June 11, 2023
Rev. Mary Erickson
Hope Lutheran Church
Romans 4:13-25; Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
What God Most Desires
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
Mercy: The story is told of a mother who approached the powerful ruler Napoleon. Her son had gotten into deep trouble and was sentenced to death. Emboldened by love for her son, the mother appeared before the one man who could alter her son’s dire future. Boldly, she asked Napoleon to show mercy on her son and grant him a pardon.
“But your son has committed this offense, not just once, but on two separate occasions,” he told the mother. “Justice demands death.”
The determined mother wouldn’t accept no for an answer. “I’m not asking for justice, your excellency. I plead for mercy.”
The emperor responded, “But your son doesn’t deserve mercy."
“Sir,” responded the mother, “if he deserved it, it wouldn’t be mercy. And mercy is what I’m asking for.”
“Well,” Napoleon declared, “then I will have mercy.” And he spared the condemned man from his punishment.*
Mercy. The book of Lamentations tells us “the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his MERCIES never come to an end; they are new every morning.”
Mercy. We all appreciate being on the receiving end of mercy. Mercy, by definition, is undeserved. Is there anything more lovely than mercy? And yet…
.. there’s something about mercy that sticks in the craw. Something was given undeservedly! Where is the accountability? It grates on our sense of what’s right. Mercy fundamentally seems contradictory to justice. And where would the world be without justice? But also, where would it be without mercy?
Justice and mercy. These two form the fabric of Hebrew theology. As we read the Old Testament prophets, justice and mercy are the warp and weft of their message. They work in concert with one another. Together they establish and nurture the life-giving garden God intended for humanity. They are the basis of how we are to live with our neighbor. We treat our neighbor justly, and we act in mercy. And yet …
… there’s something about mercy …
Our reading for today’s gospel includes a rapid fire of small vignettes.
• Scene one: Jesus calls tax collector Matthew to follow him. Matthew immediately gets up from his tax station and leaves everything behind.
• Scene two: Jesus is over at Matthew’s house. Matthew is throwing a dinner party with Jesus as the main guest. He’s also invited his friends, and they’re an unsavory sort. After all, who does Matthew know? He’s shunned by proper society. So he hangs with a rough crowd – fellow tax collectors and other social outcasts.
• Scene three: A leader of the local synagogue begs Jesus to come and lay hands on his daughter who just passed. Jesus goes with him.
• Scene four: Along the way, a woman with a chronic ailment dares to reach out and touch Jesus. Her “female problem” has rendered her ritually unclean from the synagogue. She’s lived as an untouchable for the past 12 years. But when she touches Jesus, she’s healed.
• Scene five: Jesus arrives at the house with the dead child. Even though she’s dead, he touches her. Touching a dead corpse was something that rendered a person ritually unclean. But Jesus casts that aside. He reaches out and touches the girl, and she’s restored to life.
A lot of questionable activities are going on in these stories.
• We have to raise an eyebrow at Jesus’ selection for his disciples. Matthew isn’t exactly “A Team” material. What will people think of Jesus and his motley crew of disciples?
• Jesus further sullies his reputation when he hangs out with tax collectors and other so called “sinners” at Matthew’s house.
• The woman with the bleeding situation dared to touch Jesus and thereby rendering him ritually unclean.
• And finally, Jesus casts aside protocol and touches a corpse.
When the Pharisees see Jesus dining with disreputable sorts, they question his decision making. Why is he doing this? If he wants to be esteemed by others and regarded with respect, why on earth would be seen associating with such sinful people, and especially to eat with them?
Jesus responds with a challenging remark. Why do they think Jesus has come? Who most needs the help of a physician, the healthy or the sick? Should a physician make a house call on a healthy person? So who exactly should Jesus be hanging out with?
And then Jesus cites a verse from the prophet Hosea: “I desire MERCY, not sacrifice.” Jesus highlights what is truly important to God, God’s set of priorities. Proper worship isn’t the chief priority. The songs of thanksgiving and the offerings of adoration aren’t what God is looking for. What God desires most is MERCY.
When we take a look at Jesus throughout all of these vignettes, we see a common denominator behind his actions. It’s mercy. He approaches Matthew in his tax booth with mercy. It’s mercy that moves him to accept the invitation to dine with the people relegated to the fringes of society. It’s out of mercy that he follows the grieving synagogue leader. And when he discovers that the bleeding woman touched him, he didn’t shout at her, “You evil woman, how dare you touch me!” No, he tells her “Daughter! Take heart!” And he healed her. In mercy, he gathered the lifeless body of the little girl up in his arms, and he restored her to life.
Throughout all of the gospels, in each and every single story about Jesus we see what his primary motivation is. He is driven by mercy, through and through. And that mercy is most completely expressed and fulfilled through his actions on the cross.
It’s precisely there on the cross that we have our clearest demonstration of mercy’s primacy over justice. For who deserved to die on that cross? Was it the One who was completely blameless? No! Was there anything fair or deserving in Jesus’ execution on his cross? Nothing whatsoever! It was the most unfair and unjust action ever to take place in the history of the world.
Here was the one who was without sin; he was completely without fault. But in going to his cross, he willingly took on the sin of everyone who has ever lived. He carried all of it upon himself in order to bring about the biggest act of mercy ever to occur.
And in this act, Jesus fulfilled the words of the prophet Hosea: “I desire mercy.” Mercy is what is at the heart of the eternal. Mercy is what drove Jesus’ actions in his life AND in his death. And in his final act, Jesus demonstrated just how far divine mercy will go to restore the right relationship between a broken humanity and our creator.
Justice or mercy? What we deserved was divine justice. But what we received was far sweeter and ever more powerful: divine mercy.
You and I, we are the recipients of that mercy. God’s mercies are new every morning. They sustain us every single day. We rely on them. We come before our Savior with the same faith as the grieving father and the ailing woman. We seek out Jesus for his boundless mercies.
And living in this mercy, may we become more and more like Jesus. May we reveal and embody his mercy as we step into this world. May our welcoming spirit and our compassion be motivated by his mercy working within us.
Friends, as we eat the holy meal our Lord has given us, we take him in. He is in the bread and the cup. His body and his blood come to us and enter us. He becomes one with us. And his mercy comes with him. Each time we eat this meal, he fills us more and more. Each time, as we take him into ourselves, his mercy fills and transforms us. And through him, we fulfill what God most desires.
*Luis Palau, "Experiencing God's Forgiveness,” Multnomah Press, 1984
