“Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’”
Jesus is referring his hearers to the passage in Hosea that we heard
in our first reading. So firstly, why; secondly, what was Hosea even
talking about, and thirdly, is it relevant to us in any way?
Well,
the first question is easy enough to answer. Why did Jesus refer his
hearers to that passage?
He had just called Matthew from
the tax office. Now, as I am sure you know, back in the day, tax
collectors were quislings, collaborators with the occupying power.
They were expected to hand over so much to the Roman authorities
every – I don’t know whether it was every month, or every
quarter, but certainly every so often – and also to pay themselves
a decent salary out of what they had collected. And human nature
being what it is, many, if not most tax collectors were apt to
feather their own nests at the expense of the public! They would
demand far more than they were owed, and enforce payment. We don’t
know that Matthew did that – we do know that Zaccheus did.
So,
anyway, Jesus has called Matthew, and then he has dinner with Matthew
and, presumably, some of his tax-collector friends. And the
virtue-signallers, the Pharisees, start chuntering about this and
asking why on earth he would want to eat with such dreadful people.
To which Jesus replies that these are the very people who need him,
the ones he was sent to help! The ones who think they’re doing
fine don’t need him, or don’t admit to needing him. So he sends
them away to look up Hosea….. and I don’t suppose they were best
pleased, because of course
they knew the Scriptures, didn’t they? Didn’t they?
And
what, then, of Hosea? Hosea is the prophet who was asked to marry a
prostitute who he couldn’t trust to be faithful to him, as a
picture of the way the tribes of Israel and Judah couldn’t be
trusted to stay faithful to God, but were apt to go off after the
local gods of the area who were so much easier to cope with, as they
only wanted you to do the various rituals. They didn’t want a
relationship with God; that might interfere with their own lives, and
make them live in ways they didn’t want to live!
Every
so often they would make attempts to come back to God, but what
usually ended up happening was that, as we heard in our reading,
“their love is like a morning cloud,
like
the dew that goes away early.”
In other words, they
start off well, but then get distracted. Like the seed in Jesus’
story that landed in the rocky ground or in the thistles, and didn’t
grow much after the first sprout. And God says, through Hosea, that
sacrifices and temple rituals are all very well but what is wanted is
mercy – steadfast love, says the NRSV – not sacrifice!
I
don’t know whether you’ve ever read John Wesley’s sermon on the
means of grace? We local preachers have to read certain selected
sermons as part of our training, and this is one of them. Wesley
tries to navigate between two equal and opposite errors, the first
being formalism – ritual without substance, just what Hosea is
talking about here, and the second being what was called quietism,
where you did nothing but wait for God to give you faith.
Wesley
reckoned – and so do we, to this day – that God has ordained
three specific means of grace that we all need to use. They
are:
Prayer; both private and corporate. After all we all
have times when, try as we might, we simply can’t pray, and that’s
when we have to rely on corporate prayer, and perhaps prayers that
other people have written. It doesn’t matter how you pray, of
course – verbal prayer is only one way of praying – it is the
contact with God that matters.
Then there is searching the
Scripture, by reading, hearing and meditating on it. You probably
have your own method of doing this, whether you like to meditate on
the week’s readings, or whether you use a daily Bible reading
guide, or whatever, but there again, Scripture is there to help us
know God.
And finally there is the Sacrament of Holy Communion,
which, whatever we may mean when we make our Communion – and of
course, our views on it will change as we go on in our journey of
faith – is important to our spiritual growth.
So far, so
good. But: “I desire mercy, rather than sacrifice”. Wesley goes
on to point out that these things, important though they are, have
no intrinsic power: Separate from the Spirit of God,
a ritual is just what Wesley calls "a dry leaf, a shadow."
Spoken words, printed text, or bread and wine aren’t magic!
They
possess no merit:
Performing these duties does not buy God's favour or atone for
sins. Only the blood of Christ saves. And this, of course, is part of
what Hosea was talking about. Mercy rather than sacrifice.
Steadfast love rather than keeping the rules.
And Wesley
also reminds us that God is greater than the means of grace! We
should use them, because he told us to, but God is perfectly capable
of acting outside them! Again, they are not a magic formula!
But
there is more to it than just our personal relationship with God. Of
course, that is important, vital, even. But I don’t suppose for one
moment that there were no followers of God at the time Hosea was
writing. There were probably a minority of people who did want to be
God’s people, who did do their best to give mercy, steadfast love,
rather than mere form. But the people as a whole were not God’s
people. The community was not a God-fearing one. As, of course,
ours isn’t.
And you will note what was happening when
Jesus told the Pharisees to go away and read Hosea – he was eating
with a group of people who were widely hated. Hated. Outcast.
Other. And we know all about that in our society, don’t we? Yes,
I’m white and privileged, I know that, but I also know that many
people are pretty much outcast and hated in much of our society, due
to skin colour, sexuality or religion. Or are hated because they are
so-called “migrants”, many of whom are so desperate to get here
that they take their lives in their hands to do so, only to find they
are not only officially unwelcome but are widely mistrusted and
hated.
And yes, we know we must and will stand by such
people, love them, defend them, help them as best we can. As Jesus
did with the tax-collectors. As he did with other outcasts of the
day – Samaritans, lepers, and so on.
But then, and this
is where it gets really difficult, and why I’ll probably start
speaking far too fast – do attract my attention if I do! But then,
there are the haters. The Christian nationalists, Reform, Nigel
Farage, the MAGA republicans, Donald Trump. What should our attitude
to them be? What would Jesus say to them?
It’s so easy,
isn’t it, to hate them in our turn. Certainly I hate some of the
things that seem to be happening in the US, although I do wonder
sometimes if there isn’t a bit of exaggeration. And it makes it
very difficult not to hate the perpetrators – but we mustn’t.
Jesus doesn’t. He argues with the pharisees, sure. He refers them
to Scripture. He tells them frankly that their self-satisfaction
means they can’t get close to God. But he doesn’t hate
them.
Look at the healings in the second half of the Gospel.
Matthew’s account is very bald compared to those in Mark and Luke,
but he still tells the story. How the leader of the synagogue comes
to Jesus in despair as his daughter is deathly ill – in this
account, he says she has already died. But Jairus, as the other
accounts tell us he is called, is probably a Pharisee. He may have
been one of the haters; he may have thought that Jesus was
blaspheming when he suggested that they should come to him to know
righteousness with God. But he was desperate, and he came to Jesus
in his despair – and Jesus raised his daughter. He didn’t hate
Jairus, any more than he hated any other Pharisee.
And we
haven’t to hate, either. Not even Trump. Not even Farage. Not
even Boris Johnson for what he did to our country…. We mustn’t
hate. But how not to? This is what I find hard – I want to hate
them! Yet Jesus says, very firmly, to love our enemies, and he sets
us an example of how it is done. He didn’t let them get away with
anything – he was, after all, the one who drove the traders out of
the Temple – but he didn’t hate them, and when they were in need,
he responded to that need.
So how not to hate? I think
there’s only one way, and that is to ask God to love them through
us. We are given the potential through the Holy Spirit indwelling
us; we can, I think, be guided as to whether we should speak out, or
not. Probably we should – we need to call out wrongdoing and
hatred when we find it. Not always easy to do – much easier to
leave it to other people! But we are promised that we’ll be given
the words when we need them.
But I don’t want to end on
a negative note – let’s think about love, not hatred! Matthew
doesn’t really show it, but look how lovely Jesus is with the woman
who couldn’t stop bleeding, and, indeed, with Jairus’ daughter.
And, indeed, with the tax-gatherers, with whom he enjoyed a convivial
lunch! Which reminds me of the passage in Revelation that so many of
us have used, over the years, to commit and to recommit ourselves to
being Jesus’ person: “Listen! I am standing at the door,
knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to
you and eat with you, and you with me.”
“I will come in to
you and eat with you, and you with me.” Amen.
