June 8, 2008 at Saint Mark Norman, OK
Hosea 6: 3- 6 + Psalm 50 + Romans 4: 18-25 + Matthew 9: 9-13
By the time the prophet Hosea is writing and preaching, the Hebrews had taken the revelation to Moses on Mt Sinai and made a fine system of law and ritual that was complex and detailed. They had pretty well put out the fire of that burning bush. In place of some real fire, they simply had their rules and an ethic and creed that shaped their morality. No wonder they could walk past a fellow human being that had been beaten, robbed, and left to die on the side of road. They put all their confidence in that law and shaped morality around it; but Hosea tells them that this falls short of the radical morality in God’s design. Through Hosea, God complains that he is tired of their superficiality and the formalism of their law-keeping. It was as though they thought they could save themselves by keeping the law, as though not killing, not making idols, not dishonoring one’s parents, or stealing was the whole heart of morality and goodness.
Hosea was marginally effective, but only for a time. It was and still is easier to be law abiding than merciful; easier to just keep the rules than trouble oneself about misery or the suffering of another. Enter Jesus Christ, the Word Made Flesh! He troubles the rule-keepers who question his judgment about Matthew; and he quotes Hosea back them when they question his company. The morality, the ethics with which Jesus of Nazareth teaches and by which he lives are not rooted in law, but in mercy, for this is the face of God he reveals, a face of mercy.
This message and story bears frequent repetition until we get it right. In our retelling of this story, we find ourselves reliving this behavior hiding in this superficial morality with an ethic that is self protecting and self serving. It is easier to keep the rules than look past them or look into the face of suffering. Easier to just go to church, get it over with, and go home rather than learn the meaning of mercy. It is easier to lock up drug offenders and single moms than figure out the cause of their misery and suffering that led them to the drugs in the first place. It is easier to say five Our Fathers and five Hail Marys than make a significant change in ones life, attitude, or thinking. It’s easier to throw some pocket change, a couple of bucks into that basket than make a life changing loving grateful commitment to stewardship’s tithing. It is easier to break up families and deport the so called “illegal” than do something about the misery they flee.
This Gospel today is Mercy in your face. “Go and learn the meaning of it.” says Jesus to the good rule keepers. Matthew, a sinner like any and all of us, is invited into the school of mercy. “Follow Me.” is not an invitation to go for a walk. It is an opportunity to learn mercy, and if we kept on reading Matthew’s ninth chapter, we would get the point. For as soon as the conversation ends here a synagogue official rushes up and begs Jesus to come and save his daughter. The disciples follow Jesus to that home where Jesus is ridiculed and laughed at by a crowd who are more interested in their wailing than the presence of mercy. He puts them out – because they have blocked themselves off from life. Imagine, they laugh and scoff at mercy. Opponents of the death penalty know what that’s like, but we have been invited to learn the meaning of Mercy, so we must not laugh, but learn.
Those disciples who have tagged along are not put outside, but they stay in the house and see what happens when divine desire follows the cry of suffering. They learn there not only how to desire mercy; but how to become mercy. Yet it does not end there, for immediately Jesus returns to the crowds outside and a woman of suffering touches the hem of his garment to teach one more time the lesson of mercy. It’s about desire. It is a quality of the divine that Jesus reveals in these verses of Matthew’s Gospel.
What we must learn is that mercy is not a single act, my friends. It is a way of life. It is like the sea in which we swim. It gives us hope every day, all day. The stories of this chapter on mercy suggest that what brings mercy is desire.
We are a Matthew people, busy at our jobs, sitting at our desks, moving money around, taking all we can get however we can get it. I think that Matthew was just waiting for Jesus to come by. He gets up all too quickly. I think he was ready and waiting for the call, and when invited to follow Jesus it was no invitation to go somewhere, but an invitation to learn the meaning of mercy which is not an intellectual exercise or a rational argument. It is a matter of following along watching and listening to Jesus in action and then ever so slowly becoming mercy filled ourselves. When that day comes, and this could be it, we will put down the rocks with which we might righteously stone others and cease the laughter that mocks mercy remembering that we are all in need of mercy, and there is plenty to go around if we will just give what we expect and so desire to receive.