Worship & the Wideness of Mercy

Sermon for the Second Sunday after Pentecost, Year A

Church of the Epiphany | Washington, DC

Matthew 9: 9-13, 18-26

“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.”

Jesus’ words seem pretty obvious. Because of course healers exist to serve those in need of healing. This is all fairly straightforward—unless of course the physician has forgotten their purpose…  And it’s for this reason that these words are scandalous.

For the religious ritual of ancient Israel—of which Jesus was a devout follower—sacrifice was central for drawing close to God. Sacrifice was part of many forms or practices with set expectations of why and how to properly worship and who offers that worship.

Jesus’ words to the Pharisees are scandalous because they challenge religious assumptions…

For whom does the Church exist? What makes worship good enough for God? How does a person become worthy—or to use Paul's term in his letter to the Romans: what or who “justifies” our lives? And perhaps most importantly, who gets to belong?

I think all of these questions swirl around in our gospel lesson because the lives of the characters we meet revolve around these very questions…

First there’s Matthew, a tax collector. Here again things are pretty obvious; because if there’s one thing we know about tax collectors it’s that they’re despised. They collude with Roman authority and personally enrich themselves by preying on the poor. As much as they’ve become financially elevated, they have become socially isolated.

Then along comes a religious leader. This is a respected man of principle. This is a man whose presence and worship in the synagogue is considered acceptable because he makes himself “righteous” by observing a code of purity—which includes avoiding contact with dead bodies considered “unclean.” But now his young daughter has died, and he finds himself in need. 

And much like the body of the daughter, we then meet a woman whose body is also considered “impure.” Because like death, within the religious system, bleeding compromised the purity required to participate in festivals and rituals. And so this deeply faithful woman who wants to be made well—and therefore justified—finds herself on the outside.

There is so much need in these lives, and there are so many barriers. 

Matthew and other tax collectors bear a moral stain setting them outside the boundaries of belonging. The religious leader’s profession creates barriers in his life. And it would seem both the young girl and the grown woman are marginalized for choosing to exist in a body.

Then of course, at the center of all this drama, there’s this Jesus who himself grew up on the wrong side of the tracks—as the saying goes, “can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

Jesus doesn’t exactly have an impressive pedigree: he comes from a poor, podunk town and is from questionable birth. So, in a search for someone worthy to offer worship, he’s out too. Jesus is certainly familiar with being looked down upon, and at times cast aside. 

And now here he sits at a crowded table surrounded by a bunch of outcasts, receiving the hospitality offered by those considered losers, low-lifes, and the “least.” And there he quotes the voice of God speaking through the Prophet Hosea, who says “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”

It would be easy to conclude that Jesus dismisses sacrifice, and that God has no interest in our worship—so maybe we’d be better off spending our limited energy elsewhere. Afterall, in the book of Amos, God does at one point even say “I despise your religious festivals… Away with the noise of your songs!” Evidently, worship can miss the plot from time to time.  

So, it’s fair to wonder: what good is offering worship to God while there is so much need for healing and mercy in the world? And when so many are sick and struggling, what good is it to gather for a meal with people responsible for social injustices like the tax collectors?

Again, for whom does the Church exist? Who gets to belong? And when the world cries out for mercy, what’s the point of religious ceremony—or for that matter of faith or of spirituality?   

These are the same questions and preoccupations around which our lives revolve today. They demand our attention, and they are questions worthy of our time.

In another time, Jesus told a group of Pharisees “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” His point was that Sabbath observance—much like the religious rituals of sacrificial worship—is ultimately concerned with human need. 

For as much as we may tend to think all of this is somehow about doing God a favor, religion and all of its practices are constructed for us. Religion is about drawing us into relationship with God so that we might be made whole. 

It’s about responding to and meeting human need. Because God will be okay without our song and ceremony.  Which isn’t to say that God does not desire our worship…

The worship God desires though is not about begrudging favors, or even about well-polished performances and platitudes… The worship God desires has to do with the human heart. 

It looks like lifting up our lives as an offering to God. Our real lives. It’s about honestly holding up ourselves, the imperfect gifts that we are, and returning ourselves as an oblation to God. 

God isn’t concerned with our piety or purity, our merit or any made-up measure of worthiness. 

We come as we are—and it matters greatly that we all have access to do so.  Because like the woman who desires to be made well so she can once again fully participate in religious ritual, practicing and offering thanksgiving is essential to a whole life.

We are right to concern ourselves with the matters of justice and mercy pressing on us from every direction, and gathering here gives us the foundation to sustain how we do so. How we worship and who gets to worship is far from irrelevant to the lives we live.

Because part of respecting the dignity of all persons is affirming what makes for a whole human person—including that all are deserving of creative expression and the presence of beauty in their lives. To deny someone the ability to delight in wonder as though it were non-essential is dehumanizing because it dismisses something fundamental to being fully alive.

Church of the Epiphany has long understood this. And for many years has lived this reality. 

Central to the mission of this place is a commitment to seeking justice and to offering the gift of the arts. Not as two different, opposing parts of its mission: but as two interdependent expressions of faithfulness to God. 

“Loving our neighbors” and offering the “gift of music” is a response to the core human need every one of us who enters these doors carries with us: to be loved, to belong, and to be well.

We’re all in it together: sinners and so-called saints alike, gathered around a table of welcome by Jesus of Nazareth. And I think that’s a pretty good picture of what the wideness of God’s mercy looks like.

So, lift up your hearts. It is pleasing and acceptable to God.

Amen