Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
June 8, 2008

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Our readings from Hosea and Matthew this morning make a very important point. God does not want our animal sacrifices. In the Hosea God says: “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” Hosea 6:6 NRSV In the Matthew Jesus says: “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’” Matthew 9:13 NRSV It isn’t obvious because of the translation difference here, but Matthew’s Jesus is actually quoting the line from Hosea. He clearly and intentionally identifies himself here with the Hebrew prophetic tradition in which prophet after prophet says to the people that God really doesn’t want your animal sacrifices. The prophets said it. Jesus said it. So I guess we’d better believe it. No animal sacrifices. So I guess I’ll have to cancel that sheep killing ceremony that I had planned for later in the service. I thought that was what God wanted from us, but I guess it isn’t. Oh, well.

What’s that you say? We don’t sacrifice animals to God? You say it doesn’t come as news to you that God doesn’t want us to sacrifice animals as an act of worship? Well, then. I guess these verses have no meaning for us. After all, in Hosea’s day worship consisted primarily of animal sacrifice. It did in Jesus’ day too. But Jesus is telling them: You’ve got it all wrong. You think that what God wants is animal sacrifice, but that isn’t at all what God wants. Which makes it particularly odd that the Christian tradition went ahead anyway and turned him into the ultimate animal sacrifice, but that’s a topic for another day. The point right now is that since these passages are about rejecting animal sacrifice, and we don’t do and have never done animal sacrifice. So these verses have no meaning for us, right?

Well, I’m sure it won’t shock you when I say “not so fast.” After all, if I really thought these verses had no meaning for us, I probably wouldn’t have chosen them to be our Scripture lessons this morning. So to get at what that meaning might be let me ask: Is there something that we actually do that plays the same role in our spiritual lives that sacrificial worship played in the lives of people in Hosea’s time and in Jesus’ time? Is there something that we actually do that we think is what God wants from us but that really isn’t what God wants from us? To try to answer that question, let’s look more closely at just what role the animal sacrifice that our prophets Hosea and Jesus reject played in the lives of ordinary people in Biblical times. Sacrifice was what their religion demanded of them. It demanded other things too, but mostly it demanded that they offer animal sacrifice in the temple in Jerusalem. That more than anything else is what made people righteous in the eyes of the religious authorities of the time. Is there something that plays that role in our lives?

The answer that came to me this past week as I pondered that question is: Personal piety. Personal piety is what most of the religious authorities of our time say is what God wants from us. Let me outline for you the kind of life that religion today, for the most part, says God wants. Imagine if you will (no, this is not the Twilight Zone) a woman of my age or older who has never personally hurt anyone in her life. She is scrupulously honest in all of her dealings and relationships. She doesn’t swear. Her personal sexual morality has always been above reproach. She donates regularly to her church, to the local food bank, and to the Salvation Army. She attends church twice a week and says her prayers regularly every morning and evening. She reads a Bible every day. Everyone says she is the nicest, sweetest person they have ever met. She is, in short, a model of personal piety; and she sincerely believes that that is what God wants from her. If she had lived in Jerusalem two thousand years ago you can bet she would have sacrificed at least a dove in the temple almost every week.

But there is another side of her life. She has opposed every modern liberation movement that has arisen in her lifetime. She opposed the civil rights movement back in the sixties, and she repeatedly urged her representatives in Washington, D.C. to vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 because she thought Black people were cursed as the descendants of one of the sons of Noah. And she thought that all that trouble in the South was caused by extremist “outside agitators” because the “Negroes” were content to live as they did. She supported the Vietnam War policies of the Johnson and Nixon administrations because she was sure God wanted us fight the “godless Communists.” She opposed the women’s liberation movement, and still does, because she thinks the Bible says women should be subservient to men. She opposes the gay rights movement because she knows that the Bible approves of sexual relations only between a man and a woman within marriage. She supported the American invasion of Iraq and continues to support US military action there because she thinks all Muslims are godless terrorists. She supports capital punishment. She supports deep cuts in government social safety net programs at the state and federal levels because she’s sure all those poor people are poor because they choose to be; and besides, we need the money for the military. She has no doubt that what God wants from her is her personal piety, that her faith says nothing about these other matters, and that the only people who are saved are Christians who believe just like she does.

Friends, my hypothetical woman here—and there really are such people, lots of them—is a modern day Pharisee. Jesus quoted Hosea to the Pharisees of his day saying “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” To this Pharisee of our day and all the people like her he would say “I desire mercy, not your version of personal piety.” Jesus would not find her personal piety appealing or acceptable at all because she rejects what Hosea calls “steadfast love” and Jesus calls “mercy.” That is what God wants, not our self-righteous piety.

But we need to ask: If God doesn’t want our personal piety, just what is it that God does want? What do “steadfast love” and “mercy” mean here? The word that Hosea used and that Jesus quoted is the Hebrew word “hesed.” That word gets translated many ways, as steadfast love, or mercy, or loyalty, or grace, or even love. What it actually means is something like “covenantal faithfulness.” It means God’s faithfulness to the covenant between God and God’s people, and it means the people’s faithfulness to the covenant as well. God’s side of that covenant is grace, but our side of that covenant is faithfulness to God’s will for us and the world. The Hebrew prophets, and Jesus who is their heir and successor, tell us what that is. “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8 NRSV There’s little or nothing about personal piety there. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” Matthew 22:37 NRSV And you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Matthew 22:39 There’s little or nothing about personal piety there either. It’s not that personal piety is a bad thing. It isn’t. It’s just that personal piety alone is most decidedly not what God desires from us. God desires of us love of the other, justice, peace, and mercy. The God of the Bible, both the Old Testament and the New, is more than anything else the God of compassion. And that’s what God desires of us, compassion. Compassion toward the individuals in need whom we encounter, but more than that. Compassion toward all of God’s people expressed in lives committed to the ways of justice for all people and the ways that truly make for peace, the ways of creative, assertive, nonviolent resistance to evil. The Hebrew prophets like Hosea and Micah railed against the people of their time because they made sacrifice but did not do justice. Jesus did the same. They would rail against us today if we concern ourselves with our own personal piety and purity and ignore the works of justice and of peace as badly as the rulers of Hosea’s time or the Pharisees of Jesus’ time did.

I have said many times before, and I’ll say again now, that we all live in God’s grace and that we neither can nor need to do anything to earn that grace. That’s not the issue here. The issue is how God calls us to respond to that grace. The Pharisees of Jesus’ time thought it was by performing animal sacrifice and obeying the Levitical purity code. They were wrong. Far too many people of our time think it is by living personally blameless lives and that it has nothing to do with how we live together in community and how we express God’s compassion in the world. They’re wrong too. Hosea, Micah, and Jesus make it perfectly clear that they are wrong. Through God’s prophets God says: “I desire steadfast love not sacrifice; I desire mercy for all people, not your self-centered personal piety.” God also says I welcome your sacrifices, I welcome your personal piety if they are truly expressions of your devotion to me; but I want to see that devotion expressed in other ways too. I call on you to learn what this means: I desire mercy not sacrifice. Are we ready to do it? With God’s help, we can. Amen.