DESIRING MERCY

 Sermon preached by the Rev. Michael Anderson Bullock

[Genesis 12:1-9; Romans 4:13-25; Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26]

There is so much going on in the world and in our own lives – both personally and as members of St. Philip’s – that it is easy to feel overwhelmed, powerless by unruly events and things.  So it is, I think, that we need to keep tending to those resources that provide our lives with the stability of roots and the openness of wings.  A mature orientation to and relationship with God-in-Christ supports such stability and freedom that is the hallmark of the God-life.

In terms of being anchored to life on God’s terms, it behooves us to check a spiritual GPS so that we can recognize where we are now, when it comes to following Jesus and representing him in the world.  I say this with respect to two perspectives.  One has to do with the macro-reality of having begun the post-Easter part of the church’s life and mission. The other speaks to our – yours and my -- micro (or personal) reality as people and priest.

From the larger, macro perspective of post-Eastertide life, all followers of Jesus have now entered the long season of Pentecost.  Whereas the first six months of the Christian calendar always focus on Jesus – from the advent of his birth, to his death and resurrection, to the empowering gift of the Holy Spirit – in this first-half of our worshipping year, our hearts and minds center upon what life with God is like, with Jesus as the clarifying lens of insight.

In term of the big picture, no one expresses more directly and comprehensively what the macro-life with God-in-Christ means more powerfully than the Apostle Paul.  Here are his famous words of an overall proclamation: For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.[1]

This is where you and I and all the baptized are as we enter this second-half of our worshipping year.  This is our message.  This is our hope.  God’s love is stronger than death.

Like the lushness of this month of June, this green spiritual season signifies our time as Christ’s Body, the Church.  Yet, this macro, green season perspective also applies to you and me in our specific relationship as people and priest.  The question of our growth and where we are headed unavoidably presses upon us both.  So, I want to raise with you the issue of how you and I – in this place and in this limited-three-week time – how we might prepare ourselves for doing this representative work under the new circumstances of being apart.

My answer has to do with the reality of “mercy” and the needful challenge of living with “the awareness of all God’s mercies” (to use the great phrase from the Prayer Book’s “General Thanksgiving”)[2].

And at the mentioning of “awareness” a side bar:  One of the great and simple spiritual resources in the Book of Common Prayer tradition is the term “awareness”.  The wonder of this spiritual term is that everyone can be aware.  We may not understand, but we can also be aware of this limitation as well.  “Awareness” challenges blindness or ignorance.  Yet, with a commitment to awareness, we move beyond the oppression of denial and place ourselves in a position truly to see and learn and grow.

When in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus calls Matthew to follow him, something powerful is revealed about God and life with God.  In response to the Pharisee’s dismissive criticism of Jesus that he associates with people who don’t meet “religious” standards for living a “purely enough”, Jesus’ makes a piercing proclamation which is also a challenge: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”[3]

The backstory of today’s gospel is this.  Returning from that eventful sea cruise to their homeland – the one in which the violent storm threatens to sink the Jesus Movement enterprise, the first thing Jesus does after this encounter with chaos is to call the tax collector, Matthew to discipleship.  Now all of us should readily recognize that tax collectors in Jesus’ time had two strikes against them.  First, the taxes they collected funded the presence of the Roman oppressors.  That many (like Matthew were Jews) only complicated the scene, shading these tax collectors as collaborating traitors to their own people.  Moreover, it was not unusual for the tax collectors to collect more than was actually due, pocketing for themselves the “shipping and handling” fees.

But as important as this background story is, it has the capacity to distract us from perceiving something much more subtle and significant.  That is, Jesus shares table fellowship (a nascent form of Communion) with what the text describes as “many tax collectors and sinners”.  More to the point, I and others think that the house in which this meal was shared was Matthew’s house, which would make sense in terms of Matthew’s gratitude for being offered Jesus’ new life.  Yet, it also means that Jesus received hospitality from the “unclean” and those “outside” the realm of the covenanted people.  He accepted from “them” what heretofore only he had intramurally offered.  But the crescendo of the shared meal, the “pre-Communion communion”, lies in Jesus’ retort to the purity criticisms of the Pharisees: “Why does your Master have “communion” with “those kinds of people”?  Jesus’ terse reply: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.  “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’”

Context is key here.  These words are not original with Jesus.  Rather, our Lord speaks what was initially spoken eight hundred years before by the Prophet Hosea.  And here’s the point: The prophet’s words and more specifically the prophet’s life illustrates the nature of God and what it takes to be merciful and to do more than keep score with the lives of God’s people.  Specifically, Hosea’s words and personal life stand as a testimony to the heart of what matters most to God: namely, mercy and not sacrifice; heartfelt awareness, not just proper activity.

