mercy not sacrifice

I’ve spent most of five decades reading  and trying to understand the Bible, and it still challenges my assumptions. That happened again today as I was reading through the first part of Matthew 12. Look at verses 1-8: 

“At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, ‘Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.’

“He answered, ‘Haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread—which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests. Or haven’t you read in the Law that the priests on Sabbath duty in the temple desecrate the Sabbath and yet are innocent? I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. If you had known what these words mean, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice,” you would not have condemned the innocent. For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.’”

You see, if you’d caught me cold and asked, I’d have probably said God prefers sacrifice. I’d have been focused on my sin and God’s justice and the fact that my relationship with God was irrevocably broken until Jesus fixed it. 

And, I’d have pointed to a lifetime of false practices whereby church leaders - sometimes me - stopped people from doing things in the name of God. We’ve shamed them into skipping World Series games for church, and pressured them to give their money to ministry instead of other things they might use it for. We tell kids that movies and and parties and books and music and video games aren’t befitting children of the king. Whether we’re right or wrong to say those things, we soon create the impression that following God is all about giving up things we want.

In this passage, though, Jesus’ disciples violated one of the most precious core values of the religious establishment: those books full of rules about what people could and couldn’t do on the Sabbath. There were entire careers built around the intricacies of these laws; they were serious business.

Yet the rabbi Jesus, who was supposed to be teaching holiness and piety to his disciples, instead defends their law-breaking. He declares them innocent. He proclaims himself as the living fulfillment of everything the temple and Sabbath law pointed to. And he did it while saying that God prefers mercy to sacrifice.

Jesus reminds us that God’s plan from the beginning of time was to bring him and us back to a place where he could forgive us without demanding our death. His passion has always been for mercy. He always intended to fix what was broken at his expense, not ours. The sacrifice was necessary so that he would not be unjust, but it isn’t what he wanted our relationship to be.

It’s a huge relief to realize that God didn’t settle for mercy over sacrifice, he really desired it. His first choice would be to show grace - giving me good things I don’t deserve - and mercy - not giving me the bad things I do deserve. That’s where is heart is.

I have a Lord who wants to cut me all the breaks he can, because he loves me. That’s a Lord who’s much easier to follow than the one who always demands sacrifice.