This is the original, to view the Toronto version, click here: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.ca/2016/09/hosea-66-matthew-913-i-desire-mercy-not.html
Our scripture that we are looking at today comes from Matthew 9:13: “But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."”
I desire mercy…
Summer is on its way. Alvin has a great car. It is fancy. He has a Lincoln that he spent a lot of time fixing up himself. He came by the office the other day and took me for a cruise – on one of the rare days when it wasn’t raining. It is nice. He did a lot of work fixing it up. It sort of reminded me of my younger days. I remember when I was a teenager. I was blessed to be able to afford a car that I could fix up a little bit too. Here’s a picture of it…
Okay that’s not my car – that is Fred Flintstone’s mobile but that isn’t entirely dissimilar from my car. My car was only worth $100 and see how Fred’s car is propelled… It only moves because he runs with his feet sticking out the bottom. That was sort of like my Pontiac. It, like Fred’s car, didn’t have any floorboards at all on the passenger’s side – so my passengers had to be careful not to drop anything on the floor because it would be gone. It was allegedly a two-door but the driver’s door never worked. This sometimes made it a little difficult especially considering one of my friends for part of this time was confined to a wheelchair so whenever I gave them a ride anywhere I would either have to climb over them to get into the car or more likely get in Dukes of Hazard style. (You remember the Duke’s of Hazard where they would climb in through the windows instead of using the door?) – Actually, before I was done with my car, we always had to get in Dukes of Hazard style because the other door broke too. Nonetheless I loved my first car. It was all mine. It did have one good thing about it. It had four really nice moon discs. They were shiny, they were good solid hubcaps and they were really cool.
‘I desire mercy’ is a quote from our text today. I remember I used to let friends of mine drive my car for a number of different reasons. One friend of mine – Billy, he’s a great guy, he really is– we’re teenagers and he has his learner’s licence. We load the car up with many of our friends and we go cruising around the town. At one point we decide to go through the drive through and get some water to drink (we couldn’t afford to buy anything else) so – Billy is still driving – he takes us through the drive through and he cuts the corner to close and ‘crunch’ – there goes my front moon disk and then instead of stopping, (because he is an inexperienced driver) he keeps going and ‘crunch’; there goes a second one. Billy is so upset as he is chased from my car by our friends. He starts walking home feeling quite sad. I take over driving. We order enough waters from the A&W for everyone in the car and one for Billy too – remember the quote from the scriptures, ‘I desire mercy’ – we pull up beside him. He comes up to the car and then we – well – we pelt him with our waters. Okay maybe that is not a good example of mercy. We sacrificed our water instead of offering mercy. Whoops. We got it a little backwards.
Jesus said, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice’. This is significant.
Look at what is happening in our text today. Jesus is having one of his all too familiar conflicts with the religious teachers. Verse 9 records that Jesus is walking along after performing a sensational faith healing in front of a large audience, Verse 8. Verse 9, he sees a tax collector and Jesus invites this tax collector over for dinner – no, he doesn’t actually. He really invites himself over to the tax collector’s house for dinner and the tax collector (Matthew) accepts.
Now we should put things in perspective a little bit here. Jesus is famous. He is like a televangelist before TV with all of his faith healings (Matthew 8:2-4; 8:14-16, 9:2-8, 9:18-26; cf. Mark 1:40, Luke 5:12-14; Mark 1:29-34, Luke 4:38-41; Mark 2:3-12, Luke 5:18-26; Mark 5:22-43, Luke 8:41-56) and exorcisms (Matthew 8:28-24; cf. Mark 5:1-17, Luke 8:26-37) and he even controls the weather (Matthew 8:23-27; cf. Mark 4:36-41, Luke 8:22-25).[1] More than that even: with his high popularity ratings he is kind of like an earlier version of popular TV shows: ‘Judean Idol’ or ‘Survivor Palestine’ with a socio-politico-religious bent or something like that. Jesus is as popular as Jonathan Toews and his Blackhawks are this week as they have just won the Stanley Cup. He is as popular as any rock star or soccer player in the World Cup that has started this week. Just like contemporary celebrities, crowds are following Jesus everywhere he is going. He even has to hop on a boat after the miracle of the fish and the loaves to get away from them and then in front of his disciples and whoever else was on the Sea of Galilee at that time he even calms the storm (Matthew 8:18-27; Mark 4:36-41; Luke 8:22-25). Jesus is a pretty popular celebrity preacher and all the people are following him,[2] presumably instead of the other Rabbis and Pharisees, and this celebrity Jesus sees this tax collector and he invites himself over for dinner.
