Text: Matthew 9:9-13 (Hosea 5:15-6:6)                                                       W 3^rd Sunday after Pentecost

The Heart of God

            In the name of Jesus, dear friends in Christ:  I’ll willing to bet that I’m not the only one here who remembers an advertising campaign several years back for a certain antacid tablet that became an instant sensation when it was kicked off by a television commercial that went something like this:  you had a fellow sitting in a mom and pop kind of Italian restaurant, what with the red checkered tablecloths on little round tables and all, and a snooty looking waiter with a towel over his arm in the background.  The guy at the table says, “I come to this little place. The waiter says, ‘Try this, you’ll like it.’  I said, ‘What’s this?’  He says, ‘Try it, you’ll like it.’  ‘But what is it?’  ‘Try it, you’ll like it.’  So I tried it.  Thought I was gonna die.”  He went on to explain that his near-death experience was happily resolved when he took a couple of the antacid tablets the ad was promoting.  And okay, as far as commercials go, it was sort of cute; and that “try it you’ll like it” line was especially memorable, so naturally, it soon became one of those advertising slogans that they overplayed to death.  Bill boards, bumper stickers, T-shirts, more commercials that were not nearly as clever as the first …for a while, everywhere you looked it was “Try it, you’ll like it.”  Mercifully, presumably after a few people threatened suicide if they ever heard it again, the campaign ended.

But I think that one of the things that contributed to the slogan’s initial success was that it touched a chord with most people.  In the little story, the waiter was certain that he knew what someone else would like.  And just about everybody has had that happen, when someone comes along and tells you what it is that they are so sure that you’re going to like – only to discover, to your greater regret (not to mention pain and possible injury), that they were wrong.

And who knows?  Maybe you’ve been the perpetrator who did that to someone else.  I expect most of us have; and probably more than once.  So let’s probe a bit deeper and ask how it was that you came to the conclusion that someone else would like something, whatever it happened to be?  The obvious answer is that you liked it yourself.  Whatever it was, it gave you pleasure, and you wanted to share the experience.  So you set out with the best intentions to bring joy to someone only to find out that for one reason or another they hated it. If it was something to eat, maybe it gave them indigestion, or an allergic reaction, or it just tasted bad to them (you know, as shocking as it is to me, I’ve heard that there are some people out there who don’t like chocolate – which is certainly a pathologic condition that we can only hope is not contagious).  But Ladies, this is why your husbands sometimes buy you things like power tools and metric socket sets.  They’re trying to please you the only way they know how:  by giving you what they themselves would like to have – and, I suppose, secretly suspect they will have when you reject the offering – but even then, you can be happy knowing that they only want the tools so that they can do jobs around the house for you!

            Okay, perhaps I’m stretching it a bit – or maybe a lot.  But the point I’m driving at is that the assumption that whatever it is that makes me happy – or that I imagine will make me happy – that the same thing ought to make someone else happy too is not necessarily a good one. In fact, it can be totally dead wrong.

            And nowhere is this truth more apparent – and its failure to be grasped more potentially deadly to human souls – than when it’s applied toward our efforts to please the Lord God who created and redeemed us.  I mean, we could ask the questions:  What does God want?  What will please him?  What’s the deepest desire of his heart as it concerns me?   And when answering those questions the natural assumption that all people make is that God would like precisely what I would like if I were in his position.

            What would that be?  Well, first and foremost, there’s obedience.  God is the King of the universe, after all, and he went through all the trouble of giving us all those Laws; if I were in his shoes, most folks think, I’d surely like my people to obey my rules and follow all the other instructions I’d given.  Then, I suppose, I’d want them to render proper honor and respect to me, and show a little appreciation for all that I had done for them.  You know, some time spent worshipping and praising me – one or two crummy little hours a week isn’t asking too much.  Then, I wouldn’t want to forget prayer … couple times a day, I should think, oh, and of course at meals.  And it might be nice if once in a while they made a little extra effort to surprise me by going beyond the bare minimums of obedience and praise and prayer and came up with something on their own – something to really wow me.  And what else?  They should devote some time to helping others, make a few charitable donations now and then.  Oh, and of course, give regularly to the church; wouldn’t want to forget that. And let’s see … perhaps, since they do represent me in the world, I’d want them to select their friends pretty carefully and associate with the right sort of people.  That way they wouldn’t be led astray and I wouldn’t get a bad name by their hanging out with people of low repute.  And then I’d have to consider how to handle the folks who had been doing a really lousy job of doing everything I’ve mentioned so far, and who really made me angry in the process, who now wanted to turn over a new leaf and try again.  Those folks, well, they’d have to make amends somehow, show me how sorry they are … oh, maybe not the “sitting in sackcloth and ashes thing”, I’ve never been into that; but some kind of probation process with a little extra added devotion to show their sincerity and make it less likely that they’d wander off again. Yeah, that would about do it, I think.  These are the things that should please God and make him happy.

