Fourth Sunday after Trinity 2026
We are now in Trinitytide with its emphasis on practical application of Gospel truths. We learned in the first two weeks of Trinity season of the importance, indeed, the primacy of love. Last week, we were taught that we are to add to love, joyful humility, such as delights in even the least desirable being retrieved, redeemed by God. Today, we learn about the importance of mercy, more particularly our need to give and receive mercy.
Our Epistle from Romans Chapter 8 speaks to our present condition - waiting. Awaiting the fullness of redemption that Christ promises to bring when he returns in glory. St. Paul writes of the incomparable glory that shall be revealed in us - Such glory makes all suffering in the present unworthy of any comparisons. Glory - the shorthand of St. Paul - to describe the presence of God; like that in the shekinah cloud - the same that was a pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night in the wilderness; the same shekinah glory that accompanied the ark of the covenant. A brightness, a splendor emanating from God’s presence. The promise of God’s glory coming in its fullness makes all comparisons of our circumstances, our suffering unworthy of true consideration.
The anticipation, the waiting is not just the present state of humans, All creation awaits the restoration of all things. Mankind’s decision in the Garden subjected all of creation to vanity; this groaning, laboring will give birth to new creation. All of the created order awaits a return to the perfection of the Garden - even more so because the perfection of the Garden could and did pass away because of sin. The new Garden, the heavenly Jerusalem along with the new earth will represent a perfect perfection in which it will be impossible for sin to spoil and defile God’s new creation.
For sin and death have been vanquished by Christ’s conquest - all that remains is the clean-up campaign of the defeated foe. Much like the European campaign in which Hitler’s days were numbered with the success of Normandy, the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Christ is in the mop-up phase. This may seem contrary to our groanings, our sufferings, our distractions, but this is what is really real. We are in process - as St. Paul says of entering into the glorious liberty of the children of God. Awaiting full adoption as sons, even the redemption of our bodies. God is with us and all that is happening in the present is intended for our sanctification. He encourages us to embrace the challenges of the present and not respond to the pressures in ways that undercut our discipleship.
St. Paul gives us instruction on the pressure, the groaning of waiting. There is always a temptation to lash out by directing our criticism, our attention toward what others are doing wrong.
Our Gospel contains instruction about how we are to live as children of the King, as brothers and sisters in Christ, awaiting his coming again. We are to be people of profound mercy, because we stand in constant need of mountains of mercy which our Lord has lavished upon us and therefore all of our interactions with others, inside the church and outside, must be undergirded with lavish mercy - the same mercy that we know we need and for which we depend now and in the day of judgment.
Our Gospel is from St. Luke Chapter 6, where Jesus begins by commanding his disciples to be merciful as their heavenly Father is merciful unto them. What a standard! Jesus tells them to look at what mercy they have received from God and then apply that measure to those around them.
Let this understanding of what one has objectively received from God determine one’s subjective estimate of the merits/failures of others around you. Jesus mentions here the issue of judgment. He says judge not lest ye be judged. Our culture loves this one. They love to trot this line out anytime there is a call to a higher standard or higher power. Who are you to judge? I think it is helpful to understand what Jesus is actually saying here or rather begin by what he is not saying here. He is not calling us to refuse to discern between truth and error, or goodness and evil. Instead, he is warning us against hasty judgments when we don’t know intentions; which is a majority of interactions with those around us. You may think you know what goes on in another person’s heart, but don’t be so sure. When it comes to blatant sins - outright theft, adultery and so on - it is not I who judges but the law of God. These things are, on their face, determined to be wrong. What Jesus is criticizing and forbidding is jumping to conclusions about the “spirit” or the “motivation” of actions left to discretion.
The sad reality is that a condemning spirit that jumps to conclusions about others is often deceived about the grave sins and flaws that rest within themselves.
