William Yagel
Grace Radford
June 11, 2023
Proper 5, Year A
Holy and Loving God - may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be pleasing in your sight O Lord you are our strength and our redeemer.
Amen
“Mercy, not sacrifice.”
These were the words that stopped me in my tracks when I read them early in the week. If you have ever participated in a Lectio Divina, or a divine reading of scripture, you may remember that often the first instruction upon hearing a passage is to listen for a simple word or phrase that resonates with you. No explanation or grand theological treatise, simply the word or phrase that jumps off the page and speaks directly to you. Well, this was my phrase this week.
I took to heart, without actually realizing it, the command from Christ: “Go and learn what this means ‘I desire Mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but the sinners”. I have not been able to shake them, every time I would read the passage again, these words came back and most of the rest seemed to fall away. The phrase is beautiful and comforting. It puts me at ease and wraps me in love. These words have been in the ether around me all week, showing up again and again.
The phrase itself was clipped from the words of the prophet Hosea who was speaking just prior to the fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the 8th Century BC. The term mercy, or Hesed, in the Hebrew of Hosea can be understood as a beautiful expression of the fullness of love. It translates as mercy, but also as steadfast love, kindness, goodness, faithful love, or covenant love. This word speaks to the boundless Love that we receive from God. That love that was promised and offered by God is what God seeks for us to share with him and with one another.
But the word sacrifice is maybe not what you would expect. Hosea is speaking specifically to the temple sacrifices, he is not telling them that God doesn’t want them to “give something up”. The translation of the root word Olah which is taken from Hosea 6:6 is literally “that which goes up” or “whole burnt offerings”. Sacrifices- in the Temple. Animals that were killed and whose lives were ceremonially sacrificed to God. This was their ancient understanding of how the people should worship God. But by the time of Hosea, the people had distorted the meaning of these sacrifices. The sacrifices had taken the place of steadfast love and became a way to purchase piety. The wealthy could afford the best, the unblemished lambs, while the poor could not participate or were taken advantage of.
The prophetic voice of Hosea is saying God seeks your love not your false piety. The ritual sacrifices had become hollow, the meaning and power was to be bound up in a love for God but that had been lost, and only the religious act remained. Religion and Church are not nor have they ever been the goal, rather, they are the means. These are ways to seek and to be sought by God as a people. The church is, as I mentioned on Pentecost, God’s mission to us in the world, a gift of the outpouring of God’s love, not our means to self importance. Mercy, steadfast love, Relationship with God. This is the goal.
And this is exactly what Paul has in mind as he writes to the church in Rome this morning. What he does in these few verses is a powerful explanation of the Mercy that Matthew and Hosea speak about. Much of Paul’s work centered around who could belong to the Church. Was the budding Christian church meant only for Jews or could Gentiles also join the ranks? Who did God want in God’s Church. Who has access to the salvation of Christ and who is getting pushed away from the table?
On this Paul is clear.
He goes back to the beginning of the people of Israel, back to the call of Abram and Sarai out of the country of their birth and into the promised land. Ok, I just have one more translation for you. Torah. The Torah is just the first five books of the bible-Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The Jewish people have had the other OT scriptures as well, but the Torah is the foundation of their faith. And the word Torah means Law. Those five books are traditionally believed to have been give by Moses to the people. Moses Gave the people the Law.
When Paul is talking about Abram he is remembering that it is faith, not law that was at the beginning. The gift given by God to Abram and Sarai was not offered because Abram followed the law-the law did not yet exist. This blessing given to Abram and Sarai and their descendants was never earned. It was given freely out of and abundance of Love. And we know that his descendants shall be “as numerous as the stars in the sky, and through your offspring all the nations on the earth shall be blessed.”
Paul is telling the people that God’s, God’s grace, God’s mercy is not reserved for a particular group and certainly not for those who suppose to adhere to the Law, or those who suppose that they are superior. Paul is reminding the people of the Church in Rome and the Church in Radford that none of us can ever hope to get it “right”. We constantly fall short and so then we must rely on Grace.
This is why we make a confession together every Sunday. We as individuals and as a people confess that we have sinned against God in Thought and word and deed. In what we have done and what we have left undone we have not loved you with our whole hearts. We have failed to be your mission in the world and we need your help to do what you ask. We need Gods help to offer steadfast love, to offer mercy.
But the really good news from Paul is that Christ made good on the Blessing promised knowing how far short we fall. The expansive love of God welcomes all of the descendants of Abraham, as we heard in the first reading, it is through Abraham that all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Jews and Gentiles, slaves and free are inheritors of God’s blessing. God is welcoming us all knowing that we fall short of any law. As with Abram, it is not our merits that afford us welcome, but the generative love found in God’s Grace and Mercy seen in the life of Christ that calls us ever deeper into the heart of God.
So, this morning as Jesus dines with tax collectors and sinners, as he touches the woman and dead girl who are unclean according to Jewish law, he illustrates for us who God called us to be through Hosea and all the prophets. He continues to call us to be a people of steadfast love who are striving to see our own tendency to going through the motions of faith without seeking the fullness of God. He charges us to see the fullness of the human family as beloved and deserving of mercy, not because of any merits, but because of God’s unbounded mercy for us.
Amen