Hosea: 5:15-6:6
Matthew 9:9-13 & 18-26

“For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”

We spend so much of our life pretending.

“Hi how are you”
“I’m fine” or “I’m really good”

wanting to demonstrate to the other person how together our lives are. But also just a social habit – become part of our lives that we need to present a good image: we need to present an outward appearance of being together and in control. And of course on the surface most of us spend most of our lives more of less all right. But scratch below the surface, like Jesus does, and the picture for most of us is different.

Supposing we were honest and when someone says “how are you” we say “a bit sick actually- feeling a bit of a failure, not sure what I’m doing most of the time and haven’t spoken to God for 2 months. Pretty preoccupied with money and material things and a bit status obsessed. Actually a bit morally and spiritually sick” we adopt a concerned expression -  this is a special needs case and needs lots of attention. This expression says “Thank God we’re not like that”

But if we take Jesus seriously the healthy state is to know we are sick. So if someone says “I’m fine” or “I’m good” then we should look concerned. That is an unhealthy place state of mind. Normal is to say “I’m sick” “That’s great, so am I”

Matthew, the tax-collectors and sinners knew that they were sick – because everyone told them so: and this is why those who thought they were well were scandalised by the fact that Jesus was spending time with people who were clearly morally and spiritually sick.
They were people who did not attend the temple, did not make sacrifice and so were outside God’s presence. In our words they didn’t go to Church.

It is interesting how much time Jesus spent with people like that – and that he was actually not too concerned with getting them into organised religion. Whilst Jesus went to the temple and the synagogue, there isn’t much to suggest that he thought it necessary for others to do so. His tendency was to reveal God to people where they were – to demonstrate God’s love in the real world. At times Jesus revealed God through dramatic acts of healing – and at other times by just being with people; and we find both of these things in this passage.  

So when the Pharisees challenge him on the company he keeps he quotes words they already know from Hosea “I desire mercy, and steadfast love, not sacrifice and burnt offerings”. God is a God of unconditional, extravagant and generous love to all people.
God does not confine himself to the temple, and he does not meet us through empty ritual and burnt offerings.

There is a Pharisee in all of us – someone who wants to control God to suit our own views. We tend to treat God as if He was a frightened old man living behind the altar, and too timid to go out into the world unless on very special occasions we take him by the hand and lead Him out there.

At times we will bring strangers in to our church, or allow them in for weddings or Christenings, but we worry that they might upset the old man behind the altar by not behaving properly, not knowing when to sing. And when they feel uncomfortable and fidget and clearly don’t know how to behave in a Church we judge them and are glad when they’ve gone and the old man can relax again.

We get worried that people are ignoring this old man, that fewer people are coming to see him and one day people might forget him all together. So we become fearful, and hard and anxious that we are not doing enough for God, that somehow we are letting him down. As our anxiety blinds us, we fail to recognise Jesus in the world already, being present in ways that are not religious.

We must recognise that we are just the same as the Pharisees who failed to recognise Jesus: we share the same humanity and so make the same mistakes. The Pharisees too were consumed by fear and anxiety because of the way they saw God. They believed that if everyone in Israel could keep every commandment for just one day then the kingdom of God would come. So they became increasingly fearful that this would not happen, invented more rules, squabbled about more irrelevancies and became harsher, more distant and more judging of their brothers and sisters.

So preoccupied are we and they with trying to be right people, with the workings of our temple that we fail to recognise Jesus in the world.

In Jesus, God demonstrates that He is not a frightened old man who needs rules of engagement to protect him; but He is God with us and that He shares everything with us. He is present in every human situation: suffering, healing, being ignored and misunderstood, always loving, often rejected and always patient. God is not confined to the temple or church and is not only to be found in keeping the rules. The God in the world is the One who is not concerned with whether people are obeying the rules – for He desires mercy and not sacrifice.

In some ways this is quite annoying. Here we are, faithfully coming to Church week by week, giving sacrificially of our time and money. Putting our love and energy into the place and now I’m telling you that God isn’t in it.

That of course is not what I’m saying: we do meet God through our life together, through sharing God’s word and through the Eucharist. But only if these things flow from our coming to God with empty hands and agreeing with Him that we are sick and in need of his touch. The rhythm of prayer and praise is our food and drink. But if we believe that God is only in our sacrifice of praise, then we are limiting Him.

If we come to God with our hands full of the things we’ve brought him, full of our own good deeds and character, full of the reasons that He should be grateful to us, then our hands are too full to receive Him. We can only come to Him acknowledging that “our love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes away early”: that we are sick, hungry and thirsty, with our hands empty and nothing to offer. Just like the woman who touched Jesus cloak, it is at that point, when we feel we have nothing, that Jesus says to us “your faith has made you well”.

Amen