Anybody have a favourite celebrity here? Call out a name or two…Alvin what if Stevie Y invited himself over to your place for dinner, would you accept? Of course. This is what Matthew does.
Now there is more. Who is Matthew, this fellow who Jesus has invited himself over to his house? Matthew is a tax collector. Strictly speaking he is more like a customs official, but it was the same idea and expressed with the same Greek word: either way he collected taxes for Rome.[3] I have a clip for you from Corner Gas. You all know Corner Gas right? A good Saskatchewan show: Side note, did you know Brent Butt and the whole big Butt family used to go to the Tisdale Corps of The Salvation Army. We saw their names on the old rolls when we were posted there. Anyway, this clip shows what some people still think about taxmen in our day and age:
It wasn’t entirely different in Jesus’ day – only it was a little worse. Do you remember who controlled Palestine in Jesus’ day? The Romans – the Superpower of the day. Palestine was an occupied territory. I celebrated D-Day with the veterans last weekend. Paying taxes to the Romans would be the same of the Dutch or the French paying taxes to the Nazis. It would be like Afghanistan paying taxes to NATO or Iraq paying taxes to the USA. The Americans – in their own revolution – cited as one of their causes for starting that war the fact that they didn’t want to pay taxes even to support their own military. People generally aren’t so fond of paying taxes. As a Judean, for Matthew, collecting taxes from his own people to pay Caesar would be like collaborating with the enemy (cf. Matthew 22:15-22, Mark 12:13-17, Luke 20:20-26). This is what Matthew would have been doing in essence, as he was sitting in his tariff/tax booth (Matthew 9:9).[4]
So here is Jesus, a celebrity preacher, who some people know is even the Messiah and some of those think as a part of this he will destroy the Superpower and free the occupied territories in Palestine and now Jesus goes and invites himself over to one of the collaborators places for dinner.[5]
So here Jesus’ adversaries, the Pharisees, think they see a weakness in Jesus. They think that they can create a scandal that will discredit him and by extension increase their own power and popularity. The general people in Palestine at this time don’t support the occupying forces – they want to be free and some of them want Jesus to free them. So the Pharisees attack. If there were newspapers, internet and the like back then the headline on the 6-O’Clock News would read like verse 11: “Jesus eats with sinners and tax collectors”
It would be like today if someone has a picture of a politician or a famous preacher coming out of a seedy bar or if they have pictures of a person from the Conservative party having secret meeting with the Federal Liberals or Liberals and the NDP meting about a merger.[6] This is potentially a scandal.
Now Jesus –unlike many contemporary politicians- doesn’t deny what he is doing. He is associating with the unfavourable parties in society and he is partying with people who are perceived by some as traitors to his own country. The Pharisees obviously follow him here and have caught Jesus red-handed with these unfavourable people, ‘sinners’ as they call them, and so they attack Jesus’ followers, verse 11: “When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?’” Jesus overhears them and instead of running for cover, instead of denying his actions, Verses 12 and 13, “On hearing this, Jesus said, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.’”