For our own souls' health, Jesus commands us not to condemn, that is to sentence someone in our hearts, minds, words, to a certain outcome, an unchangeable verdict. In relenting from this mindset we will not be condemned. Forgive and ye shall be forgiven. We must forgive. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that we deny the wrongness of a wrong act; instead, it is an admission that we have wronged God in so many ways, yet he extends forgiveness. Jesus gives an example of how much we have wronged the Lord and how meager in comparison is the debt of others. Our Lord in Matthew Chapter 18 tells the story of a man who owed 10,000 talents - billions of dollars - to a king and the king forgave the debt and the forgiven man, but then the man goes out immediately and brutally collects a debt of another subject in the amount of thousands of dollars.
It stands to reason that one would be very forgiving when billions had been forgiven yet this was not the case. Beloved, many of us have been wronged but we must leave that to the King for his judgment. Forgiveness does not mean that we deny the wrongness of the act that needs to be forgiven; rather, it is a decision of the will that we stand in need of infinite forgiveness and this has been lavished upon us through Jesus' loving sacrifice. This sacrifice, this gift of mercy, must order how we think about the sins of others, the legitimate failing of others. Proverbs 19:11 suggests this attitude of charity. It says, “Good sense and discretion make a man slow to anger, and it is to one’s glory to overlook an offense.”
Indeed, we notice that the measure we give to other people is often that which we receive from them. If you have a reputation of being exacting with people, don’t be surprised if they are exacting in response to you and your actions. Jesus commands us to show mercy, to defer judgment, to not condemn, to be forgiving.
In doing so we receive an overflowing abundance of the very things that we need. We need mercy, forgiveness, kindness, from the Almighty who grants freely and we shouldn’t be surprised that we receive this in good order from other people when we are ourselves merciful. Be a person of mercy, trust in the Lord, leave your case with Him and God will give you all these things in abundance in the life to come and even markers of this reward, indications in the present.
He shows the absurdity of being unmerciful, unforgiving. He likens it to being blind and then trying to lead other blind persons in the right path. What confidence, what self-delusion does it take to be blind and think you are better situated to lead, better qualified to direct? He then gives an even more absurd example of one with a beam in his own eye trying to remove a speck from the eye of another. A speck is a smallest sliver of wood; and even a speck can render the eye useless despite its small size.
How much more useless is the eye when one has a beam, a large plank of wood in it. Jesus says that those who are sensitive to the needs of others, aware of the faults of others should avoid the hypocrisy of disregarding greater impediments to sight, more obvious, more blatant while trying to perform sensitive surgery on another’s speck. Jesus is commanding us to scrutinize our own lives, our own sins, take the light of the Gospel into our own sinful hearts and minds FIRST and FOREMOST. This will require such attention if we are honest with ourselves that we will have little energy to concern ourselves with even noticing the specks in other’s eyes. We should be very exacting with our own lives and more gracious and merciful with those around us. In all these circumstances, we will quickly realize that we need mercy. We need God to forbear his righteous, perfect judgment of our true sins. In living this way we will be more charitable, more merciful with those matters of conscience, those matters of sanctification that another needs.
Beloved, Jesus commands us to cultivate a charitable spirit which speaks mercy to others. Not that we deny the reality of sin; not that we deny its evil but that we turn to Jesus, the author and finisher of the faith, and ask Him to give mercy to me and to thee, to grant repentance and a better mind to me and to thee. So before we take Holy Communion, let us examine ourselves. Take a few moments and consider our own sins - the things that remain hidden, that remain conveniently veiled from the view of others but are exposed clearly in the sight of God. After considering our own sinfulness, let us plead mercy and repentance for others around us. That God will grant mercy to those around us so that we all might stand before God, clothed in the righteousness of Christ, the purest mercy of God toward us. Let us plead for the mercy we need, knowing that it is God’s good pleasure to give to us that which we desire, which we need, for His Son’s sake. Beloved, let us be merciful as our heavenly Father is merciful. Amen.
