Readings
Hosea 5:15-6:6
Psalm 50:7-15
Romans 4:13-25
Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
“I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” These five words, both in Hosea and Matthew, set the tone and the stage for everything we hear in the Gospel story this morning.
Our Gospel passage is set in a series of 3 acts. First there is the calling of Matthew, the tax collector, and Jesus’ fellowship with him and his friends. Next is the call by the leader of the synagogue to come and raise his daughter from the dead. And finally, in the midst of that drama there is the woman who has suffered from hemorrhages for twelve years who seeks Jesus’ healing simply by touching the fringe of his cloak.
It would be easy for us to treat each of them as a discrete story. It would be easy to simplify it all down to the idea that Jesus is about forgiveness and healing. But if we do that then we miss significant dimensions of today’s story and the implications for all of us.
Today is a story about insiders and outsiders. Today is a story about power. And, ultimately, today is a story about mercy.
Jesus today calls a tax collector to be a follower and then to make matters worse he sits down and eats with a group of tax collectors. These are people who were despised in the time of Jesus. They used the Roman tax system to get rich off the population by charging more than the tax owed to the Empire. So not only were tax collectors seen as greedy and self-serving, they also were seen as toadies of the Romans. And so, while it was a perfectly legal system, the morality of it was highly questionable to the average Judean. To be with these people was to defile oneself. Moreover, it was to risk one’s own reputation and to be exposed to ritual defilement. It was, by today’s standards, at best a major social faux pas and at worse collaborating with the enemy.
Jesus is criticized by the insiders of his society for eating with those beyond the pail. And in response Jesus speaks of those who are well not needing a physician and paraphrases Hosea. He says that God “desires mercy, not sacrifice.” In other words, religious and social norms be damned. What’s really important is steadfast love and faithfulness to those in need of it.
But our story doesn’t end there. Next we have a powerful man, a leader of a synagogue come to Jesus with a tragedy. His daughter has died, and he gets on his knees and begs Jesus to come and raise his daughter. Again, religious norms are being challenged. This leader is asking Jesus to touch the dead. Once again Jesus is faced with ritual defilement, but nonetheless he gets up immediately and in the end the daughter is raised.
Finally, in the midst of that drama there is the woman with the hemorrhages. To bleed as she does would have made her ritually unclean and to touch Jesus would have defiled him. She has such faith in Jesus that she simply wants to touch his clothes and be healed. Again, the power of Jesus is trusted and the healing occurs. In fact, Jesus tells her, not that his power has healed her but that her faith has made her well.
In all three stories we see people relinquishing their power to Jesus. In all of them what is outside is brought in. In all three cases we see healing and transformation. In all three circumstances mercy, which Hosea calls steadfast love, is at the heart of the story.
Insiders and outsiders, power, and mercy.
I recently experienced something akin to this. I was privileged to be at the hospital with a family who had a beloved son, brother, and father in critical condition and with no certainty of the outcome. I was happy to be there and offered myself to them in any way that would be helpful. What was palpable was the uneasiness in the room when I appeared. Although they had asked for a priest, it seemed that when I arrived rather than relieved they were apprehensive.
As we spent time together it became clear that they didn’t go to church very often, if at all, and the person for whom they wanted prayer had lived a fairly dissolute life. While they wanted the assurance of God’s presence and grace they weren’t sure that they would get it. And who could blame them. Even though I did my best to make them feel loved and accepted and offered them the sacraments of the Church, the track record of the larger Church isn’t great. While we take great pride in our open and inclusive positions in the Episcopal Church today, it’s been the case that for most of our history we have been more an agent of judgment rather than acceptance. And sometimes I wonder if we have blind spots to where we remain that in the lives of those who don’t conform to our social, political, moral or theological norms.
Most, if not all of us are keenly aware of our shortcomings and our need for forgiveness and grace. More often than not, church is for us a place of belonging, of healing, and of acceptance. For many of us this is the place to which we come to experience the steadfast love and faithfulness of God in one another and in our worship.
But I ask you, what about all those who do not cross our threshold for whom the world is anything but a place of mercy or steadfast love? What about the systemic realities that keep people not only out of our community, but on the margins of our larger society?
I believe that today the pharisees of our culture, of which there are many, are more concerned with social and political issues than with religious ones. There are ample voices in our world today that seek to blame the outsiders for their social position. To blame the poor for their poverty. To criminalize things like homelessness.
Equally I believe that if Jesus were here today he would not be sitting in our churches comfortably chatting at coffee hour. No, the Jesus we encounter in this morning’s Gospel would be eating with those on the margins. He would be socializing with those polite society deems unacceptable or reprobate. He would be proclaiming the coming of the Reign of God in such a way that it was clear that the systemic forces that create such classes of people are in violation of God’s vision for humanity. And he would be calling us out to do something about it.
For all of our lives we have lived in a Church that has a heart for the poor, the marginalized, and the rejected. But, with a few notable exceptions, our response has more often than not to engage in acts of charity. To offer food to the hungry, to listen to and support the marginalized, and in the present age to post memes on Facebook that express our compassion and support.
The problem is that those responses alone are insufficient. In fact, in many cases, such responses only trap the people we focus on in the circumstances they find themselves in. Why? Because charity in whatever form it takes does not address the systemic issues that lead to the circumstance in which many find themselves. When we engage in those simple acts of good alone we satisfy our piety, but only put a Band-Aid on the problem. We don’t really do anything to fix it.
No, let’s be clear. Our Lord was not interested in a piety that leads to charity. No, our Lord was interested in the Kingdom of Heaven, the Reign of God, that seeks to transform the world we live in. It is a vision that rocks the boat, that tilts at the social injustices of our society, that challenges the status quo, and seeks ultimately to respect the dignity of every human being. And for Jesus that wasn’t just a religious act, it was also moral, social, and political. Yes, political. Do not forget that Jesus was condemned as a political prisoner. For the Romans the issue wasn’t his religion, but the social and political conclusions he drew from his religion.
We too are called to put our values to action. We are called to bring those who are on the outside in. We are called to go into our neighborhoods, towns, cities, states, and nation and actively proclaim the Reign of God and its values. We are called to help tear down those systems that create inequality, poverty, and injustice. We do not do it out of a liberal or conservative frame, we do it as a proclamation of the Gospel.
Who are the tax collectors and sinners of our society today? Like Jesus, let us throw our lot in with them. Let us proclaim a message that calls them to the vision of God and let us challenge the forces that would keep them out and down. Let us embrace the broad and expansive vision of God’s Kingdom that Jesus proclaimed – one in which the poor are raised up, the marginalized brought in, and the dignity of all is affirmed and respected. Let us be about more than worship and acts of charity. Let us also be a people who live into Hosea’s and Jesus’ vision, a people of steadfast love and mercy.