If someone is teaching and they repeat the same phrase or quote it makes our ears pique. Repeating something often indicates that it is an important thought or point to the presenter.
Did you notice that Jesus repeated himself in our reading today?
Back when Jesus called Matthew to be his disciple, the Pharisees confronted His disciples about why Jesus eats with “tax collectors and ‘sinners.’” He told them that the answer laid in understanding this passage from Hosea 6:6 – “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.” Now as he walks through a grain field, he is once again confronted by the Pharisees, this time about “breaking the Sabbath,” and Jesus tells them, “If you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless.”
Mercy. Not Sacrifice.
So many of the religions of the world boil down to one word: Sacrifice. If you want God’s blessings offer a sacrifice. If you want to go to heaven do what is right, obey, sacrifice. Give up your pleasure here – sacrifice – so that you can have rich rewards in the afterlife. This thought is part of the Islamic concept of jihad if I understand it rightly: sacrifice your life for Allah and you will have 70 virgins in paradise. (I wonder how Muslim wives feel about that.) And I fear that even we Christians walk dangerously close to making our faith about sacrifice; making those lifestyle changes, shunning evil, and giving, giving, giving.
It isn’t that sacrifice doesn’t matter. That’s not at all what Jesus is saying here. In fact, sacrifice is essential to our relationship with God. It’s just not our sacrifice that matters – it’s Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, the sign of Jonah he talks about here. His dying and rising are the sacrifice that was necessary to atone for our sins, and we would be lost without it.
In response to that sacrifice, we too will sacrifice. God has more and better in store for us than this world has to offer. As Jim Elliot, a missionary and martyr who died in 1956 bringing the Gospel to the Auca people in Ecuador, once wrote in his journal, “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” To die in this world is simply to enter eternal life.
Besides, God uses our sacrifice for the sake of His kingdom. When Elliot and his partners were murdered by the Auca warriors, no one could have imagined that it would set the stage for their wives and children to come to the Auca people with the message of Jesus’ forgiveness so that now almost the whole tribe is Christian.
No, sacrifice matters, and, indeed, it is good. But what matters even more is why we offer the sacrifice.
Why was Jim Elliot willing to give up what he could not keep; to give up his very life? Because he had received mercy from God’s hand in Jesus’ death and resurrection. God’s first action toward us in not judgment, but mercy. In everything that happens in life our starting point is this: We have received mercy from God. His mercy flows through us to others so that they experience mercy as well – sometimes as we sacrifice ourselves, our time, our talents, even our treasures (although this is really the least of these, but the greatest in our own minds) for them.
We are people of mercy because we have received mercy from – and if a tree is known by its fruit, what fruit should we bear?
Father in Heaven, thank you for your mercy that I have experienced in my life. I have not always extended mercy to the people you have placed in my life, help me to be a better conduit of your grace to others. Help me to keep mercy and sacrifice in the right places in my life, and use me to help others experience your mercy so that they can know, love and follow Jesus, too. In His Name I pray. Amen.
Did you notice that Jesus repeated himself in our reading today?
Back when Jesus called Matthew to be his disciple, the Pharisees confronted His disciples about why Jesus eats with “tax collectors and ‘sinners.’” He told them that the answer laid in understanding this passage from Hosea 6:6 – “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.” Now as he walks through a grain field, he is once again confronted by the Pharisees, this time about “breaking the Sabbath,” and Jesus tells them, “If you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless.”
Mercy. Not Sacrifice.
So many of the religions of the world boil down to one word: Sacrifice. If you want God’s blessings offer a sacrifice. If you want to go to heaven do what is right, obey, sacrifice. Give up your pleasure here – sacrifice – so that you can have rich rewards in the afterlife. This thought is part of the Islamic concept of jihad if I understand it rightly: sacrifice your life for Allah and you will have 70 virgins in paradise. (I wonder how Muslim wives feel about that.) And I fear that even we Christians walk dangerously close to making our faith about sacrifice; making those lifestyle changes, shunning evil, and giving, giving, giving.
It isn’t that sacrifice doesn’t matter. That’s not at all what Jesus is saying here. In fact, sacrifice is essential to our relationship with God. It’s just not our sacrifice that matters – it’s Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, the sign of Jonah he talks about here. His dying and rising are the sacrifice that was necessary to atone for our sins, and we would be lost without it.
In response to that sacrifice, we too will sacrifice. God has more and better in store for us than this world has to offer. As Jim Elliot, a missionary and martyr who died in 1956 bringing the Gospel to the Auca people in Ecuador, once wrote in his journal, “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” To die in this world is simply to enter eternal life.
Besides, God uses our sacrifice for the sake of His kingdom. When Elliot and his partners were murdered by the Auca warriors, no one could have imagined that it would set the stage for their wives and children to come to the Auca people with the message of Jesus’ forgiveness so that now almost the whole tribe is Christian.
No, sacrifice matters, and, indeed, it is good. But what matters even more is why we offer the sacrifice.
Why was Jim Elliot willing to give up what he could not keep; to give up his very life? Because he had received mercy from God’s hand in Jesus’ death and resurrection. God’s first action toward us in not judgment, but mercy. In everything that happens in life our starting point is this: We have received mercy from God. His mercy flows through us to others so that they experience mercy as well – sometimes as we sacrifice ourselves, our time, our talents, even our treasures (although this is really the least of these, but the greatest in our own minds) for them.
We are people of mercy because we have received mercy from – and if a tree is known by its fruit, what fruit should we bear?
Father in Heaven, thank you for your mercy that I have experienced in my life. I have not always extended mercy to the people you have placed in my life, help me to be a better conduit of your grace to others. Help me to keep mercy and sacrifice in the right places in my life, and use me to help others experience your mercy so that they can know, love and follow Jesus, too. In His Name I pray. Amen.
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