Mercy and Justice Sermon
About this Sermon on Mercy and Justice
In this sermon on Genesis 18, Hebrews 12, and Luke 19, I explore how true mercy begins with seeing individual faces and hearing real stories. Abraham pleads for the righteous in Sodom not because of abstract ethics, but because someone he loves—Lot—lives there. Jesus echoes this heart in Luke 19 as He weeps over Jerusalem, showing that divine justice is never indifferent to suffering. Mercy isn’t a loophole to justice—it’s its fulfillment. And it starts not with a principle, but with a name.
Introduction
You ever pick a passage from Genesis for a sermon, and then when Sunday morning comes around, you’re like, “You know, there were easier passages to pick from for today”?
I chose this one because it is difficult and because it makes us wrestle with one of the oldest, deepest questions: Does anyone care about the innocent sufferer?
Because if we care, life gets uncomfortable. And we’re faced with another question: If we do care about the innocent sufferer, then what do we mean by justice?
That question doesn’t start in Sodom—it starts four chapters into the Bible. Cain grows needless angry and jealous and murders his brother. God comes and says, “Cain! What have you done? Listen, your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground.”
The bible begins with a cry-a cry for justice. And that cry echoes throughout Scripture.
· Hagar, cast aside into the wilderness by Abraham and Sarah.
· Joseph, betrayed by his brothers and sold into slavery.
· Israel, enslaved in Egypt.
· The prophets, crying out for justice while their fellow citizens shrug –“That’s just how things are sometimes.”
All asking, “Does anyone care?”
Abraham and the Cry for Justice
And in Genesis 18, we have a story that’s not just about a city behaving badly. It’s about people crying out to God in pain and wondering if justice means anything if it leaves them behind or ignores them.
I love how the story is told. Abraham is passing by. He is on his way to another place and he hears God says, “Whoa, whoa, whoa! The amount of prayers and pleading coming out of these cities is great. I need to see if what they are saying is true, and then do something about it.”
And we see that God responds to the oppressed before he acts toward the oppressor. And Abraham doesn’t stand back and cheer for judgment. He steps forward and pleads: “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty, forty-five? Forty? Thirty? Twenty? Ten?”
He’s not bargaining. He’s interceding. He’s praying.
He’s asking, “Can there be justice that makes space for mercy? Can a few good lives matter enough to hold back destruction?”
In Defense of Victims
Before we go further, let’s pause. Because someone might be wondering, “Why are we talking so much about mercy? What about the people who were hurt?”
That’s a good and necessary question. It deserves to be heard.
Mercy is never about forgetting the victims. It’s never about erasing accountability. God heard Abel’s blood crying out from the ground. God saw Hagar weeping in the desert. God rescued Israel from Pharaoh’s cruelty. God is never indifferent to suffering
But in this moment, Abraham isn’t asking for mercy for the wicked. He’s asking that the innocent not be swept away in judgment meant for the guilty. He’s not pleading for the unrepentant—he’s interceding for the righteous
It’s a prayer we still need: that evil be stopped, but not at the cost of the vulnerable. That justice not become a flood that washes away the good with the bad.
And here’s the radical thing about God: God cares for both the victim and the wrongdoer. Not because the wrongdoer deserves it, but because mercy is in God’s nature.
Mercy doesn’t weaken justice—it completes it. It refuses to become cruelty in the name of principle. It refuses to ignore the vulnerable, even among the guilty. That’s what Abraham is leaning on.
Justice Without Mercy is Cruel
In our Genesis passage, God is about to “visit the city.” Justice is coming. That’s the concept the writer is getting across.
So Abraham thinks about that and asks, “So, when you bring justice, you do take into consideration the innocent, right? Justice is not justice if it also harms the innocent, right God?”
During Abraham’s time, concepts of justice was fire and destruction. It did not take into account the innocent.
In our time, justice often comes dressed in procedure, but it can be just as devastating:
· Nearly 1,000 children remain permanently separated from their parents after being detained at the border. I had a parishioner who specializes in trauma care. She was at the border in those warehouse-like dorms with those now needlessly orphaned kids. At night the kids would sing and cry out to God. Like our passage, does any one care?
· American citizens and veterans have been wrongly deported, without due process.
· In war, civilian deaths are labeled “collateral damage.” In Gaza, tens of thousands dead. Children, men, and women starving while food is blocked.
And the hard question rises up to heaven, it rises up in Dutchess, it rises up to Albany, it rises up to Washington: “Does anyone care?”
And people say, “We must have justice.”
Yes. But justice that ignores suffering is just cruelty with added paperwork.
And we must allow ourselves to step into and live into the messiness of our work as Christians. If we harden ourselves and forget the victims and just shake our heads and say, “That’s just how it’s done. We’re flawed. What can you do?” If we do that, then we become less human.
We want laws and their enforcement, and we want mercy – most of the time.
Jonah: When Mercy Makes You Mad
No one embodies this conversation more vividly than the prophet Jonah. God called Jonah to go to Nineveh (Mosul, Iraq). You remember the story. God tells Jonah to go and Jonah says, “Uh uh, I’m not going to them. No way.”
