NRS Hosea 6
4 What shall I do with you, O Ephraim?
What shall I do with you, O Judah?
Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes away early.
5 Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets,
I have killed them by the words of my mouth,
and my judgment goes forth as the light.
6 For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,
the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

NRS Matthew 9
9 As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, "Follow me." And he got up and followed him.
10 And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" 12 But when he heard this, he said, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 13 Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners."

God's grace be with you always!

Let's face it. The Bible is a strange book. It's filled with strange people from strange times and places who often do some very strange things, or at least, strange to us. Maybe the strangest and perhaps even the most embarrassing of the Bible's many puzzling prescriptions is the practice of animal sacrifice. The Book of Leviticus, one of the Bible's foundational texts, has very exact directions for the ritual slaughter of animals that included: burnt offerings, in which the whole animal was consumed by fire; guilt offerings, in which part was burnt and part left for the priests; and thank offerings, too, in which the animal sacrificed was shared in a communal banquet. The Bible is likewise very specific about where, when, and how sacrifices were to be offered, and also who was to preside and under what conditions. Now we tend to skip over these parts of the Bible, but for the people of the Bible they were a major component of what they understood to be true faith and proper devotion to God.

The ancient Hebrews and their later Jewish descendants were by no means the only people to engage in such sacrifices. Long before the Bible or really before any written record, people were sacrificing animals, and sometimes humans, too, in religious rituals. Because the practice was, in fact, so widespread and nearly universal, the great 12th century rabbi Maimonides reasoned that God had to make some provision for the Israelites to offer some kind of sacrifice, otherwise they wouldn't have been able even to conceive of a religion without it.

There's no one theory that entirely explains the origins of animal sacrifice. Anthropologists see sacrifice as arising out of many different motivations and often with many different meanings. But in all forms of sacrifice there's almost always some expression of what I call the "make-up impulse." When you know that you've crossed a line, or as we say in the Lord's Prayer, when you realize that you've trespassed, we often feel this great pain in our hearts and souls to make up and repair the breach. In our own families, after we've stepped on somebody's toes or stuck our noses some place where they don't belong, almost automatically we want to get things back to where they were, and often we do this through some kind of symbolic action. We come home with flowers, or we make a nice meal, or we take everybody out for a special treat. Through this kind of offering, or sacrifice, we let people know that we're sorry and we want to make things right again.

What's true in our family relations is also true in our relationship to God, or should I say, even more true in our relationship to God. Sometimes we do or say things that cross a line that God has drawn. More than just offending our friend or neighbor, we realize that we've trespassed against God and violated God's divine order. That's a terrifying realization, and of course, we immediately want to put things back to right with God. We want to make up. For the ancient Israelites the sacrifice of a precious animal was a symbolic way to repair the damage that sin had brought to their relationship with God. For us, we might make a sacrifice of money, or a pledge of devotion, as our symbolic expression of making amends with God for our transgressions.

This desire to make up and make right is a good thing. It helps us overcome our faults and grow into more conscientious people. But sometimes that good impulse can get us into bad trouble, and the Bible's prophets were among the first to see how we can distort even a good thing like sacrifice. The prophets saw how we can fool ourselves into thinking that we can substitute the symbolic act of sacrifice for true repentance, and further delude ourselves into thinking that God won't see the difference.

Think of it this way. Imagine a husband and wife who have a long-standing conflict over the husband's binge drinking. He doesn't drink everyday, but on weekends or holidays or vacations or when there's a full moon, he might drink six or seven or thirteen beers in a night, much to the great distress of his spouse. After an especially bitter argument over this, the husband comes home one day after work with a dozen long-stem red roses. He gives his wife the flowers and pledges, "Never again." The wife is touched, they make up, and things go back to the way they were until the next incident. There's, of course, another big fight, and the next day hubby again comes home, but this time with reservations to the best restaurant in town. There's another pledge of sorrow and repentance, and while the making up takes a little longer, things eventually get back to normal. Normal, of course, means more of the same, and when the train once more jumps the track, there's a huge explosion. Tears, anger, shouting, kids screaming, dogs barking, it's a nightmare. The husband takes off in the car, and three days later he comes home, this time, though, not with flowers or dinner reservations, but rather a brand new diamond ring. Wow, it's gorgeous, but when he gives it to his wife, she throws it back in his face and she says, "Do you think I'm that stupid? Do you think you can buy me off with expensive gifts? I don't want your diamond ring. I want you, sober, and healthy, and well."

That's exactly the bombshell God drops in this morning's reading from Hosea. In the first part of our First Reading we hear Israel expressing its sorrow and remorse over their most recent faithlessness. Israel has once more gone traipsing after false gods and bowed down before the altars of the Canaanite god Baal. Now they're sorry and they want to make up. But God, speaking through the prophet, says, "Not so fast." According to Hosea, God rejects Israel's pleas for two reasons. One, God is not interested in any kind of on-again-off-again relationship. What God wants is our whole heart, our whole being, our whole lives. And that's not because God is so small and petty that God can't stand competition, but rather, it's only in and through steadfast love to God that we can know true happiness and fulfillment. This ties into the second reason God rejects Israel's crocodile tears. Israel assumes that God is like the phony gods and idols of her neighbors, who can be bought off with the blood of oxen or gifts of grain and wine. But God, our God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jesus, this God will not be manipulated, whether by our personal sacrifices or by our prayers and sacraments. God will not be reduced to a pocket-sized deity, but instead, lives and reigns over us and all creation, thank God. That's the meaning behind the words, "I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings."

This past spring the New Testament scholar Krister Stendahl passed away after a long and distinguished career, including a stint as the Bishop of Stockholm. I remember him for some advice he once passed along on in an essay I first read many years ago. Stendahl wrote that if ever we're seized with some desire to do something great or noble for God, whether out of gratitude for blessing or out of remorse for sin, we should first immediately lay down, take a long nap, and try our best to get over it. His point being: God doesn't need anything from us. God is none the greater for our offerings and sacrifices. And since we have been, through Jesus Christ, made right with God and covered in his grace, our desires to make up with God are ill-founded and occasionally dangerous. But God is glorified when we offer our gifts and talents in the service of those Jesus called "the least of our brothers and sisters." Because it's mercy, not sacrifice, that God desires, and that's probably why in the Gospel of Matthew Jesus quotes this word from Hosea not once, but twice.

In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.