So this is interesting. Jesus is quoting Hosea 6. The Pharisees would have been very familiar with Hosea 6. Do you remember exactly who the Pharisees are? They know their scriptures. At their best, they are like the holiness teachers of their day. Today we have the more orthodox churches theologically who –like us - do uphold the inerrancy of scripture but some of the apparently theologically orthodox preachers have a tendency to err towards your super-ultra-right-wing Bible belt, holier than thou, prosperity gospel, venom spewing types that want to tell you that you deserve everything that happens to you and they are more than happy to point out to you every that sin you commit and how terrible you are for committing it.[7] The best of the Pharisees are like the good Bible believing Christians of today, even encouraging us to holiness; the Apostle Paul was a Pharisee (Acts 23:6, 26:5). [8] The worst of the Pharisees however, I imagine, if they were around in today’s day and age you would hear their voices screaming hatred over the radio at you or intimidating people with signs and mobs as they catch people like Jesus here heading into the seedy places of today to be with ‘sinners’ or even standing there approving as some of these ‘sinners’ are stoned to death (Acts 22:20).
These Pharisees are very careful not to break any religious law and they accuse Jesus (and others one would assume) every time they catch him doing something that they would not think appropriate. I know you know the type. I run into people all the time who say that they don’t come to church any more because some of us can be like this. People tell me all the time that they don’t come to church because they think we Christians are all judgemental hypocrites.
This is important. When accused, Jesus says to the Pharisees, Matthew 9:13: “But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.’”
Now the Pharisees, Jesus’ rivals who we have been pointing out their flaws a little bit here, they were really good at sacrifice. They did rightly believe in holiness. Amongst their number were probably some of the best of the religious people of their day (cf. Acts 22:1-5; Galatians 1:13,14). Maybe even better than us at times at following the scriptures: They tithed regularly. How well does everyone here do at doing that? They read their scriptures. They come to the synagogue (church) regularly. They do not work on the Sabbath and they would certainly never go out for brunch on the Sabbath because that would cause someone else to work (Deuteronomy 5; Exodus 20). They are very careful about taking all that they do seriously and worshiping God by providing the appropriate sacrifices. If they were around today they most likely would always have the Christian radio station tuned into their car, would always be dressed appropriately and like I said before, they would be very careful to tithe and offer the appropriate sacrifices.
These are good guys in this regard but they are Jesus’ adversaries and here they are pointing out that Jesus by eating with ‘sinners’ is not like the Pharisees. Jesus agrees that he is not like them and he tells them why. He says the difference is that the Pharisees are not extending mercy. God loves people. The word ‘mercy’ here, ḥesed, means steadfast love or literally ‘covenant love.’[9] They are accusing Jesus of not being faithful to covenant observances because he eats with ‘sinners’ but Jesus is saying that he is faithful to God’s covenant percisely because he eats with quote, ‘sinners’ and thus by extenstion then the Pharisees are unfaithful to this covenant love because even though they seem to do everything right, they are not showing mercy. Jesus says, quoting Hosea 6:6: “But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but ‘sinners.’”
The Pharisees: they did many things right in the eyes of their community. If around today, they certainly wouldn’t have been smokers, or heavy drinkers they would be embarrassed if they were ever caught speeding, or if they accidentally bounced their cheque to the church but, knowing that all of this stuff is good that they do, Jesus says that that is not what is most important. God desires mercy and not sacrifice.
I remember once when I was visiting a good church many, many years ago; a street person came in and lay down on the pews for a nap. A good, self-sacrificing pastor at this time at this church asked him to leave. Jesus says, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.'
I have also seen congregations where nice, good, self-sacrificing church people have sat pouting, arms crossed all through the service because some stranger had dared to come an unwittingly sit in their seat. Jesus says, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.'
I have in my time heard good self-sacrificing church people complain because a teenager showed up in jeans or in other ways not dressed the right way. Jesus says, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.'
I have heard divorced people tell me that they felt shunned at church by these good self-sacrificing Christians after their marriage collapsed but Jesus says, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.'
I have heard single mothers tell me that they don’t feel welcome in many churches by good, self-sacrificing Christians but Jesus says 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’
Well what about us here today? Do we follow the letter of the law at the expense of the spirit of the law? Do we make sure that we listen to good Gospel music but neglect to be hospitable to the people God brings across our path? How do we greet the people God brings across our path? Do we extend to them the hesed covenant love of Christ who went over to their homes, in whatever condition of upkeep their homes were in?
