Sermon

Good in a Bad Way

Hosea 5:15-6:6, Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

In this morning’s Gospel lesson Jesus instructed the Pharisees by using some words from the prophet Hosea. When the Pharisees wanted to know why Jesus was eating with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus quoted Hosea by telling the Pharisees to go and learn the meaning of the words: I desire mercy and not sacrifice. Or, in the words of the New Revised Standard Version, I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice. By the religious standards of Jesus’ day it was considered a violation of the law to be eating with such people and the Pharisees were offended when they saw this law being violated.

We should note that the concern of the Pharisees arose from the fact that they were good, law-abiding citizens, regular in worship, leaders in the synagogue. Their concern was that a religious law was being openly broken.

While we see Jesus from the distance of history as doing the right thing by eating with those considered to be sinners or outcasts, the religious leaders of that day saw him only in terms of breaking a sacred law. We have had sacred laws in our past. The Sunday “blue laws” made it unlawful for businesses to open on Sundays. I recall how scandalized my mother was the first time I went to see a movie on Sunday.

It was a popular piety of the New Testament, and even today many times, to view goodness in negative terms. That is, you are good if you do not do bad things. Or another way to say that is to say, the person who avoids evil is therefore good.

We can see this all about us. For example, many people avoid any association with social movements associated with change. Think what negative images, even today, that term “flower children” brings to mind. Some of us today associate certain forms of music with drugs and violence. Some of us, recalling our own up-bringing, still believe you “ought” to be in church on Sundays. So good gets defined as “not being bad.”

Part of our negative attitude of goodness may even be traced to something so simple as how Bible verses are written. Look, for example, at the Ten Commandments. Eight of them are stated in negative terms: You shall have no other gods before me; you shall not make yourself a graven image; you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain; you shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; you shall not covet. Only two of the commandments are stated in the positive: Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy and honor your father and your mother.

So, we have allowed ourselves to slip into the easy way out by being good in a bad way. That is, we are good in terms of the bad things we do not do, rather than in terms of the good things we do. But being a good person is much more positive than simply not being a bad person. We are good because we do good things not just because we refrain from doing bad things.

The prophet Hosea understood the law to be a positive thing. The law, for him, was a requirement to show compassion and mercy to one’s neighbor. It was a call to show steadfast love. That is a much more proactive way than simply avoiding harming your neighbor.

The Israelites of Hosea’s time had forgotten the requirements of God and had assumed they were very righteous because they observed the strict letter of the law and did not do bad things. They also had the idea that if there were positive things in the law they were, for the most part, ceremonial. Thus they religiously performed their sacrifices and thought themselves to be righteous. It is, to be honest, a convenient way to be righteous. We see it from time to time even in ourselves.

For the children of Israel the blood of animals represented a sacrificial repentance. The book of Leviticus tells of the people using an animal as a scapegoat. The sins of the people were ceremoniously heaped upon a goat and the goat was then driven from the community. The members of the community felt their sins were carried away by the goat – until the next year when the ceremony had to be performed again.

Shirley Jackson’s short story, The Lottery, has much the same theme. Each year in this rigid, righteous small community a lottery was held. Everyone gathered in the town square, the big box was brought out and each person drew a slip of paper. The person who drew the paper with the black spot on it became the scapegoat for the community. As soon as the black spot was drawn the whole village picked up stones and stoned the person to death – even family members took part in the stoning. Then everyone went back to his or her business until the next year and the next lottery.

Jesus is often referred to as a scapegoat, the one who takes upon himself the sins of society and dies in our place. He is a willing redeemer, paying the price for the world’s sins.

We can look around us today and see all sorts of scapegoats. They are the persons in business or industry or government who suddenly become expendable in order to save someone else’s neck. Sometimes it is almost seen as a house-cleaning – getting rid of persons we can saddle with the responsibilities for failures in business or public life. Whistle-blowers who reveal serious wrongs in corporate structures or governmental departments often become the scapegoats used by corporations and governmental departments so there is the appearance of righting wrongs.

Hosea tries to get the nation to realize that ceremonial cleanness, or even scape-goating, will not make the nation good and acceptable to God. In the earlier verses of the chapter read this morning Hosea challenges the nation: “The judgment pertains to you,” he said. He continued: Israel is not hidden from me; their deeds do not permit them to return to their God; with their flocks and herds they shall go to seek the Lord, but they will not find him, he as withdrawn from them; God will pour out wrath like water.

