Daily Lectionary: Nehemiah 5:1-16, 6:1-9, 15-16; 1 Timothy 4:1-16

In the Name + of Jesus. Amen. 

Matthew certainly sacrifices something. He sacrifices his certain income and the wealth and status that goes along with it. And every Christian sacrifices something in order to follow Jesus. There are certain roads closed to us once we belong to Christ. It cannot be otherwise. But that is not what Jesus is talking about when He cites the prophet Hosea: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” (Hosea 6:6). In Hosea, the sacrifice is the sacrifice for sin, offered in the temple over and over again. God says that the people are like a morning cloud that comes and goes, fickle and wavering. They come and offer the prescribed sacrifices, but then they depart from God in their idolatry and sin. 

Tax collectors were perceived as doubly evil by the people around them: they made their living off what they collected over and above what was required in taxes, and they collaborated with Israel’s oppressors in Rome. Their critics among the Pharisees and the leaders of Israel no doubt gave the proper sacrifices at the proper times, upholding the Law of God. Their outward acts are righteous and holy. It wasn’t just the Pharisees who believed it about themselves, but the people around them would have thought so as well. Jesus appears as both the sacrifice and the mercy. Once He shows up, the line of righteousness does not run between Pharisees and tax collectors but between everyone and Jesus. There is no one healthy, no one righteous. And Jesus has come to call every sick person and every sinner.

Everything depends on where you stand. If you stand with the outwardly righteous, Jesus will be a threat and an enemy. But if you know that you are a sick sinner, Jesus is the healing physician and the forgiving mercy of God. Matthew sits there at the table with Jesus, not in self-righteousness, but in the perfect relief of being the object of the mercy of Jesus, who would be sacrificed for the sins of the whole world. That is where you and I find ourselves, as well: at the table of Jesus’ mercy, in the all-encompassing forgiveness of God, eating and drinking as forgiven sinners with the sacrificial Lamb of God. Thanks be to God for His gracious calling and merciful welcome of sinners such as us!

In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.

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