Mercy, not sacrifice

“Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do.
Go and learn the meaning of the words,
I desire mercy, not sacrifice.
I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/092116.cfm

EPH 4:1-7, 11-13
MT 9:9-13

Jesus takes the meaning of multi-level marketing to a whole new level when he says he comes to call upon sinners and not the righteous. Based upon his desire for mercy, rather than sacrifice, the sinner is all that he cares about. The righteous, it appears, don’t need mercy. And, sacrifice? It’s a waste of time.

The whole thing looks backwards. The righteous deserve God’s full attention, don’t they? Aren’t they the ones that God would call? The sinners stands outside the gate, filthy in their misdeeds. Sacrifice identifies the upstanding and moral person, giving of themselves for the sake of others. Those who need mercy defines the reprobates. These are the folks who should come crawling to God, begging for forgiveness.

First sacrifice, and then mercy. So we think.

“Learn the meaning of the words,” Jesus says. 

I think he means that first comes mercy; and to defeat sin, extend mercy as a sacrifice. It looks totally backwards because that’s not how we operate.

Our understanding of getting in on the ground level of an enterprise, for instance, offers financial advantages and rewards for early adopters who put in their time, talent and treasures. Jesus appears to shift the risk/rewards of joining the Kingdom of Heaven away from signing up early into signing up everyone with the same advantages. 

To give away the point of the verses above, God seeks an eternal relationship with all of his creation, so much so, that he puts all of his marketing eggs into saving sinners. He is perfectly satisfied with those he has already claimed as righteous. He’s already won them. His eyes are on the wayfarers, wanderers, and the lost. He invokes those he’s won into the same merciful mission.

There are ranges in sinners and the righteous. Not all righteous are the same, and all righteous, except for Mother Mary, were at one time called out of their sin. 

Jesus’ sales pitch involves such a particular attention to sinners, as he said, that his “call” to sinners outlines the entire purpose of his incarnation. One could argue that without sin God would not have needed to become man. But that’s us focused again upon a wrong sense of sacrifice over mercy. 

Jesus became man to live among us to seal mercy as a way of life, for us to know mercy completely. 

Rather than thinking that the righteous, those who are already virtuous and decent, are not called at all by Jesus, consider gathering of the breakfast meal. Place yourself at the table with Jesus. 

“I’ve called you all together to tell you that I’m going on a mission,” he explains. 

“Hear, hear!,” everyone yells. 

“I’m going to go after everyone who’s not here.”

“Hooray!” they all acclaim loudly. 

“And, I’m going to need your help.”

“We’re all in. What do you want us to do?”

At first, we imagined that Jesus was ignoring the righteous, but not so. Beneath the surface of the statement of his “coming,” his incarnation as a human being among us, sits his marketing plan. “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” He’s almost asking us, “Who’s with me?”

The righteous are already loyal customers, without need of mercy, or calling. They’ve already answered the call. “We’re here, Lord,” they would tell him. 

We might even say that the righteous join Jesus in living a life of loving sacrifice because they don’t worry about mercy. They absorb sacrifice, just like Jesus, as an offering of the very mercy that is sourced from God himself. Sacrifice isn’t the goal. It’s just a tool.

I believe that’s at the core of Jesus’ exhortation for us to go and learn the meaning of his words. This juxtaposition of mercy and sacrifice is so intense and foreign to us, that only by living within God’s unrelenting and unlimited mercy can we let go of sin and live in the Kingdom.

Sacrifice, in our American lexicon, represents hard work, dedication, and focus. Those are all good things. Jesus doesn’t dispose of their value when he says “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” Our skewed view of the order of relationships, however, due to our sinful propensities, forces most of us to see God as a superior being running the universe like a corporate demagogue rather than a merciful savior. 

To be sure, some of us live in the righteous dimension, the one where the Kingdom of Heaven is visible, and those lovely folks default to God as merciful. They also reflect mercy through their necessary sacrifice within a world dripping in sin. They heal the sick, bandage the wounded, rush into burning buildings, and serve everyone before themselves.

The bulk of us, though, rattle around in our four dimensions of space and time unaware of mercy’s healing power. We don’t expect mercy. We expect correction. We are expecting God to flick us on the back of our ears when we stray, or test us with daily doses of character building exercises in order to teach us sacrifice. We don’t like the idea of a strictly autocratic demagogue-run life, but we operate as if the God of the universe demands it.

According to Jesus, the righteous live so aligned with God, and so used to mercy that they don’t require God’s mission of marketing. They’re part of his marketing team, already signed up, and eager to help.

God as a demagogue, to clarify such a bizarre analogy of leadership, means that we see God as prejudiced against the righteous and the successful, because they think too highly of themselves. We see God burdened with the forever sinful population of us folks. He is bent over and worn out from people like us who don’t properly love him. The god of demagoguery resorts to henchmen to run the show, because there are so many sinners. God’s power is filtered through authorities with large thumbs, who push our heads down so that our noses are sharpened against the grindstone. The righteous sit on their pompous asses and don’t do anything to help.

The demagogue, then, attracts support from the poor and downtrodden, who identify themselves as both victims and happily unsophisticated common folks, and he leads them in a revolution against the righteous. That’s kind of the skewed Jewish view of the Messiah as a demagogue. 

We envision God’s mercy handed out like rationed provisions. The sinners walk aimlessly on the streets, begging for handouts from God, who periodically shows up with bread, water and cheese. They wait for the day they’ll storm the gates of the righteous.

We are used to demagogues. We are not used to the behavior of the actual merciful God, who has successfully rounded up his saints both here and in heaven, and is blowing to all corners of the earth, pouring grace over the population like water on a dry field.

The news doesn’t report that. It can’t. It can’t see mercy. It sees only sacrifice that dies at the hand of sin. Fortunately, this works in God’s favor, but it leaves out so much of the merciful grace part.

The necessary conclusion from this full statement in Matthew is that God has a desire; that he wants something. While our desires usually come from a place of emptiness, or our lacking something personally, God’s desire comes from fullness. What I mean is that God doesn’t need anything. There is no emptiness or yearning in him. God is complete. A desire from God can only translate to his hope for creation, not hope for himself. 

And, I believe God’s hope and desire can only mean that he wants us to be like him. He is good. He attracts all goodness. Everything God designed is meant for goodness. Mercy is only necessary when goodness is broken and dismissed, and that’s how he calls sinners. With mercy.

He does that with his righteous and faithful believers.

We are not God. But he wants us to be like him. Merciful, forgiving, and when useful, sacrificial lambs.