Sermon preached at St. Alban's, Spirit Lake, on June 8, 2008
(Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A, BCP Lectionary)
by the Rev. Carl D. Mann

Texts:   Hosea 5:15-6:6
Psalm 50:7-15
Romans 4:13-18
Matthew 9:9-13

Today we are presented with a mystery. God, who established the sacrificial system by accepting Abel’s first offering, the system by which the people of Israel practiced stewardship, offered thanks, made their confession, atoned for their sins, and worshiped God, has now said that He no longer desires it. As the Psalm tells us, He doesn’t need sacrificed animals because they already belong to Him. He can have as many as He wants whenever He wants them, which is ridiculous because He doesn’t even eat them. He’s not even hungry nor would he tell us if He was. So the well worn, comfortable religious traditions of the Temple cult appear to have been reduced to empty actions by these prophetic words of God. What was once hallowed had become hollow.

Now that doesn’t bode well for Episcopalians, does it? Or for Roman Catholics and a few High Church Lutherans either. We love our liturgical traditions; our vestments, altars, bells, incense, icons, and vast amounts of symbolism. Aren’t these the modern day equivalent of the sacrificial rituals and ceremonies employed in the temple in Jerusalem?

And the rubrics! Those little italicized instructions in the Prayer Book telling us what to do, and how to do them, and when to do them throughout the service making sure that everything is done well and in good taste!

But Scripture tells us that God really wants a sacrifice of thanksgiving. He desires our love. He desires our faithfulness, and a deeper understanding of Him. He wants the intention of our hearts to be in the right place.

In the Gospel today, the passage ends with Jesus quoting the last verse of today’s Old Testament lesson from Hosea, only he changes the word steadfast love to mercy. But Jesus didn’t goof nor did he paraphrase it. He nailed it correctly. The Hebrew word is “hesed,” (pronounced Kheh’sed), which has a multitude of meanings: loyalty, faithfulness, goodness, mercy, lovingkindness, steadfast or unfailing love. Hesed is enduring, persistent, and even eternal. It is both a noun and a verb. It is nothing short of Divine Love. All of these words describe the qualities of God as He has revealed them to us through His covenant. In fact, hesed is the very essence of the covenantal relationship.

But also embedded in hesed is an expected reciprocity and mutuality that demands service, reverential awe, and a corresponding exercise of hesed in return. In other words, we are expected to do likewise. But how do we accomplish this faithful, divine work assigned to us by God?

The answer is in today’s Gospel. The Pharisees, those stringent keepers of the Law and traditions of Judaism ask Jesus’ disciples how it is that Jesus can sit down and eat with tax collectors and other assorted sinners. To do this is to render one's self ritually unclean! But Jesus, who overhears this says, “It’s simple!” You see, God has shown His faithful divine love to an undeserving mankind. In doing so, He has set the standard for what He expects in return, which is to show the same kind of steadfast love and mercy to those who are less fortunate than us. He has provided everything that we need. All we have to do is to share what we have with those who have not. And it may just lead them into the same covenantal relationship with God that we ourselves share. By doing so, we not only become receptacles of God’s grace but also vehicles of God’s grace. As Jesus said, it makes no sense sending a doctor to those who are well. We are to give to those who are in need and are as undeserving as we are.

Ok, that’s the “what we are supposed to do” but how do we do it? It was easy for Jesus because he is God. He can sit with publicans and sinners and dispense Divine Love like candy but we’re just human beings with our own discriminating tastes. How can we possibly suck up our pride and sit with people like ‘them’?

This is the beauty of the Covenant. God gives us this unmerited gift of grace and with it His expectations and high standards, and the power to do likewise. It’s called the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God’s active agent working in this world that allows us as humans to accomplish the divine work of hesed. In fact the Holy Spirit is the “embodiment” of hesed! The Holy Spirit is God’s grace. The Holy Spirit is the highest of all standards. The Holy Spirit is the active source of goodness that energizes our spirit to reciprocate Divine Love to God and to our neighbors.

This is reflected in our Collect this morning. ‘O God, from whom all good proceeds: Grant that by your inspiration we may think those things that are right, and by your merciful guiding may do them.’

We acknowledge that God is the source of all goodness. We are asking for His knowledge by means of His Spirit; that we may breathe in His goodness which allow us to think right things, things that only accord to His will. And by His hesed, His steadfast love to us, for us, and with us, He will set an example to follow, and He will empower us to accomplish the same through His Word, Jesus Christ.

Through this simple prayer we are asking God to take what he has already given to us freely by virtue of our baptisms and to transform us into extended agents of His Holy Spirit, working His will in this world, returning thanks to Him and being faithful to Him.

If you want a practical example, again look to the Gospel. Jesus sees Matthew, a tax collector of some variety, who is hated by nearly everybody except other tax collectors, and calls to him, and says, “Follow me.” Now the Greek word translated as calls is more like an invitation to dinner. Jesus is inviting Matthew to come and eat with him, and in the next sentence Matthew got up and followed him to a house where dinner was being served to a whole raft of sinners. Now the Greek words translated as got up are similar to the word used for resurrected. So in essence, Jesus is setting the example for us to invite other people who are in need of salvation to join us in a resurrected or transformed life at the heavenly banquet. And we get a foretaste of that heavenly banquet each week when we celebrate the Eucharist which means thanksgiving, which is exactly what we are called to do in verse 14 of today’s Psalm: “Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving and make good your vows to the Most High.” In other words, each time we invite others to share in the Eucharist with us; we are fully participating in, both receiving and returning to God His Divine Love, which is hesed.

So where does that leave us with the rest of our liturgical traditions and rituals? There is nothing outwardly wrong with them. It is important for us to understand their meaning. They enhance our worship, they help us personally to focus our attention on God, and they are useful reminders of the beauty of holiness. But what Jesus is saying to us today is that unless they are heartfelt, encompassing all the qualities that permeate hesed, if they don’t inspire us to act out our faith, then they are as unnecessary as a doctor is to a healthy person and as meaningless as throwing a barbeque for God who isn’t even hungry, and wouldn’t tell us if He was.

Gloria Patri