Luke 24:36b-48
While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’
They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, ‘Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.
While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.
Then he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’
Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.’
We all like mercy, just not too much of it. Lindsay Holifield is a singer/songwriter and artist in Alabama, who struggled severely with anorexia for 14 years. She tells a story of being in a treatment facility for her sixteenth birthday. While other girls gathered for dinners and parties,
Lindsay remembers her charge nurse Lupe bringing her a piece of cake and she sobbed at the thought of such high calorie food entering her body. That was the first birthday she’d spend inpatient at a treatment facility, but not her last.
For nearly a decade and a half, Lindsay couldn’t subdue this self-destructive drive that had taken hold of her. She writes, “I desperately wanted to wake up each day without having to submit afresh to the hellish existence of self-starvation and running till my lungs felt on the verge of collapse. But I felt chained to this destructive cycle deep into my bones, despite my best intentions.”
Many treatment providers, likely friends and family too, lambasted Lindsay for not having enough motivation or courage or strength to overcome the voice inside her that demanded self-destruction. Everyone, from doctors to mental health clinicians, told her that if she wanted to get better, really wanted it, she’d have to try harder, pull herself up by her bootstraps and will her way into recovery. But, as Lindsay explains, “After each attempt under this approach, I would fall flat on my face. The despair of my situation began to swallow me whole: there was no way out, because I could not yell at myself enough to make myself well.”
We are all too familiar with the work harder advice, the tough love attitude, the “you just have to want it more” approach. You’ve likely said and received similar sentiments as Lindsay had. When folks are struggling, sad, or scared for any number of reasons, we find it much easier to say “just get over it”, “work harder”, “stop being so weak, or afraid, or fill in the blank”.To the person with anxiety or mental health problems we say deal with it. Or the one grieving we say “how long”? Or the person in an abusive relationship we say “just leave”. That’s the way of our culture. And sometimes it works, sometimes this does the job we hoped it would and we see results. I’m not discounting that. But many times, like with Lindsay, this strategy fails.
At twenty six, Lindsay sat in a green folding chair on a farm in Nashville, TN. In the folding chair across from her sat a woman who fiercely supported her recovery; but there was no yelling or giving a firm lecture. Alternatively, with tenderness unknown to Lindsay, the woman explained how her struggles made sense in light of her own experiences. “Perhaps,” the woman said gently, “your brain was trying to survive great pain. Perhaps you were simply trying to make the ache go away the best way you knew how.”
And that’s all Lindsay ever needed to hear. The compassion shown her by this woman “broke something open within her”. Everyone else was far too afraid that such softness, such mercy would further enable Lindsay’s self-harm. “But they were wrong” Lindsay wrote, “It is precisely this compassion, [this mercy] that softened my armored heart”.
We all like mercy, just not too much. Too much mercy is a hand out, it’s enabling, it’s embracing excuses. If we are too extravagant with mercy or compassion or understanding,
we think not only do we make people who are weak, weaker, but that the one extending such mercy is weak also. And if there is one thing in our strength obsessed, confidence driven, power hungry world we can’t tolerate, it’s weakness. But here is where Jesus and the Gospel confront us.
The disciples are huddled together at some house in Jerusalem, likely where they’ve been hiding since the crucifixion. Cleopas and an unnamed disciple (maybe his wife) had just arrived telling all the other disciples about their encounter with the risen Jesus on their way to a town called Emmaus. Suddenly, Jesus stands among the disciples, who are startled and terrified, unsure of what’s happening.
And notice what Jesus doesn’t say. He doesn’t say, “why are you hiding in this house? Get it together! You should be strong and courageous, not sitting here as terrified cowards!”
He doesn’t say “I told you this would happen, why didn’t you listen to me?!”
Instead, he offers them peace. He shows them his hands and his side. He invites them to touch and see that it's truly him. And then just to go the extra step, to show more mercy, to instill just a bit more peace in their troubled hearts, he eats for them, with them (something he had done with them, likely every day for nearly three years). The disciples were told no less than three times that Jesus must suffer, die, and be resurrected.
If there was ever an instance in which Jesus could have berated them, grown impatient with them, it was at this encounter! But he didn’t. He encourages them, helps them understand what all is said in Scripture, and tells them they are still the people who will share with the whole world the repentance and forgiveness that comes only from Jesus.
Throughout this gospel, Jesus does berate and grow impatient with folks, just not the ones you'd expect. Think of the woman who is a sinner and Simon the Pharisee, who couldn’t believe Jesus allowed this woman to touch him. And who does Jesus rebuke? It wasn’t the sinful woman.
I think of Martha who thought she was in the right and wanted Jesus to correct Mary.Or the older brother in the prodigal son and the lavish love, (not a stern rebuke) by the father to the son who squandered his life away.
Jesus is impatient, correcting, condemning even, not to those who are weak, suffering, and longing for relief or forgiveness or to be better. But rather to those who are certain, self-assured, and assume they are right. He rebukes those who are too strict with the law and too stingy with mercy.
So take this gospel as a defense of weakness and mercy. After all, Jesus himself chose to be weak and extended so much mercy for you and for me that it put him to death on a cross.
It's in our weakness that Christ's power is made perfect, demonstrating that true strength is found not in willpower or self assurance or tough love,
but in dependence on a savior crucified and risen.
Recovery for Lindsay did not come quickly. But she attributes the lavish compassion extended to her by that woman on the farm in Nashville for radically changing her life.
It was mercy that quieted the voice of condemnation and slowly turned her from self-destruction to life.
So for our worry about too much mercy, Lindsay proclaims,
“I am a living testament that compassion is what softens hearts of stone, armored up by self-protection... I would have died many times over save for the compassion that chased me down and embraced me, and being held in such tender kindness was the only thing that could have changed my fate. I believe this for mental health, yes, but more importantly, I believe this for the rescue of all of humanity. The grace of God is the sole agent of resurrection and change.”
This post resurrection appearance reveals that Christ stands among the weak and brokenhearted, the joyful yet doubting, the hurting and fearful offering mercy, comfort, and hope just as he did with his first disciples.
To be clear, the goal is to not remain weak or hurting; doubting or afraid. Jesus visited the disciples not to perpetuate their fears and doubts but to help them grow in fearlessness and faith. And he did this through mercy and grace, just as he does today for you and me.
May we embody this Gospel and never be afraid of too much mercy. For in our weakness God’s strength and mercy shines through. Amen.