Hosea’s life unfolded in his marriage to a woman by the name of Gomer.  Hosea loved Gomer with all his heart.  And while they had children together, Gomer was not faithful to the marriage.  She wandered off and lived with other men.  Yet, in spite of his lawful right in Moses’ Law, Hosea could not – he would not -- divorce Gomer, but rather (motivated by his love for her) Hosea forgave Gomer for her egregious and adulterous behavior.  In spite of suffering the public shame and personal heart-break of her unfaithfulness, Hosea remained true.

In the biblical context and history, Hosea is seen as embodying God and what God goes through with unfaithful Israel.  “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”  Some among us would cynically ask, “What’s in it for Hosea?”  But God’s answer is “mercy” – something that is more poignant than law, more to the heart of things than well-rehearsed dance steps.

So, the issue before us is this: What does “mercy, not sacrifice” mean?  And (in particular) how might this prophetic admonition guide and sustain us as we move apart from one another?

As always, in order to glean gospel clarity, we need to make sure we know what we are talking about.  So, what is “mercy”?  And what are the dynamics of “sacrifice”?  Who among us need a physician to deal with sickness of fear and rage?

The simplest, most direct definition of “mercy” that I have encountered is one that holds “grace” in parallel with “mercy”.  This is to say that God’s love has two sides: one is “grace”; the other side is “mercy”.

Whereas “grace” is receiving that which we DO NOT deserve, cannot earn because grace is unadulterated gift.  In distinction, “mercy is NOT getting what we DO deserve.  It is the Prophet Hosea’s life that points out the reality of “mercy”, specifically God’s mercy.  It is Jesus Christ who incarnates God’s mercy – given for all.

Please note: This is not some sort of biblical “rom-com” story.  Hosea’s forgiveness did not make everything “all better” -- quite to the contrary.  In fact, Hosea’s prophetic ministry and words can easily be dismissed as “gloomy” because of his insistence that there are dire consequences to our sickness of “stepping out” on God.  Yet, while the consequences of the adulterous nature of God’s people were real (and remain so now); Hosea’s hard and unflattering truth-telling also spoke of the merciful restoration that God’s unfailing love purposely contains.  Like Hosea and his marriage to wandering Gomer, God cannot and will not “divorce” Israel.  God’s love for us prevails– no matter what.  And this brings me to “sacrifice”.

“Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’”

Are our actions, our attitudes, our thinking a matter of a heartfelt awareness for what God gives; or do we simply go through the motions, allowing our bodies to do the dance without our hearts singing the song?

Over the last ten years, you may have noticed that when in the course of the Communion liturgy, at the time of the Offertory, the Offertory Sentence I say to inaugurate the movement and experience from the “Liturgy of the Word” to the “Liturgy of the Alar” are always these: “Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and make good your vows to the Most High.”[4]  It’s not that I lack enough imagination to use other appropriate words at the Offertory.  No, I use these words to remind us of all God’s gifts (especially and centrally for the life we are about to receive in the Body and Blood of Christ).  With an awareness of all God’s mercies (which in themselves are gifts), do we offer thanks not just with our lips but in our lives?

“All things come of Thee, O Lord; and of Thine own have we given Thee.”  Life with God is not about succeeding and not making mistakes.  Life with God is rather about knowing that we are given what we need and cannot provide for ourselves; and from this sense of mercy and grace, we share with others what we ourselves have been given.  And that’s what the long season of Pentecost is about.  And that’s been what our time together has meant: Knowing and living in God’s love through grace and mercy.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

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[1] Romans 8:38-39.

[2] Book of Common Prayer. p. 101.

[3] Matthew 9:13.

[4] Bood of Common Prayer. “Offertory Sentences,” page 376.