"Mercy and Sacrifice – That’s Simple to Understand," the senior sermon of Nancy Ricketts, Class of 2008 from the Diocese of Texas, given on
October 24, 2007, in Christ Chapel

The previous weeks had not been easy ones for Jesus and the disciples. What had begun as a “good-will” tour of the Galilean cities had turned into a disaster. It seemed that if something could go wrong, it went wrong. First the imprisoned John questions Jesus as the Messiah. Later, Jesus finds it necessary to respond to the almost criminal charges of being a glutton and drunkard. The final disappointment was when the people in the cities, who had initially seemed sympathetic, openly rejected Jesus’ message, deciding that their urban religious institutions were doing just fine, thank you very much.

And now, to add insult to injury, these dejected, exhausted, and desperately hungry disciples were confronted by the Pharisees for plucking a few grains of wheat on the Sabbath. The Pharisees timing couldn’t have been worse. Jesus was in a less than pleasant mood and Matthew’s choice of Greek adjectives makes it clear that the disciples were starving. This was not just a snack to tide them over until dinner.

The discussion is short and to the point. The Pharisees judge the disciples as being in violation of Sabbath and Jesus responds, referring to the actions of King David and his companions as precedent for the actions of Jesus and the disciples. And then Jesus adds, “But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless.”

“I desire mercy and not sacrifice.” This isn’t the first time Jesus has quoted this phrase from Hosea. Back in Chapter 9, he instructed the Pharisees to “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ ”

It may not be politically correct, but I have to confess to a great deal of admiration for the Pharisees. We know that Matthew was writing his gospel after the failed Jewish revolt. The Essenes had packed their bags and left town. With the destruction of the Temple, the Sadducees were now unemployed, leaving the Pharisees as the only surviving Jewish leaders struggling to maintain the integrity of their religion in the face of the Roman Empire.

And Sabbath was a significant part of that religion. Sabbath recalled creation. Sabbath celebrated deliverance from Egypt. God was quite adamant in Deuteronomy that Israel keep Sabbath. Sabbath was not to be taken lightly. The Pharisees were doing nothing more than trying to keep up their end of this 2,000 year old covenant that God had made with God’s chosen people.

This wasn’t some trivial, nitpicking matter that the Pharisees had thought up to irritate Jesus. They weren’t trying to trick him into making some sort of admission that would question his credibility as a Jewish teacher. Keeping Sabbath was critical to the Jewish faith. In fact, the Pharisees took this responsibility so seriously that they were willing to die in defending God’s law. If the Pharisees believed that the disciples were violating the observance of Sabbath, they would have been derelict in their duties if they hadn’t confronted them.

Jesus had made it clear time and time again that he was committed to his Jewish faith, and that included observing Sabbath. This was not a struggle between Christians and Jews. Jesus and the Pharisees worshipped the same God, read the same Torah, and accepted the same prophets. This was a family feud; people of the same faith tradition were trying to work out what they believed God required of them.

“I desire mercy and not sacrifice.”

So, what did the Pharisees know about mercy? They knew that mercy was not something to be earned. It wasn’t something they were entitled to. Mercy wasn’t payment for work done. Mercy implied love, kindness, compassion, and forgiveness. Mercy was God’s grace.

And what did they know about sacrifice? Sacrifice was an obligation, something akin to payment, a divine form of quid pro quo – their “this” for God’s “that”; the willingness to give up something for the greater good. Sacrifice was the means to an end. Sacrifice was the need to perform. Sacrifice was work.

And there it is. Mercy versus sacrifice. Works versus grace. The Pharisees versus Jesus. The Jews versus the Christians. At least that’s what many of us as Christians have been taught. Somewhere back in Sunday school I learned that Jesus spoke of the Kingdom of God, not as something that has to be earned, but as freely given. The Pharisees, on the other hand, believed the Kingdom of God was like a divine retirement account in which a final tally of one’s obedience to the law determined your eternal fate. Mercy vs. sacrifice. Grace vs. works.

We preach and teach that God’s love is freely given. It’s our acceptance of that free love that gives us the desire to act, the desire to serve God’s creation. Our works are to overflow out of love in response to God’s love. Our works are not to be obligations, hoping that God will love us more if we do more.

The concept is pretty simple. And maybe that’s the problem. It’s too simple.

Simple isn’t something I do very well. In fact, many of my classmates might even testify to how talented I am in taking something that’s simple and making it very difficult. But, in my defense, I was raised in a culture in which achieving your goal was hard work. This is a culture in which we are taught that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. We’ve all grown up being told that we must work hard for what we want.

And we have worked hard or we wouldn’t be here. We worked for good grades in school so that we could get into good colleges. And we worked for good grades in college so we could get good jobs. We worked to put together impressive resumes. We’ve worked to learn how to successfully maneuver our way through any number of systems. We know what we must do, what role we must play, and how we must behave to be successful.

But we tell anyone within earshot that God’s love is different, that we don’t have to work for God’s love. But is that how we live our lives?

Certainly, I’d like to think I’m living my life responding to God’s love, but a look at my calendar for the past several months tells me that I may not be as good at distinguishing grace from works as I’d like to think. My schedule for a typical day reflects one activity after another that has very little to do with desire and everything to do with obligation. My calendar tells me that if a good Pharisee was defined by works and sacrifice, I wouldn’t have been merely good - I would’ve been great.

I don’t think that I’m going too far out on a limb in assuming that your calendar doesn’t look all that different from mine. It’s probably safe to say that we’re all rushing from one obligation to another. Our calendars are full of things we have to do, things we should do, things we ought to do. School, responsibilities at our assigned parish, papers due, work study, reading assignments, and even the senior sermon. We’re all living our lives trying to balance obligations with desire, works with grace, sacrifice with mercy.

I’ve been accused of being many things while in seminary, but being a prophet is not one of them. Yet, I am willing to prophesy that at some point in our various ministries, we will glance down at our calendar and discover that it’s full of things we have to do. Things we should do or ought to do but nothing that we want to do. We’ll realize that our acts of mercy have become acts of sacrifice. How many meetings did we attend? How many hospital visits did we make? How many hungry did we feed? How many naked did we clothe? We might even begin demanding that others make similar sacrifices, resenting those who refuse and judging them as less worthy of God’s love. We’ll find ourselves adding up our good deeds and handing God our invoices, hoping for God’s approval as return payment. Quid pro quo. Our “this” for God’s “that.”

The question is not “will it happen?” The question is when it happens how will we respond to that nagging voice that tells us we must do more, work harder, be more obedient to earn God’s love? How will we handle that nagging desire to be needed, to be liked, and the discovery that the more obligations we have on our calendar, the more we’re needed and the more we’re liked.

We must put behind us the naive notion that there’s a clear-cut distinction between works and grace, mercy and sacrifice. We must be prepared to spend our lives struggling with the constant tension between grace and works. We must be willing to live a life in which discernment replaces surety, questions replace answers.

The Pharisees weren’t trying to cleverly entrap Jesus. Like us, they were just trying to do the best job they could to be God’s people on earth. What stood between Jesus and the Pharisees was how one went about being God’s people on earth.

Jesus was reminding the Pharisees, just as he reminds us, that God’s will, God’s desire, is not black and white, but is a matter of constant discernment, balancing labor with love. “I desire mercy and not sacrifice.” It’s simple enough to understand. But we humans don’t do simple very well. Mercy vs. sacrifice. A simple idea that brings with it a lifetime of struggle.