LEARN WHAT THIS MEANS
A sermon by George R. Pasley
Matthew 9:9-13; 18-26; Hosea 6:1-6

"Go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.'"

The people that Jesus spoke those words to were Pharisees- that is; they were experts in the scripture. So if they bothered to go and learn, they would have first considered the particular scripture that Jesus was quoting, the passage we read today from the prophet Hosea.

I have to tell you that when I was teaching 8th grade Sunday school, the prophet Hosea was my class' favorite lesson of that whole year. That's because God instructed Hosea to go and marry a particular woman named Gomer. We're not told if Gomer agreed to that idea or not, but we are told that Gomer was a prostitute and that she kept leaving Hosea and he kept finding her and bringing her back.

That whole painful love affair was God's way of saying something important to the people Israel: "You keep on sinning, but I keep on forgiving because that's who I am."

In fact, when I read that verse in Hebrew something jumped out at me. I do remember a little bit more Hebrew than I do Greek, but one thing that has somehow stuck in the oxygen deprived foreign language part of my brain is the Hebrew word Hesed, which may be the most important word in the Old Testament.

In Hosea it is translated mercy, but in other places in various translations it is translated several different ways: Faithfulness and loving-kindness are the two most common translations.

But instead of getting into the nitty gritty details of translation, let me instead share some stories with you about Hesed.

Hesed is used to describe the actions of Boaz. Boaz is a character in the book of Ruth. Ruth was a widow and she went out to the fields in the hot Palestinian summertime and sent about to gather some food for herself in the manner prescribed by the Law of Moses: follow after the men who were harvesting in the fields, and pick up the small kernels and stalks that they miss. She went to a field owned by Boaz and started work in the early morning and worked all day, stooping and picking tiny kernels of barley up from the ground.

Boaz came and saw, and turned and asked his men who she was.

They told her, and he told them: "Leave some extra grain for her to gather, and be sure you leave her alone!"

Then he turned and said to Ruth, "Whenever you are thirsty, come and drink from the water we have here."

Boaz' kindness to Ruth is described as Hesed- loving-kindness.

Now let me tell you another story. In the book of Deuteronomy the story is told of Moses giving instructions to Israel before they enter the promise land, and that story includes a phrase called the Shema, which is often considered to be the name of God, even though it is mostly adjectives and verbs. The phrase goes like this: "Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his Hesed- his covenant of love-to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands.

Hesed is who God is and it is who God's people are expected to be.

Now, you are familiar with the fact that most of Jesus first disciples were fishermen, and you are comfortable with that even though a good many of the fishermen in Ketchikan's history have not been particularly savory characters!

But in our story today Jesus calls a tax-collector, which to a good Jew of the Roman era was synonymous with crook, cheat, sinner, low-life and worse. So Jesus was being followed by sinners, and they followed him straight to a party that might or might not have been wild, but for sure it was a party where all the guests were of questionable character. In fact, some of them were probably the people who have been waking me up at 2 a.m. every Sunday morning!

So of course somebody said something about it, and Jesus immediate reply was HESED.

"This is loving-kindness and mercy; this is the way and character of God." To put it another way, consider the words of songwriter Steve Greene: "It's his kindness that leads us to repentance."

It's not exactly clear what kind of stories Jesus was telling them, but it is clear that they were stories of God's mercy, stories of a God who would not give up, and those stories captured them and held them tight in wonder.

Now, there are two more stories that follow, and they both involve some Hesed and some following.

First their came a man whose daughter had died, and Jesus stood up and followed him, just as swiftly as those fishermen and tax collectors had followed Jesus- and since they were following him, when he followed the grieving father they of course followed too.

They followed a man who was in need of mercy and they followed him even though it was pretty much agreed by everybody else that it was a lost cause. But hesed does not concern itself with lost causes. Hesed is about who God is, and nothing is lost to God.

But in between something else happened, and the fact that it is in between is the Bible's way of saying LOOK!

Look at what happened- a woman came up, touched his cloak, and was healed.

That may not mean much to us, it may seem like just another healing story but it was so much more than that. Matthew wrote to a Jewish audience, and THEY knew what it meant.

That woman was unclean. That woman was cursed. That woman could not participate. That woman was an outcaste, and all of that was SURELY because that woman had some great secret sin.

That's what they knew. But that woman knew something different. That woman
knew that God keeps his Hesed- his covenant of mercy, no matter what.

That little bit of knowledge made a whole lot of difference. The Bible says it made her whole. Not healed, whole- saved.

So the question I have is this: How did she know?

I think she saw where Jesus went.
I think she saw who followed Jesus.
I think she saw who Jesus invited.
I think she saw that nothing was a lost cause to Jesus.
I think she saw that the pews were filled with people who celebrated hesed.

That's what she saw, and that's what she knew, and that's what difference it made.

So, if you've looked into that mysterious unfathomable place inside your own heart, and thought that it looked like a lost cause, learn what this means: God keeps his hesed. Nothing is lost to God.

Nothing is lost to God. That's something to celebrate!

But let's all learn what this means: Jesus ate in THEIR homes.  Jesus followed THEM into the places of death.

I think that means we need to go to them, wherever they are, those who are cursed and outcaste, those who do not know the incredible mercy of God.

So Hosea married a prostitute named Gomer.
So some churches meet in tattoo parlors and some hold bible studies in the
bars.

As for me, I'm not sure how far I'd go.
I won't be getting a tattoo and I don't expect to be marrying a prostitute,
but I do expect we ought to be living more intentionally, maybe even more scandalously, among those who are cast out and put down.

If they ask what that means we can say, "God hasn't given up on me and
I'm very, very glad."

Let's all say AMEN to that!

In the name of the Father, Son & Holy Ghost. Amen.