On a hospital visit. Next to the sick church member lies a woman. Blind, deaf. It is impossible to speak to her. She is now about fifty years old. She became like this after a brain injury at the age of six. It is not possible to have contact with her unless you have received special training. A human being. A human being like me. With thoughts, feelings. Lonely. Isolated. So frail, in a hospital bed.

On a visit to a centre where severely handicapped people are lovingly received and cared for. How broken is this creation of which the Lord once said that it was good, and how broken is man as image of God, that man of whom God spoke saying, “And behold, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31).

You are filled with compassion. Are you experiencing a part of the compassion that filled Christ as he sought those who were lost? He was so often moved with compassion. The great High Priest, who gave himself out of a love that transcends all human measures. For a moment you see it. For a moment you experience it. And you see everything differently. Your disabled fellow man, even he or she with whom you can make little or no contact. A human being created by God, destined to praise and glorify God eternally, and now this. If you yourself are strong and healthy, it becomes almost an accusation, since I am no better or more worthy than the most severely disabled fellow man. How much the Saviour was moved through a limitless love. All the love of God was in his heart. In this manner he looked at people (Luke 1:78), in this way he approached them, and thus he tried to win them: for love and through love. Driven by compassion: the Priest, the High Priest.

Respect and gratitude fill you as you see how patiently and lovingly the caregivers and helpers interact with these disabled ones. What patience. What wisdom. What a capacity for feeling and sensitivity. How precious it is when you may give yourself in such a manner in service of people whose glory has become tarnished, knowing that you are one of them. Truly, we are all tarnished through sin and wholly dependent on mercy, the grace and love and faithfulness of God. On Jesus Christ. More than knowledge, more than anything else, is that love, the mercy of which Jesus is the fount. You see it. It brings you to amazement. It silences you, and you feel shame for all those times when you fell short from seeing with eyes full of heartfelt mercy. That you have always more or less taken it for granted, that you yourself are not handicapped. Not the stalwart and the strong, not the rich and the great are acceptable in the eyes of him who has created us to know him and love him from pure and simple hearts. Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy and not sacrifice.

This word is also meant for our churches. If what Peter writes in 1 Peter 2:9 cannot be said of us (“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light”), if that is not true of our churches, then everything else will disgrace us and count against us. If I don’t have love, I am nothing (1 Cor. 13). If anyone does not love the Lord, a curse be on him. Come, O Lord! What is it that should concern us as churches and individuals? God’s mercy, the mercy that has come to us, who have been elected from eternity, in the gospel of Jesus Christ. The mercy by which the Lord has been pleased to open our hearts with his heavenly power, softening them and filling them with his welcoming love. Once without mercy. Terrible: if a person is without this mercy. Terrible, also, when we leave others without mercy when we were the ones who could give it to them.

I see a priestly church. At the feet of the great High Priest. The church lets itself be filled with the mercy of its High Priest who prays for it every day. I am learning to see with the eyes of Christ. A bond of faith develops between his heart and our hearts. Christ among us: the High Priest.

We are busy with many things, with many church matters and problems. Time and money are wasted on matters that would never have arisen if we had kept the mercy of Christ in mind. We did not do this, or we did it very poorly. What do we expect now? Do we think that we will be praised? Mercy is what I desire and not churchly sacrifice.

Heavy, light, in between or of other shades, Christian Reformed, Reformed, Liberated, Dutch Reformed, or whatever else: Where are the priests? Is Christ in us?

Does our church affiliation then not matter?

Of course it does. It is even completely biblical to address the question of the true church and to think about its boundaries. However, if there is no mercy, no priestliness, no attitude of Jesus Christ, who humbled himself to the point of hanging cursed on the cross, then all these names are muck and filth. We no longer dare say them. We are either too lax or too orthodox or too liberal or whatever else. But who has the mind of Christ? In Middelburg and in Sliedrecht, in Enschede and Hoogeveen, in Amsterdam and Groningen? And you? Who has the mind of Christ?

How priestly are our churches? I was challenged by this question and I am laying it before you. The purpose is that we as churches will take a closer look at this question. Let there be an urgent prayer for the Spirit of Pentecost to make you and me into priests. We, fighters and warriors, we watchmen over this and that. Are we truly watching and fighting with the mind of Christ?