Read Matthew
9
Not everyone
who followed Jesus was a fisherman.
Jesus came upon a certain tax collector named Levi or Matthew. Nobody liked tax collectors. There was no IRS schedule that determined how
much tax you paid. There were no tax
brackets. There were no tax deductions.
There was
the tax collector. He paid an amount
agreed upon with those in power and then he taxed people with whatever he
thought was appropriate. I do not use
the word fair.
The tax
collector assessed and collected the tax based upon his perception of what was
fair, mostly fair to him. It could be a
lucrative business, if you had the gumption to be hated by just about everyone
except for your fellow tax collectors.
You had to
have some business smarts and some negotiation skills and even some poker
skills. You might have to bluff every
now and then. The Romans would not want
a tax collector who had to ask the governor to send soldiers because people
wouldn’t cough up the tax, but you had to have the nerves to make people feel
like you would do just that.
If you were
a people person, this probably was not a good line of work for you.
Jesus came
to Matthew and said, “Follow me.” We get
no additional details. There is no witty
saying to put on tee shirts. Follow
me and you can collect taxes in heaven.
It was just follow
me. Matthew got up and followed
Jesus. This was a man who surely
estimated cost and profit with every transaction; yet, he simply got up and
followed Jesus.
The next
thing we read is that Jesus is at Matthew’s house eating with other tax
collectors and a group that gets lumped together called sinners.
This surely
got under the skin of the Pharisees. They
asked the disciples why their teacher ate with such people. What’s up with that?
Jesus heard
this—maybe overheard this or heard it from his disciples, but this was not
Jesus knowing what they were thinking.
Thoughts became words this time.
The Pharisees had some questions based in their own self-righteousness.
The answer
is one we know well. “It’s not the
healthy that need a doctor but the sick.”
Jesus came to call sinners not the righteous.
He
challenged the religious hypocrites once again with words
they should have known.
For I desire
mercy, not sacrifice,
and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt
offerings.
Jesus had
begun a course of chastising the Pharisees and other religious leaders that
would reach its peak in chapter
23. The Pharisees could not see that
Jesus was the one sent to save the world not condemn it. They only knew condemnation and they were
good at condemning others.
They knew
rules and penalties, and even added their own rules, thinking God’s
insufficient on their own.
They missed
the heart of God that longed to be acknowledged
by his creation. God wanted genuine
worship not perfunctory
offerings.
Jesus offered
them some reconciliation here. He
charged them to learn what this meant.
Had they followed the counsel proffered, they might have acquired eyes
to see and ears to hear what the one before them was doing.
They might
have had a glimpse of the heart of God.
Those who memorized the words but missed the love and compassion and
holiness of God, would neither see nor hear the one whom God sent, nor would
they obey what he told them to do.
“Go and learn
what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’”
We will take
a single verse from John’s gospel to add context here.
For God did
not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world
through him.
Jesus came
to save the world, not to socialize with the religious hypocrites. He didn’t kick them to the curb, but
challenged them to work on their
own blindness.
God desires
mercy not sacrifice. We know his mercy
in his sacrifice for us. God wants us to
know him, and acknowledge him, and worship him so much more than the sacrifices
prescribed in the law he gave to Moses.
Praise the
Lord that we have eyes to see God’s mercy in our Savior. Let us worship God in spirit
and in truth and never just go through the motions.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment