful because then we will receive mercy, and the same for forgiveness and charity, and while it’s true that God might give these things back to us in kind, it is not so with the world.

Jesus offered all of these things right to the cross and yet was killed. Dirk Willems, on the verge of freedom, showed mercy to those who sought to kill him and was shown no mercy in return.

We are going to forgive in this life and receive no forgiveness back, we will give charitably and remain poor materially, we will offer mercy and still have our heads put on the block.

We can strive to live the principles of the Kingdom, but we may still be crucified for it. In this time in the world that’s so obsessed with power, and might, and cancelling – God’s grace, mercy, and love – and those who are messengers of it – will be seen as a threat.

And this is the source and cause of Paul’s hopeful words in the Epistle today when he says that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.  All creation, he says, we ourselves have been groaning for deliverance from this world and from these awful ways of being that reject forgiveness, transformation, charity, and mercy as the principles by which we should live by and which we should show to others. We are all groaning in longing for the coming of God’s Kingdom and its ways in all its fulness.

Yet even during this waiting in an imperfect, judgemental, and hostile world, even when we are rejected and persecuted for showing mercy and offering forgiveness, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end,” Lamentations reminds us. Even when it feels like we are alone against the world, we are not, for “His mercies never come to an end.” Amen.