            You might think, anyway—but then you would be absolutely, one hundred percent wrong.  Listen: ever since the fall of our first parents into sin, whenever someone does any of those things that I mentioned with the intent that God might be pleased, it has the opposite effect.  It does not please him one tiny iota.  The truth is that it infuriates him.  Why?  Because everything we’re talking about here is a sacrifice of some kind:  a sacrifice of time, of treasure, of effort, or whatever that’s offered to the Lord with the old, “Try this, you’ll like it” attitude.  It’s “See, Lord, what I have done for you?  Aren’t you happy now?”  No.  It’s precisely the list of things that the Pharisees thought God would like and what they tried their level best to deliver.  The Lord completely rejects such offerings.  And to help understand why, we could return to the initial illustration.  Suppose you went to a quaint little restaurant for a meal, but as you were being seated, you got a look into the kitchen.  And what you saw appalled you:   it was filthy, with rats crawling everywhere, and mounds of rotting vegetables and rancid meat competing for counter space with piles of dirty dishes containing half eaten meals from days and possible weeks before.  The unwashed, shirtless, and profusely sweating cook is stirring a pot, and as you watch in disgust, the two inch long ash from the cigarette dangling from his mouth falls and he just stirs it in as if it were part of the recipe.  That would be enough.  You’d turn right around and head for the door.  But the waiter grabs your arm and pleads with you to stay, “No, don’t go. Just try it, you’ll like it.” You’d tell him, “Let go of me.  I don’t care what it is or how good you think it is, if it came out of that kitchen, it’s probably going to kill me.” That’s the way it is with our best efforts toward God.  It doesn’t matter how good our intentions are or how much we want to please him.  He’s had a look inside the kitchen:  the kitchen of our hearts.  He sees what sin and filth fills the place and knows that nothing good can come out of there.  He doesn’t want our sacrifices.  He’s disgusted by them.

            But in both today’s Old Testament and Gospel lessons, the Lord reveals to us what is the deepest desire of his heart when he says, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”  Jesus told the Pharisees (and I dare say the rest of us) to go learn what that means.  And if they had been paying attention, they would have realized that through his own actions he was showing them.

            How?  By reaching out to and calling a tax collector named Matthew.  Matthew occupied a place at or near the very bottom wrung of humanity in the eyes of his contemporaries.  He was definitely what today we would call a “bottom feeder”. Not that collecting taxes is inherently sinful; not at all:  taxes have to be collected.  The problem was the way it was done in the Roman world.  I won’t take the time to explain it now, but suffice it to say that it was a system loaded with corruption and fraud.  Men like Matthew lived by exploiting the system to their advantage at the expense of all the rest of their Jewish countrymen.  So, to his community, a guy like Matthew would be properly considered both a traitor and a thief.  The standing rule of the day was to exclude tax collectors from the synagogue – they were excommunicate.  And the thing about it was that it was no secret.  A Jew who entered this career field knew very well that he was turning his back on his nation, his neighbors, and his God – and the only reason he would do it was for the opportunity to make himself rich.

            But what kind of life would someone who started down this path have?  Respectable people wouldn’t have anything to do with you.  Your only friends would be despicable, dishonest outcasts like yourself – people you really could never trust.  And as a result, whatever relationships you might have would be shallow and unfulfilling.  You’d have your money; but money is a poor companion.  Oh, and you’d have your guilt to live with:  knowing that you were stealing from rich and poor alike, and that you’d betrayed your family and your people; and over it all this uneasy feeling that the Lord God whose Laws and stories you had learned in your youth and who you promised to be faithful to at your Bar Mitzvah was profoundly disappointed in you – and would one day settle the score.