Today, like always, I invite us to examine ourselves. Are we like it says in Matthew 23:24‘straining a gnat and swallowing a camel’ (cf. Mark 10:25)? Are we ‘majoring in the minors’? Or do we openly embrace our brothers and sisters? Do we eager look for opportunities to show our love for God by loving our neighbours (cf. Matthew 22:34-40; Cf. Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 5:43, 6:33, 7:12; Matthew 19:16-30; Mark 12:28-34; Luke 10:25-37; Romans 13:6-10; Galatians 5:14; James 2:8)? In short, if Christ (or an angel) showed up today in disguise (Hebrews 13:2; cf. Acts 12:11) would we welcome him warmly? Would he recognize us as his followers? If there are any ways that we here today have not been open to serving God by showing this hesed, mercy, covenant love to our neighbours, I would ask the Lord to reveal that to us, so that we can turn that and our whole lives over to Jesus Christ and I pray that they will indeed know we are Christians by our love.
Let us pray.
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[1] Cf. Captain Michael Ramsay, 'Mark 4:35-41: We Stand in Awe of You', Presented to Tisdale Corps on March 30, 2008 and Nipawin Corps on April 6, 2008. Available on-line at http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2008/03/mark-435-41-we-stand-in-awe-of-you.html
[2] cf. Captain Michael Ramsay, 'Luke 8:1-18 - The Jesus Show' Presented to each the Nipawin and Tisdale Corps 15 July 2007. Available on-line: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2007/08/luke-81-18-jesus-show.html
[3] R. T. France, Matthew: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press, 1985 (Tyndale New Testament Commentaries 1), S. 171; verse 9: The tax office at Capernaum would be concerned with tolls on goods crossing the frontier of Antipas’s tetrarchy either across the lake from Decapolis or across the Jordan from Philip’s tetrarchy. Matthew was thus apparently a customs official in the service of Herod Antipas rather than a collector of direct taxes, but the two distinct occupations (see Jeremias, NTT, pp. 110–111) are both represented by the Greek telōnēs, and were generally linked together in Jewish writings, often bracketed with thieves and ‘sinners’ in general.
[4] R. T. France, Matthew: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press, 1985 (Tyndale New Testament Commentaries 1), S. 171
[5] Cf. Clayton Harrop, ‘Jewish Parties in the New Testament’ in Holman Bible Dictionary, Editor, Trent C. Butler, (Holman Bible Publishers: Nashville, Tenn., 1991), pp. 791-794.And Cf. The Radical Reformation, ‘Four Types of Judaism at the Time of Jesus’. Available on-line at: http://www.theradicalreformation.com/media/audio/worldview%20class/lecture%2010%20--%20five%20types%20of%20judaism%20at%20the%20time%20of%20Jesus.pdf
[6] Interesting Similar Scandal in the Canadian news this week: CBC News, 'Liberal president talked merger: affidavits' Last Updated: Wednesday, June 9, 2010 10:55 PM ET. Available on-line: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/09/liberals-ndp-merger-kinsella.html#ixzz0qTDoNEav
[7] Cf. E.P. Sanders, “Judaism and the grand "Christian" abstractions : love, mercy, and grace.” Interpretation, 39 no 4 Oct. 1985, p 357-372.
[8] Cf. Clayton Harrop, ‘Jewish Parties in the New Testament’ in Holman Bible Dictionary, Editor, Trent C. Butler, (Holman Bible Publishers: Nashville, Tenn., 1991), pp. 791-794
[9] Expositor's Bible Commentary, The, Pradis CD-ROM:Matthew/Exposition of Matthew/III. The Kingdom Extended Under Jesus' Authority (8:1-11:1)/A. Narrative (8:1-10:4)/6. Eating with sinners (9:10-13), Book Version: 4.0.2
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