In Defense of Too Much Mercy Sermon Audio – Cross of Grace

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 woma