Mercy not Sacrifice

June 7, 2026

Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

            Our second reading this morning is four short stories from the gospel of Matthew.  Listen as God continues speaking to you.

            READ

            It’s the people of this passage who immediately grab my attention.  All these people have an encounter with the steadfast love of God that is embodied in Jesus.  In each of these stories, that steadfast love manifests itself in some form of restorative justice.

Let’s start with Matthew, whose work as a tax collector made him a traitor to his people.  Without question, Matthew would be seen as a Roman collaborator.  He would have been shunned and hated in his community… so it’s not surprising that in the next story Jesus is eating with the people who would be in the same situation as Matthew.  Those were the only people Matthew could be in relationship with… fellow tax collectors and other sinners… the only people who would accept Matthew’s invitation to dine with this new teacher. 

It’s not that Matthew is without any community.  This is where things get tricky with all these stories because if you’re going to talk about restorative justice… to what… or to whom are you being restored?  Restorative justice focuses on repairing harm… asking “Who was hurt, and what do they need?”  A very different stance than “What rule was broken, and how do we punish?”  Restorative justice is built on relationships… and active accountability with the goal of rebuilding trust and social connection… so it’s not always easy to know where justice needs to happen.  It’s not always in one direction… often hurts and needs push the boundaries we naturally move toward.  Matthew has community, but there is no trust or connection between that community of tax collectors and sinners and the larger surrounding community.  All have been harmed and all of need of healing.   

Let’s be clear, though, the people’s reaction to the tax collectors of that day isn’t unjustified.  I remember reading somewhere once how tax collectors weren’t paid directly by the Romans.  Instead, they were free to add on their own fees on top of the tax they were to collect.  Those fees would be decided by what the tax collector felt they deserved for this work.  I’m sure there soon followed the additions of penalties and other such collection practices to ensure that people paid their taxes.  Because if a tax collector came up short, the Romans would make sure that he would have to pay the difference.  Such a system invited corruption… and probably violence and intimidation.  These tax collectors and sinners were not innocent people.  These are crooks… at the very least.  They know what they are doing.  They have made this choice… whether through desperation… or the hope of getting ahead.

Matthew’s story forces us to ask what restoration in Christ looks like… and to whom is one restored?  How much do we want Matthew to be the one tax collector with the heart of gold?  The one honest man within a corrupt system.  Couldn’t that be the reason why he followed Jesus so quickly?  He so desperately wanted out of the choice he had made.  He was full of regret and sorrow.  Wouldn’t that be the reason why Jesus chose him specifically?  Wouldn’t that give Matthew the value he needs to justify why Jesus would reach out to him specifically.  We want Matthew not to be a crook… not to be a man of low moral character… because that makes the work of restorative justice easier.  He’s almost there… he just needs that little bit to get over the final hurdle.  Wouldn’t Jesus only choose disciples who were worth choosing?  Shouldn’t be that Jesus’ own inner circle would be above reproach.  Surely he surrounded himself at the start with good people… the right kind of people who could carry on his work. 

That’s what the Pharisees would want us to think… because it would fit into their own worldview.  They couldn’t understand why Jesus would meet with these tax collectors and sinners.  To be holy was to be set apart… to be above the baser and ugly aspects of our shared humanity.  There are good people and there are bad people… and God wants only to associate with the good.  A line needs to be drawn if each are going to get the justice they deserve. 

If these groups of stories are about restorative justice, Jesus goes to where the restoration needs to happen… and that defies our definitions of good people and bad people.  Restorative justice isn’t something that good people do to bad people in an effort to make them good… good like them.  Restorative justice connects us in all our many shades of gray.  Restorative justice goes into the area of separation between peoples… and begins its work of reconciliation there. 

Let’s stop here… step back and zoom out.  Talk about sin and the work of restorative justice that God is doing through Jesus Christ.  Sin is separation… and separation goes both ways.  When we talk about the sin between God and humanity, the reconciliation… the repair of that relationship… has to go both ways.  If our theology is a detached God who enacts punishment upon all those who break God’s rules… then what is the purpose of Christ?  Only to make clearer what the rules are?  Is this really how Jesus frees us from sin?  Or is Jesus a special cheat code to avoid accountability from sin with his special offer of right belief in him?  Doesn’t that violate the image of a just God who punishes… who holds us accountable?  Where does grace and mercy fit in?  What purpose do they play?