God calls him to enter the rough and dangerous east, and he gets on a boat that goes west. God called Jonah to the violence of Nineveh, and Jonah booked a cruise to the Spanish Riviera.
It’s hard to navigate the topic of justice and mercy.
As you know, Jonah ends up overboard the ship, is swallowed by a large fish, and is brought back to land. He receives mercy.
He begrudgingly goes to Nineveh, preaches a 5-word sermon, and they repent. Jonah is furious! (“Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” 5 words in Hebrew)
“I knew you were merciful, God. That’s why I didn’t want to come! Slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love!”
He stomps his feet and goes outside the city, finds shade under a plant, and waits for fire to fall. And God says, “Jonah, you care more about that plant giving you shade than about the people. Should I not care about this great city?”
And the book of Jonah ends not with Jonah repenting but with God’s question: Do you care like I care?
Abraham and Lot: When Mercy Has a Face
In our 20s, Barb and I lived in Marin County, just north of San Francisco. Across the bay from where we lived stood San Quentin State Penitentiary. It’s a towering, imposing building.
I like to play basketball and I joined a group that plays basketball with the incarcerated men there. We met at the tower entrance. We signed some scary-sounding waivers. And through the turns of many keys and the opening and slamming of many doors, we were led to the large recreation yard there.
If you shot at this basket, in the background was the life-wing – people serving out life sentences. And if you shot at that basket, in the background was a guard tower with plenty of weaponry in site.
Needless to say, the guys we played against had the home-court advantage.
Over the course of playing, I got to know this one guy from northern California. He was a couple of inches taller than me. He opened up. He was serving 20 years. He admitted to his mistake. He was enrolled at San Quentin’s internal school, bettering himself, so that when he got out, he could thrive. He missed his son.
I remember thinking – 20 more years. I had only been alive 27 at that point.
After that, I would often pray when I’d see San Quentin. I’d pray for those who work there and live there. But something changed. I didn’t pray for “inmates” or “the guilty,” but I prayed for him.
I thought about all of this 2 weeks ago, because it’s been 20 years.
This is what I’ve learned – things change when the topic has a name or a face. Mercy starts with a name, a face, a voice. Not just some topic rattled off by a talking head on television or a loudmouth on the radio. Mercy starts when you know someone.
Abraham’s Intercession Begins with Love
As I studied this passage, this question kept surfacing – why does Abraham care about Sodom? He doesn’t live there. He’s passing through.
And then I did some background research and realized it’s because his nephew Lot lives in the city. Mercy starts with a name.
And when someone you love is at risk, “collateral damage” is no longer acceptable.
That’s how compassion often starts:
· You care about immigration when your neighbor, classmate or friend fears deportation, although they are here through legal means. They fear going to their court appointment and then being separated from family and then sent to a prison in South America, or one in Africa, or to Guantanamo Bay.
· You care about healthcare reform when your neighbor skips a treatment because of the co-pay. Or that the insurance refuses to cover life-changing treatment.
· You care about what happens in D.C. because it affects funding for places like Dutchess Outreach who help serve our most vulnerable people in Dutchess County.
· You care about free lunch programs when you know that students are going home and coming to school hungry.
Lot.
It starts with a name, and then it grows into a prayer for the whole city.
The God Who Weeps
This is where I turn to Jesus.
Throughout Scripture, the cries keep coming:
· Abel’s blood cries for justice.
· Hagar asks, “Does anyone see me?”
· The prophets ask, “How long, O Lord?”
· The leper cries, “Have mercy on me!”
And time and again, what we read in the Gospels is this: “And Jesus stopped and turned to them.”
Jesus stops for the blind, the bleeding, the foreigner, and the forgotten.
Then one day, he comes near Jerusalem, and what does he do?
He weeps.
In Luke 19:41 we read, “As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it.”
He doesn’t shout for vengeance. He doesn’t cheer for destruction. He weeps because he knows the innocent will suffer.
The Blood that Speaks a Better Word
Many years later, a Christian would think about this very topic. They would think of Abel and they would think of Jesus. The writer would reflect, “And to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.”
What’s the better word?
Abel cried out for justice and Jesus’ blood cries out for mercy and redemption.
In Jesus, justice and mercy are no longer rivals. They are held together in the body of the innocent one who was willing to suffer for others. The Judge becomes the intercessor. The one who could condemn becomes the one who is condemned. He bears injustice to show us what real justrice looks like.
Conclusion: Mercy Starts with a Name
The truth is, we’re all Jonah. We’ve been spared consequences we do deserve. We’ve all received mercy we could never earn. The question becomes, then, what will we do with it?
Will we give mercy a name? Will we allow mercy to have a face?
Will we care about the person in the blast zone, in the cage, or the courtoom?
Mercy starts with a name, but it grows to a prayer as big as God.
And the Lord who weeps over Jerusalem stills weeps today. Still he asks, “Do you care like I care?”
It’s tempting to stay in the shade of comfort, but you have been shown mercy.
Give it your voice, your prayers, your presence. Advocate for the person the world forgets. Learn someone’s story. Speak up where silence is easier. Serve in a place where mercy is rare. Support work that lifts up those who are hurting.
Because that is what people who’ve been shared are supposed to do.
