Compassion trumps piety

Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes’ sermon for June 8, 2008

Read: Matthew 9:9–13, 18–26

In this Jubilee year of St. Andrew’s we are thinking ahead about the future purpose of our congregation. For instance, under Carle Duguid’s thoughtful leadership we are engaged in a Visioning process that seeks to discern where God wants to take us. Another example: the Pastoral Oversight visit by a delegation from Calgary Presbytery. This is part of Presbytery’s regular “checking in” on its congregations, asking questions about our mission and our strategy. Many of you already participated in that process already at our last congregational meeting as you discussed in pew groups those questions Presbytery will be asking about our particular mission as a church. When the Presbytery delegation visits our next Church Council meeting, on June 24, you are welcome to attend and engage further in the discussion. In all this we are thinking about what’s essential for our life as a congregation. And as we ponder that we have to be clear about priorities.

The text we read today from Matthew’s Gospel is about those priorities. That may not be obvious on the surface. There is a profound tension here regarding how we should live our life with God. It is however so deeply embedded in the ancient cultural context of Jesus’ times that may not see the point. The tension is between two fundamental aspects of our life with God.

The first aspect is what people commonly think of as “religious observance”. Activities like praying and gathering for worship and belonging to Bible study groups belong in this category. These are the practices of piety. We should understand the term “piety” in a positive sense. Let us put aside those stereotypes of the overly-pious hypocrite that the term raises in our minds. The practices of piety are really important. They are the things we need to do to open ourselves to God’s Spirit and to deepen our connection with the Sacred.

The second aspect includes all those activities in which we assist other people, helping them when they have trouble, guiding them, rescuing them, healing them. These are the practices of mercy or compassion. When we engage in them we strengthen our connection to the Sacred by putting it to work – the work of God who works through us.

The tension arises with this question: which aspect is more important in our life with God – to engage in the practices of piety or to undertake the practices of compassion? Well, of course, we need to do both. But when it comes down to a choice, which has a higher claim? For instance, on a Sunday morning you might have to choose between going into the sanctuary to worship or responding to the street person who has come into the church lobby asking for something to eat.

The passage in Matthew addresses this question. To repeat, that may not be obvious because of the cultural distance between Jesus’ day and ours. The three little stories in this passage portray practices that were common in the culture of Jesus’ day but are no longer part of our world. Thus we need to translate the significance of these three episodes out of that ancient context into ours. We need to map the spiritual practices of Jesus back then onto the practices of his followers today – us!

The first of these three little stories about the practice of Jesus is set in the context of a dinner he attends at Matthew’s house. Now Matthew is a tax collector, which in the eyes of Jewish piety (as required by the Pharisees) renders Matthew technically a “sinner”. As part of his work Matthew handles the currency of foreigners and has everyday contact with Gentiles. According to the detailed developed rules of Torah, the simple fact that this is his occupation renders him ritually unclean, unfit to enter synagogue or temple.

To meet those exacting standards of Pharisaic piety Jesus would have had shun the company of people like Matthew. He did not. He recognized that the need of “sinners” for God’s merciful love is as great as the religious ambition of even the most devout Pharisee. Jesus goes to dinner with such people. Your practice of who you ate with was very significant in that culture. It signalled your status in the community, whether enjoyed honour or suffered shame. When challenged about this dishonourable practice of eating with outcasts, Jesus offered the parallel of the physician’s duty to attend not those who are well but those who are sick. The unspoken question was clear: which is more important – compassion or piety? Jesus answered the question quite firmly, by quoting the scriptures he shared with the Pharisees, invoking a saying of the great prophet Hosea [6:6]:

¹³ Go and learn what this means, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”

Hosea had enunciated a principal close to the heart of God and Jesus now reinforced it – mercy or compassion is more important than sacrifice or other forms of conventional piety.

In our culture we don’t explicitly and dramatically draw lines between who’s acceptable and who’s not in the way they did in Jesus’ time. But we do have occasion to encounter people whom we regard as broken or damaged or needy. And we also have vague resistances, an inclination perhaps to regard them as people we shouldn’t deal with. These residual impulses can get in the way of our responding with compassion. Let us then remember: Jesus goes to the house of the tax collector.

In the second little story in our text the same issue arises. The woman suffering from hemorrhages was in the eyes of the Torah an untouchable. She was untouchable into two ways. First, she was a woman who approached Jesus in public. Decent women in that society did not initiate a public conversation with men not of their family. They certainly did not touch them. Yet Jesus permitted her to touch his cloak. She was also untouchable in that her bleeding categorized her according to Torah as ritually unclean, forbidden to enter places of worship, forbidden to have contact with observant Jews. But Jesus responded to her, interacted with her, extended to her the declaration that her faith had made her well. His compassionate caring overrode the proprieties of religion.

In our culture great strides have been made towards the equality of women and men. And we deal with illness not by seeking to touch the hem of the cloak of a holy person in hopes of a supernatural cure, but by heading for the clinic. Yet who will pretend that our health care system is anywhere near as compassionate as it could be? Who would not agree that those on the margins, those without money or influence, have to struggle sometimes to gain access to appropriate health care in ways requiring just as much courage and faith as in the woman who approached Jesus. Would that in deliberations about public health care, leaders of our society might remember that when a marginalized person approaches Jesus, he turns to her.

Then for the third time Matthew shows us how Jesus’ connection to the overflowing mercy in the heart of God trumps all concerns of piety. Jesus’ readiness to go into the house of mourning and touch the dead body of the little girl broke one of the strongest taboos of his day. Torah forbade such contact, again because it rendered a person ritually unclean. This didn’t mean that the body was dirty, but rather that it was no longer a vessel for the living spirit that God had originally breathed into it. Thus the dead body was now alien to God, deserving to be shunned. But Jesus so deeply partook of the compassion of God that he would let no such taboo stand in the way of restoring the little girl to her heartbroken family.

In our day there are no religious proscriptions of contact with the deceased. But there are still so often at the time of a funeral family dysfunctions and unresolved antagonisms and griefs and regrets, and these can get in the way of our reaching out to the heartbroken. Upon a death in a family there may well be events in the past which have alienated kin from kin. What everyone needs now is to let go of such shadows, to give loving attention, to bring a non-judgmental presence, indeed grace, grace on our part that reflects the infinite grace that comes from God to embrace us all. Let us remember that Jesus goes in to the deathbed of the little girl.

In this our 50^th year one of the things St. Andrew’s may truly honour is the history of the caring enterprises in which the congregation has been involved. Practices of compassion are part of your lifestyle. As we attend to the Spirit and seek to discern the life towards which God calls us, let us always remember that Jesus eats with the outcasts, turns to the needy, and brings life that overcomes the shadow of death.