Israel, United States, pastor, people – we are not good simply because we are ceremonially good, that is we attend church, we pray regularly, we are seen in the right places and we are law abiding most of the time. If you follow this line of thought you can convince yourself that you are more righteous the farther away you move from bad people and things. But we cannot remove ourselves from the world. We are to be in the world but not overcome by the world. The essence of true righteousness, I believe, shows itself in the way we care for one another, the way we show compassion and mercy, and the way we seek justice as a true way to peace.

The writer of the gospel of Matthew portrays Jesus as having that essence of true righteousness. A righteous man dares to associate with tax collectors and sinners. A righteous man does not concern himself that he may be tainted by his association. A truly good person is able to see the kernel of good in his or her neighbors. To be truly righteous is a call to respond in love to all people.

To be proactive in good is much more than simply being someone who does not do bad things. Sometimes it is easy to slip into the comfort of thinking life can be very simple: good people are those who do not do bad things. And then, I can easily make the jump to: because I do not do bad things I am good. But just like peace is more than the absence of war, so goodness is more than not doing the bad.

When I worked for Church World Service some years ago I talked with a missionary from a denomination that I often think of us as a “hell, fire and brimstone” church. He was telling me that in India when his church established mission schools the first thing they did was change the dress of the people because they did not think the people were sufficiently covered. A result of that, I discovered after pressing him for a bit, was that some children did not come to school and get an education because either they had no proper clothes or their customs were different and they refused to wear western clothes.

This is Pharisee-ism of the worst kind. First, we are assuming that we know better than others what proper dress is (or, even what constitutes goodness when carried to the extreme) and therefore we attempt to make society conform to our definitions. But there is another more subtle assumption – the assumption that deep down others want to be like us.

It seems to me that the whole passion and crucifixion story is about a God who affirms our worth and does not judge by worldly standards. In fact this God does not even fulfill our expectations. This is a God who serves. Jesus is a servant leader, a servant savior.

For Matthew the essence of being righteous is to be a servant, and consists of nothing more than serving. His whole belief about the purpose of life and death and resurrection of Jesus is found in his basic assumption that the righteous person is the one who is a servant. According to this thinking we do not first become righteous and then go to the bad to help them become good. Rather we become good ourselves in the way we treat and relate to others. The good person becomes good without ever having an awareness they are good, because that person’s life is giving and full of service to and for others.

Jesus reminded his followers and us that those who strive only to save their lives will lose their lives. But those willing to lose their lives for the sake of the gospel and others will then find their own lives. Only when we are able to give up a most precious treasure are we able to understand how precious that treasure is. It was in giving his own life that Jesus gave us the greatest gift one can give. In his dying we came to understand how valuable life really is.

Hosea wrote of God: “I desire mercy, or steadfast love, not sacrifice.” Christ told the Pharisees to discover the meaning of this message. The church in 2008 is far from being convinced that God actually requires mercy or steadfast love. We still divide people into “our kind” and “not our kind,” us and them.

Some people believe that Christian ethics consists of avoiding doing bad things. That is true to a degree. But Christian ethics is more about doing good things. Just because I have never killed or stolen does not necessarily mean I am a good person. Who knows how many opportunities to do some honest good were ignored or let pass by. Goodness, I repeat, is more than avoiding badness.

Jesus went about doing good. That was a hallmark of his way of life. I once saw a statement that said: “I read about a man named Jesus who went about doing good. We ought to be concerned that too often we are content to simply go about.”

Just as God desires steadfast love and not sacrifice, we, too, are called to live lives of steadfast love. We can do this, not because we are by nature good, but rather because we specifically respond to this call of God to lead a life that shows steadfast love and mercy.

For the church, the message is clear, it seems to me: Unless the church serves and demonstrates steadfast love, the church is not fulfilling its call to be a servant. Worship and mission are our defining hallmarks.

Christ, the suffering servant, the risen savior, called followers and founded the church to carry on his work. His work was not confined to his own circle of friends, but was more to a world that needed love, kindness, mercy, justice. His death was for humanity, not for organized religion or the institution called church. He died just as much for the bad as for the good.

I desire mercy. I desire steadfast love. Being good in a good way is to respond to that desire that God spoke of through the prophets. In looking at the world we too desire mercy and steadfast love and so we act with compassion to help create a world that is just and caring. That, I believe is a step in the direction of goodness – of being good in a good way.

Amen.

Jim Bell

6/8/08