The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost- Year C - Rev. Aimee Baxter

Our assignment for this afternoon’s CORR (Conversations on Relationships and Race) meeting is to watch the Marvel superhero movie, Black Panther. It seems odd that we’d be watching a superhero movie for something like that but there are countless societal and cultural themes throughout the movie regarding race.

What also emerges strongly in the movie is mercy. Mercy is defined as compassion or forgiveness toward someone when it is within one’s power to punish or harm them.

The king, T’Challa, who is the Black Panther, wrestles throughout the movie with how to show and embody mercy while leading his people. His father tells him, “You’re a good man. It’s hard for a good man to be king.”

The movie starts with him preparing for battle where his General tells him, “Don’t freeze.” She knows him well enough to know that his heart might stand in the way of his ability to fight.

He wrestles with showing mercy as he pleads with his competitor for the throne and asks him to concede so he doesn’t have to kill him. He ends his pleading by encouraging him saying, “Your people need you.”

When he has the opportunity to kill the man who has harmed the people of his land, Wakanda, the man pleads for mercy; and while he is torn on whether to grant it, he ultimately does.

His mercy for others ends up opening the world of Wakanda to everyone else to receive the benefit of their technology and community. He declares, “We must find a way to look after each other as if we are all members of the same tribe.”

It’s interesting to watch the film through this lens because mercy becomes the thing his critics hold over his head. They know it leaves him vulnerable and, in their eyes, unwilling to “do what must be done”.

Mercy, and the struggle of when to give it, becomes a character in and of itself throughout the movie.

As I looked over our readings for today, I see mercy emerging as one of the main characters of each story we hear.

Moses implores God to show mercy to God’s people. We’re told, “The Lord said to Moses, ‘I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.’”

This is the biblical equivalent of, “Let me at ‘em!” or “Honey, you need to deal with your son!”

Moses appeals to God’s rational side by reminding God of the ways the people have been delivered by God to a higher purpose and calling. He also appeals to God’s mercy. “Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people.”

In other words, “Look, I know you’re really mad, but remember these are your people. You are invested in them. This isn’t who you are. You are a God of mercy.”

Our psalmist and Paul testify to knowing God as merciful.

The psalmist speaks to God’s loving-kindness and great compassion while confessing their sin with the assurance and hope of God’s forgiveness.

Paul exclaims in his letter to Timothy, “The grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.”

In our Gospel, we see the personification of that mercy in Jesus Christ. Just like King T’Challa, Jesus is receiving criticism for extending grace and love to a group of people that it is often withheld from.

Jesus responds with telling them parables of what it means to go after just one sheep that is lost and needs to be brought home. Or the joy in finding that one coin after searching up and down for it. He equates this effort and energy put into finding the one lost thing with the joy and celebration that comes when one sinner repents.

You can deduce from Jesus’ words and actions that mercy is really important even when, and perhaps especially when, it flies in the face of all rationality and justification for a different response.

Can you believe “this fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them”? Well yeah, actually I can. I believe it because mercy is a main character not just in the Gospels, but as you can see from our readings today, throughout the entire story of the Scriptures.

And the best part is we are invited into that story.

As participants in the story of our faith, what does it look like for mercy to show up as a main character in our lives?

I have a hard time thinking about the word mercy without thinking about a good friend of mine that I grew up with named Brad Griffith. Unfortunately, he died tragically this summer; so maybe that’s why he is especially in the forefront of my heart and mind.

Brad started a non-profit ministry in Columbus, GA called Clement Arts to serve foster and adoptive families through offering free classes in the arts to children in foster care and fundraising through concerts for adoptive families. I had the pleasure of partnering in this work with him for several years while we lived in Columbus.

I asked him one day how he came up with the name, Clement Arts. He explained to me that the word clement means ‘bent toward mercy’. He said, “I can’t imagine a better way to describe ministry to orphans than that.”

I’m thinking maybe that’s how mercy becomes a main character in our lives.

That we live in a way where our hearts, minds and souls are bent toward mercy.

That our actions are so grace-filled that our critics chastise us for it.

That we remember the mercy we have been given and freely give it away.

May we be clement this day and always. Amen.