Presented to Swift Current Corps of The Salvation Army, 13 June 2010 and Corps 614 Regent Park and The Warehouse Mission, 16 Sept 2016, and Alberni Valley Ministries, 30 April 2023
Our scripture that we are looking at today comes from Hosea 6:6 and
Matthew 9:13: “But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not
sacrifice.' I desire mercy…
Summer has just passed. On the prairies some people have really fancy
cars that live indoors most of the year and only came on nice sunny days. Some
of these are CLASSIC cars. Many farmers are also mechanics and so spend a lot
of time working on their vehicles. It sort of reminds 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. Not quite as fancy as those sports cars in
Saskatchewan but 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 only cost $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 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 – 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 too
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 and
exorcisms and he even controls the weather. More than that even: with his high
popularity ratings he is kind of like an earlier version of popular reality TV
shows: ‘Judean Idol’ or ‘Survivor Palestine’ or something like that. Jesus is
as popular as Jose Batista was after his bat flip as the Jays had an incredible
post-season last year. He is as popular as any music star or athlete. 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 (Mt 8:18-27; Mk 4:36-41; Lk
8:22-25). Jesus is a pretty popular celebrity preacher and all the people are
following him 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… what
if _____ 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 whom 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 collects taxes for Rome. Tax collectors are not
the most popular people in the world these days.
It was even worse in Jesus' day. Do you remember who controlled
Palestine in Jesus’ day? The Romans – the Superpower of the day. Palestine was
an occupied territory. I used to lead D-Day and Nov 11 Remembrances with the
veterans each year. Paying taxes to the Romans would be the same as 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. Mt 22:15-22, Mk 12:13-17, Lk 20:20-26). This is what Matthew would
have been doing in essence, as he was sitting in his tariff/tax booth (Mt 9:9).
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.
So here Jesus’ adversaries 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 Liberals or something
like that. 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 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 sin you commit and
how terrible you are for committing it.
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).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 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’.
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 or they just don`t feel welcome.
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.’
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 following the scriptures, they tithed regularly. 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 or
anything else on the Sabbath because that would cause some poor servant to work
(Dt 5; Ex20). 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 and-or their computer; they would always be dressed appropriately and
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.’ They are accusing
Jesus of not being faithful to the covenant with God because he eats with
‘sinners’ but Jesus is saying that he is faithful to God’s covenant precisely
because he eats with ‘sinners’ and thus by extension 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 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 in my time heard good self-sacrificing Salvationists help the
poor but complain whenever someone needy shows up who doesn`t look poor or who
does not seem marginalized. Jesus says, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.'
I have in my time seen good self-sacrificing Salvationists actually
punish people for behaving in ways that are totally consistant with their
diagnosis. Jesus says, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.'
I have heard divorced people tell me that they felt shunned in their churches
by the good self-sacrificing Christians after their marriage collapses. 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 at all 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 nice to some while under the guise
of good intentions plot the downfall of others? Do we greet some people but
neglect to be hospitable to others? How do we greet the people God brings
across our path? Do we extend to them the hesed covenant love of Christ
who spent time with them even if they were rich tax collectors removed from
everyone else because of their jobs.
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’? Are we
‘majoring in the minors’? Or do we openly embrace our brothers and sisters? Do
we eagerly look for opportunities to show our love for God by loving our
neighbours – rich or poor, nice or mean, scary or not scary? In short, if
Christ (or an angel) showed up today in disguise 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.
I would be remiss if I did not point out that up at the front here we
do have the Mercy seat – and any who feel led our more that welcome to come up
here for prayer or to commune with God.
May we all today go from here with a renewed impetus to show hesed,
mercy, covenant faithfulness to our neighbour and it is my prayer that indeed
they will know we are Christians by our love.
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