What if we move such thoughts to the side for a moment.  Christ is God’s act of restorative justice.  In God’s mercy… through God’s grace… God takes the first step across the separation that is sin.  God makes the first move to reconcile the relationship.  “Follow me”, says Jesus to Matthew and Matthew does.  The reconciled relationship begins and begins this new resurrection life… because life without the burden of sin… meaning life without this separation from God… is like coming back to life again… a new life different than before.

The Pharisees are not bad people… but they are people who do not feel the burden of sin… a people who believe that they are without any serious sin… without any separation from God and God’s ways.  They are following.  They are living by the rules.  They are focused on being in relationship with God… and yet, they aren’t in relationship with God or their surrounding community.  There is a disconnect because their faith lacks mercy.  Isn’t that what Jesus is always showing them?  How… in their own acts of faith… they are working to maintain divisions between people?  That to them reconciliation is a compromise that they cannot make… because it is a compromise that threatens to tear down their well-constructed holiness?  For the Pharisees it is better for the tax collectors and sinners to receive their deserved punishment rather than risk reconciliation and contaminating their own holiness. 

For Pharisees, mercy means there will be no accountability.  Accountability can only come through some form of reckoning… through some form of punishment that will make the bad people worthy of being among the good people.  And this is where it gets tricky again… because what does restorative justice look like when it comes to still being a tax collector in that system?  Matthew leaves and follows Jesus.  He stops being a tax collector and in that way a bad person becomes a good person.  But we have to be careful of the quick and easy answer.  Not every tax collector can leave the corrupt system.  The woman is healed of her hemorrhaging and can return to her community because the thing… the rule that was being broken because of her constant hemorrhaging for twelve years… has been satisfied.  We read that and we like the happy ending for her as well.  She is restored.  Is she?  Or is the work of restoration just beginning.  Twelve years carries a lot of baggage with it.  Will she be welcomed back so easily?  Does the brokenness simply go away?  Twelve years of disgust and cruelty shown to her.  People turning their back on her because of something she had no control of.  Who are the good people?  Who are the bad people in her situation?  Where is accountability to be found? 

How does restorative justice work between Pharisees and tax collectors?  Pharisees have to maintain their integrity.  So do tax collectors.  And yet, change must happen for each if there is to be any type of restorative justice.  Tax collectors have to face their own participation in the corruption of the system.  Pharisees have to redefine holiness considering a God who desires mercy and not sacrifice.  There is no good people staying good and bad people changing.  The reality of it is not that simple.  There is only the work toward a new life in Christ… a life restored through reconciliation.

What about the story of the leader of the synagogue and his dead daughter?  The last of our four short stories.  How does that story fit into all this? 

In this gospel’s version, I think it is important to note that the daughter is already dead.  In Luke’s gospel, the daughter is dying… and as readers that gives us hope that there is still time for Jesus to do something.  But here… here she is already dead… and everyone knows it.  I think this story is here to give commentary and context to all these other stories.  Tax collectors and sinners are already dead, so great is the sin.  Pharisees are already dead, so great is the sin.  Even the woman with the horrible hemorrhaging… she is already dead from the separation even if we perhaps have more sympathy for her than the others because her separation is not of her own choosing and is out of her control.

Restorative means bringing the dead back to life.  We do not sacrifice people… kill them for God’s appeasement.  Through Christ we are called to open the tombs and let the Spirit enter in.

I suppose with the synagogue leader and his daughter, there is the miraculous act of bringing her back to life… and then there’s what happens next.  How do the living come to love those who were once dead to them?  How has death changed those who have died?  We want this man and his daughter to live happily ever after… but what comes next for them?  Why would someone go through all this for a daughter… whose value is less in this society?  She is not a first-born son.  Who is this man now that the fullness of the love in his heart has been revealed?  Who will the daughter be now knowing how much she is loved?  There is no separation so great that love cannot find a way through.

Jesus sets tables and keeps inviting sinners to come and to eat.  He keeps sharing a single meal… the meal itself creating community… the meal removing the death that separates the diners.  Tax collectors and Pharisees.  The clean and unclean.  The sinner and the holy.  Who will they all become knowing the fullness of love within God’s heart has been revealed?  Who will they become to one another knowing how much they have been loved?  Amen.