The readings on
which this sermon is based
can be found at: http://frsparky.net/a/r082.htm
s082g14 St Matthew St
Mary’s Halswell 20/9/2014
"I desire mercy, not sacrifice" Matt 9.13
This is one of those passages that rolls so
quickly off the tongue, yet is really so
pregnant with meaning!
When I read these words I picture God
throwing up the divine hands in horror and
despair - pleading for mercy - to stop the
millions of people praying for this, that
and the other. And I wonder
about christians as well as people of other
faiths exhorting us to trust and
pray. How does God deal with all
these, most often competing, requests?
It reminds me of the 1970 play, Jesus Christ
Superstar, and Jesus getting inundated with
the multitude of requests for healing and
the lovely words of the song by Tim Rice,
sung by Mary Magdalene: ‘Try not to get
worried, try not to turn on to / Problems
that upset you, oh. / Don’t you know /
Everything’s alright, yes, everything's
fine. / And we want you to sleep well
tonight. / Let the world turn without you
tonight. / If we try, we'll get by, so
forget all about us tonight.’ (1)
Is this what the text: "I desire mercy, not
sacrifice” implies? Give God a
break?
The text certainly does not mean that God
filters the prayers by listening and
responding only to those prayers which come
with the appropriate sacrifice.
God isn’t interested only in those prayers
which come with an offering of a bull or a
ram - or by extension those that are worded
in the fine phrases of the Book of Common
Prayer, the King James Version of the Bible,
or those in ecstatic speaking in
tongues. We will not get our way
with God by using any magic words - because
mostly getting our way means that someone
else doesn’t get theirs!
I often have cause to ponder just how much
money I could make if God acceded to all my
requests when it came to the weather
:-) How does one balance the
legitimate need farmers have for rain, with
the bride’s desire for fine weather?
We need to see the context of this saying,
and it is in response to the complaint of
the Pharisees: "Why does your teacher eat
with tax collectors and
sinners?” When we exercise our
faith, it is always useful to think who is
left out of the process. For the
Pharisees, they expected any new religious
figure to associate only with people like
them. Actually, for my money, I
reckon the real sense of the Pharisee’s
question is: ‘Why does your teacher bother
to eat with tax collectors and
sinners?’ This starts to give us
a feel for what motivated the religious
people. It was they who spoke
the correct orthodoxy, they who were up with
all the religious debates, they who were
worthy of Jesus’ undivided attention.
It was they who could quote correct chapter
and verse of scripture about how God hates
women who commit adultery (2), backsliders
(3), people who eat lobster (4) and people
who express their intimate affections with
someone of the same gender (5).
It is interesting that even Pilate perceived
this - ‘he realised that it was out of
jealousy that they had handed him
over.’ (6) The religious were
jealous of the common people - that this new
religious leader included people other than
themselves in his oikumene - and declared
that this was the true religion, that this
was God’s way and God’s intention, and that
they had to put aside all pretensions of
superiority and do likewise.
They were jealous, scandalised, enough to
engineer Jesus’ death.
God desires mercy - but for heaven's sake
why? God is already
merciful. We don't have to
remind God to be merciful, tell God to be
merciful, or beg God to be merciful - either
towards ourselves or others.
When I read some of the old prayers of the
Church, I think that this is what the
ancient liturgists believed.
However I suppose that they lived a much
less secure existence than we.
Of course, usually we implore God to be
merciful to us but to not be merciful
towards others; or we implore God to be
merciful to us and neglect the fact that we
continue to be merciless towards
others. I suspect even
begging for mercy in these circumstances
will be of no avail. And I mean
here that our "Christian" faith has been
taken to implicitly imply that those of
other faiths and those of little or no faith
are "damned" unless they become "Christians"
like us. In the words of the
Athanasian Creed: ‘Which faith except every
one do keep whole and undefiled; without
doubt he shall perish everlastingly’
(7) "Lack of mercy" dressed in
the guise of "orthodoxy" is no less
merciless. God desires us to be
merciful not orthodox.
Again when we plead for mercy, are we
suggesting that we are more merciful than
God? The third of the collects
for Good Friday read: ‘Have mercy upon all
Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Hereticks, and
take from them all ignorance, hardness of
heart, and contempt of thy Word; and so
fetch them home, blessed Lord, to thy flock,
that they may be saved among the remnant of
the true Israelites ..’ (8) This is
real blasphemy!
God does not want sacrifice - so we don't
have to "give up" anything - and we don't
reflect God's wishes when we demand of
others that they give up things that we
think are incompatible with
"Christianity". Neither bulls or
goats, which at least seem
possible. But nor some of those
things we expect others are able to give up,
like their particular form of
sexuality. Do we demand celibacy
of others if they are not able to live up to
our view of what is "normal"?
Giving up sacrificing goats and bulls might
be possible but is it possible for anyone to
deny their human nature? And
anyway - is this a sacrifice demanded of
them? - when the words are quite plain that
God does not want sacrifices .. but mercy.
The reality is that Jesus reminds the
Pharisees - the religious authorities - that
they need to be merciful towards those who
do not share their religious devotion or the
intricacies of their faith. So
these words remind us that we, as the
"religious" authorities, primarily need to
be merciful towards those who have perhaps
not been able to live up to our level of
religious devotion and intricacies of our
faith. When I say God doesn't
ask us to sacrifice anything, I should say
that the message is that the only thing God
does ask us to give up - is our lack of
mercy towards others.
So the text "I desire mercy, not sacrifice"
that Jesus draws to the attention of the
Pharisees, is one of those eternal
expressions of the nature of God.
St Paul exhorts us, when we show mercy, to
do so with hilarity, and if it is good
enough for us, it is good enough for
God. Of course God is merciful,
hilariously so. (9)
What would the world look like if we forgave
others for calling on God by a different
name than us, for worshipping God
differently to us, for not forgoing their
perceptions of truth and helping us preserve
our temple and ministry, forgave them for
expressing their intimate affections without
our leave? What would our
church look like if we gave up proclaiming
the good news as if everything depends on
someone else giving
sacrificially? I suggest the
world, and our church, might be an
extraordinarily happier place - and it is up
to .. us.
1.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Christ_Superstar
2. Proverbs 23.27
3. Proverbs 14.14
4. Deuteronomy 14.10
5. Leviticus 18.22
6. Matthew 27.18
7.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athanasian_Creed
8.
http://www.eskimo.com/~lhowell/bcp1662/communion/lent.html
9. Romans 12.8