            This is where Jesus found Matthew:  knowing very well that what he was doing was wrong, dissatisfied and unhappy with his present life, full of shame, self-loathing, and fear for the choices he had made, and yet unable to break out of the wretched cycle of his life.  Where could he go?  To the neighbors he’d robbed?  To the synagogue that had thrown him out?  He still had to eat.  Who would give him a job?  What respectable person would give him the time of day?  His was a cold and unforgiving world where it was held that once a sinner, always a sinner (which is true, but unfortunately it’s usually applied to others rather than to the self).  Matthew knew that he was stuck in his sinful life and that he had no way to break out of it.  You might say that he knew how dirty his kitchen was – which is exactly what made him a candidate for conversion.

            He was released from his self made prison by two simple words of Jesus:  “Follow me.” To Matthew, those were words of absolute mercy.  I mean, look: he’s at his tax collecting office doing the very thing that people rightly despise him for, and up steps the great miracle working Rabbi everyone is talking about.  Matthew has every reason to expect a severe tongue lashing – words of anger and condemnation – which he knows he richly deserves.  Instead he hears words of inclusion and forgiveness. They say, “I know all about you: who you are, what you’ve done, and what a mess you’ve made of your life; and still, I want you have a close, personal relationship with me.  Come, follow me.”

            That’s what the Lord means when he says he desires mercy and not sacrifice.  He wants us to recognize that no sacrifice we could possibly make could ever please him and instead, knowing this, that we stand before him empty-handed to receive his mercy.  As long as there is something I think I can offer to him in my hand there’s no room for anything else.  But when we stand there, like Matthew, pathetic and ashamed, with no offering or excuses, both hands are open to take the gift of mercy, forgiveness, and love that the Lord wants us to have.  That’s what pleases the heart of God.

            But someone will say, “But in the Old Testament, didn’t God require his people to make sacrifices?”  The answer is yes:  but why did he ask for them?  Was it because he wanted a bunch of dead animals?  No.  That’s ridiculous.  What he wanted was for people to see his mercy.  They were sacrifices of substitution.  The point was that you were condemned for your sin.  You deserved to die.  But in his mercy, the Lord allowed you to bring an animal to die in your place.  All those bloody sacrifices were for the purpose of showing the people how totally sinful they were and how merciful the Lord was in not punishing them as they deserved, instead taking out his judgment and wrath on something – or Someone else.  That was the point:  all the sacrifices foreshadowed how God himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, would bear the penalty of our sin for us and how God in his mercy would forgive us for his sake.

            That’s what brings joy to the heart of God:  that we receive his mercy.  That we hold out our empty, sin-stained hands and receive the sacrifice he made for us in Christ Jesus.  That we receive his body and blood given for us.  That we receive the benefits of his sacrifice:  the forgiveness of sin, hope and confidence in him, and eternal life. And that having received his mercy, we allow him to change us so that we too become merciful and self-sacrificing as he is.

            You see, receiving the mercy of God in Christ Jesus is what allows him to enter that filthy kitchen of our hearts and clean the place up.  He throws out the accumulated garbage.  He stocks the fridge and cupboards with good, wholesome ingredients – and Christ himself becomes the head chef.  That’s what happened to Matthew.  He went from bringing the people of his community threats and misery to being the disciple who recorded for the whole world the story of the life and ministry of Jesus.  He gave to us the all important account of Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection – the very heart of the Gospel, and such specifics as the Sermon on the Mount, the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant, and the judgment scene in which Christ welcomes the redeemed with these words:  “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.  For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink …” and so on, but all of which I could summarize by saying, “You were merciful to me.”  And so it comes full circle.  When we please the heart of God by receiving his mercy in Christ, it enables us to be merciful to others – which, Jesus says, is being merciful to him.

            My friends, our Lord desires mercy, not sacrifice. So let’s make it our goal each day to give him what he really wants by beginning with the prayer, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.”

Soli Deo Gloria!