Sunday Sermon - 7 June

I often find myself laying awake in bed at night or in the morning, sometimes prayerfully, sometimes in frustration, asking God what he wants of me. Today, I feel like that same question sits quietly underneath all of this morning’s readings. It’s an important question and perhaps the most important spiritual question any of us can ask:

What does God actually want from us?

Now, let’s be clear - the question is to God and only God can answer. We’re not asking: What do religious people, my priest or pastor or the church - demand of us? Not what our religious ideologies demand from us.  Not what culture demands from us. What does God want?

In the Gospel today, Jesus gives us the answer in one simple and straightforward sentence. Just 5 words: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”

To give credit where credit is due, these words were spoken long before Jesus. In fact, they originated from the prophet Hosea. Hosea 6:6 “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” Jesus did not invent the idea. He reaches back deep into the heart of the Hebrew Scriptures and pulls forward something that had always been there and he was reminding his followers of this very point. 

Hosea was an 8th century prophet speaking primarily to the northern kingdom of Israel during a time of political instability, social injustice, religious corruption, and covenantal unfaithfulness. Outwardly, the people were still ‘behaving’ very religiously. They were offering sacrifices to God, festivals were being observed, rituals continued at the temples. Inwardly, society was falling apart. The poor were being exploited, there was corruption, violence, shallow if not completely hollow repentance and divided loyalty between God and greed. In Hosea’s day the issue was not that Israel had stopped being religious.  The issue was that religion had become disconnected from mercy, justice, and covenant faithfulness.

Jesus makes his point by reaching back to Hosea because he sees the same pattern repeating itself: religious observance flourishing while compassion and mercy are neglected.

“I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”

In other words: compassion and love matter more to God than legalistic, transactional religion. If we do this - God gives us that. This is not how God exists in our lives.

That does not mean worship does not matter. It does not mean Church does not matter. It does not mean prayer or Scripture or sacraments do not matter. It means that if religion and religious acts do not produce mercy, then we have misunderstood religion entirely.

In the Gospel, the religious leaders are scandalized because Jesus is eating with tax collectors and sinners. Jesus is crossing boundaries. He is sitting with the wrong people. Associating with the wrong people. Touching the wrong people and allowing the wrong people to touch him. Instead of defending himself with a complicated theological argument, he simply says: “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’”

That phrase “go and learn” was actually a bit of a rebuke. Jesus is saying: you know the rules, but you have missed the point, or better yet, the heart of God. I think that perhaps this remains one of the great temptations of religion in every age. To know the rules but miss the heart. We know the ritual, the rote words we say every week, but are we embracing their meaning? Are they the words God really wants to hear, if he wants to hear words at all? Do the words match our actions and behaviours? I believe the words we say in our ritual are more for us, to guide our actions, than that which God really wants to hear. I believe God prefers less ritual from our lips and more mercy in our lives.

We are living in a moment where nations - nations who call themselves people of the God of Abraham; Jews, Christians and Moslems - speak endlessly about security, strength, borders, retaliation, economic interests, and national destiny. Certainly, nations have responsibilities to protect and govern wisely, but increasingly what is absent from their decision-making is mercy.

We see wars where civilian suffering becomes background noise. We see political systems that reward outrage more than compassion. We see entire populations reduced to statistics, ideologies, or obstacles. Whether it is in America and Iran, Gaza and Israel, Ukraine and Russia, Sudan, refugee camps across the world, rising political polarization here at home, growing hostility toward the stranger and the immigrant, how Toronto in preparation for the World Cup is ‘rounding up’ the unsheltered who live on the street and shipping them out of the city against their will. The great danger is always the same:  Human beings stop seeing one another as human beings.

Whenever that happens, sacrifice returns. Not always literal sacrifice - like that of a dove in the temple - but metaphorical sacrifice. A sacrifice that speaks to something much greater: The sacrifice of compassion. The sacrifice of truth. The sacrifice of mercy. The sacrifice of love for our neighbour for the sake of power, fear, greed, or ideology.

Into that world comes Jesus saying:  “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”  

Not weakness. Mercy.

Not naïveté. Mercy.

Not justification of injustice. Mercy.

Biblically speaking, mercy is not sentimental niceness. Mercy is the refusal to see another person as less than their equal. Mercy is seeing the humanity in every human being worthy of dignity, respect and love. This is not merely a New Testament theme. It goes all the way back to Abraham.

In Genesis today, God calls Abram to leave everything familiar behind. Home. Security. Identity. Stability. And why? So that “all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

From the very beginning, the covenant was never meant to be tribal or exclusive. God’s purpose was always expansive. The blessing given to Abraham was meant to flow outward into the whole human family. That means whenever religion becomes narrow, cruel, exclusionary, or self-righteous, it has already drifted from the heart of God.

Paul, in Romans, takes this even further. Paul says Abraham was made righteous not because he perfectly performed religious law, but because he trusted God. The promise depends on grace. Not transaction. Not achievement. Grace. The God revealed in Scripture is not a God endlessly asking humanity to prove itself worthy. God loves us, God has always loved us. The God revealed in Scripture is a God constantly moving toward humanity in mercy. A God who keeps choosing relationship over rejection.

A God who gives life where there is barrenness, hope where there is despair, forgiveness where there is failure. Ultimately, Christians believe, a God who enters human life fully in Jesus. So when we look at Jesus eating with sinners, touching the unclean, healing the broken, restoring the excluded — we are not seeing God temporarily acting mercifully. We are seeing who God is, what God is like and who we are called to be - in the image of God.

“I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”

That raises an important question for us - then why Church? Why gather here at all? Why liturgy? Why Eucharist? Why prayer? Why hymns? Why sacraments? Not because God needs religious performances from us.

We gather because love always seeks expression.

We come together to remember who we are.
We come together to be reshaped by mercy.
We come together to give thanks.
We come together because we need one another.

Perhaps most importantly, we come together because we ourselves are people who need mercy. Every one of us. None of us comes here as the spiritually successful.

We come simply as people trying to follow Jesus. People trying to learn compassion. People trying to forgive. People trying to become less fearful and more loving. And I am not afraid or ashamed to say that I lead the way in these needs and this effort. Week after week, we gather around this table and hear again the great truth at the centre of the Gospel: That before we ever loved God, God loved us.

Before we understood grace, we were given grace. Before we forgave, we were forgiven. That changes people, and if it doesn’t it darn well should.

The measure of Christian faith is ultimately not how religious we appear, but how merciful we are becoming. Kinder. More compassionate. More capable of seeing Christ in another human being. Including those we disagree with, those we fear, and those society discards.

That’s hard work. It is much easier to cling to certainties, ritual, clique-like congregational tribes, ideologies, and self-righteousness. Mercy requires vulnerability, humility, and for us to admit that we too stand in need of grace. This is the path Jesus gives us.

“I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”

Perhaps that is the simplest way to understand the Christian life. The life God calls us to and the life we’ve chosen. To become people who increasingly reflect the mercy we ourselves have received. People through whom blessing flows outward. People who remind a wounded world that compassion is still possible. People who refuse to surrender our humanity to fear and division. People who follow Jesus not merely in belief, but in love.

Amen.