Readings:
Hosea 5:15-6:6;
Psalm 50:7-15;
Romans 4:13-end;
Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

Collect:
God of truth,
help us to keep your law of love
and to walk in ways of wisdom,
that we may find true life
in Jesus Christ your Son. Amen

Reflection

If you’re anything like me, you are very good at ‘talking the talk’, knowing what to say, giving advice to others and generally understanding what should be done.  However, I am less good at ‘walking the walk’, or in other words, putting the talk into action and listening to my own advice.  As one commentator puts it about the people of Israel in Hosea’s time ‘their protestations of love for God is just so much hot air’, the same can be said of the pharisees and of us.  We can talk all we want about love, mercy and acceptance but if our actions don’t reflect what we say then we are full of so much hot air. This can be true for us as individuals and as a church locally and nationally.  It is often one of the criticisms thrown at Christians, that we are hypocrites because what we proclaim with our mouths isn’t reflected in what we do with our hands, and despite all the good works Christians are involved in there are many times when this criticism is justified.  You only have to think about discussions around gender, sexuality, asylum, race to see how our words and actions can be separated by a great chasm as mercy, compassion and love are seriously lacking in these debates and subsequent actions.

In the gospel reading we hear Jesus calling Matthew, a tax collector, to come and follow him and how later he settled down to eat + with other tax collectors and sinners.  Whilst doing this some pharisees come along and ask why Jesus was doing this.  They were wanting to have a theological discussion about what Jesus was doing and why it was wrong, separating themselves and making judgements about people rather than getting to know them engaging with them, showing them love and compassion.  Jesus challenged them, with the words from Hosea 6: 6 about how he ‘desires mercy and not sacrifice.’  Then, as if to prove his point, he’s interrupted by a father who’s daughter has died and whilst on his way to this man’s house he encounters a woman who is chronically ill.  

In these accounts Jesus is showing mercy to those he encounters by calling Matthew and getting to know the other tax collectors treating them as people created in the image of God.  Stopping to acknowledge the woman who touches him and calling her ‘daughter’ as he emphasises that this woman, who would have been considered ritually unclean, was a daughter of Abraham just as much as anyone else in Israel.  The same being true for the girl whom he touched and raised from the dead.  Jesus brought healing and life to those he encountered and that is what the Gospel is all about.  

None of us are perfect we all make mistakes and yet God has called us to live life in all its fullness.  When we think about our own encounter with God, we can experience the love, the mercy and the compassion and we are called to share this with others practically as well as verbally.  May we not be accused of being hypocrites or full of hot air but may we think seriously about how we can live with love, mercy and compassion oozing from our lives.   

I love the relatively new prayer of confession in Common Worship (which the Church of England produced in 2000) as it talks about us doing justly, loving mercy and walking humbly with God, a phrase from the prophet Micah.  So often our words and our actions are so far a part that we lose sight of being merciful, even though we know that God is merciful to us.  We are often remarkably good at saying the right thing but in some of our conversations and our actions we become judgemental and excluding. So as we go through this week, I invite us all to pray that prayer of confession and to reflect upon how we can love mercy as we walk humbly with our God. 

Most merciful God,
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
we confess that we have sinned in thought, word and deed.
We have not love you with our whole heart.
We have not loved our neighbours as ourselves.
In your mercy
forgive what we have been,
help us to amend what we are,
and direct what we shall be;
that we may do justly, love mercy,
and walk humbly with you, our God.  Amen.
© The Archbishops’ Council 2000

Mike Morris