Circle of Life ...
Are we followers or being followed?
What comes to mind for you when you hear the term “the Circle of Life”?
Where is the start point on the circle say, for example, for a monarch butterfly?
Is it at the caterpillar stage?
Or the butterfly stage?
Or the mysterious chrysalis stage when a caterpillar made fat on leaves is changing and undergoing that mysterious metamorphosis … transformation from worm to winged, beautiful creature of flight?
I’ll ask the same question another way … where is the start point on the circle of your relationship with God?
Is it when Jesus calls you to follow him?
Or is it when Jesus follows you to bring healing to your world?
Or is it in that space between the following and being followed when he joins you at the table breaking bread to share, lifting a cup to share?
In our lives, in our ministry, in our discipleship – are we following Jesus, or is Jesus following us?
In our lives, in our ministry, are we being called to the table to be fed?
Or are we being called to feed others at the table? Jesus says “I desire mercy, not sacrifice”
What is this thing called mercy? This thing that God both requires of us, and extends to us? [1]
What does it mean for us to exercise mercy for others, rather than offer sacrifices to God?
The Greek word for sacrifice is thusia – thoo-see-ah – properly an official sacrifice prescribed by God, an offering God accepts because it is laid out on God’s terms. Interesting that Jesus uses this word, thusia, to respond to the question of the Pharisees who are so heavily invested in following the prescriptive details of the law. The detail of the law is not the most important thing … Jesus says “I desire mercy, not sacrifice”
The Greek word for mercy is Eleos – el-eh-os - meaning compassion, or covenant-love and covenant-loyalty or loyalty to God’s covenant.
In Wiarton, our two congregations of St Peter’s and Trinity Working Together is a covenant relationship – we work together here in loyalty to God’s own covenant with God’s people, to be in and remain in relationship with us. God wants to be in relationship with us, and in the Gospel reading, Jesus is saying, the more important thing is this living into the desire to be in relationship … this is more important than the sacrifices we may lay out according to God’s terms … the kind of relationship we have is more important that the terms that govern that relationship, more important than the rule book is the relationship.
I want to bring us back to the idea of this circle of life, as it relates to mercy over sacrifice – compassion over following prescriptions and laws.
The Gospel begins with Jesus calling Matthew.
Matthew – a tax collector. Those who handled taxes, you might remember the story of Zacchaeus, were generally not well respected by the Synagogue leaders, as though money were a dirty thing. Perhaps it was because in that time, those who had the job and the authority to collect taxes on behalf of the Roman Empire, often used that authority to unduly extract money from people.
Authority can be like that – it often blinds us to compassion, making us think we have it right, we have all the answers, we are above correction.
Either way, Jesus doesn’t say to himself, when I am picking disciples I will skip the ones who may have a bad reputation!
Follow me, he says to Matthew. And in the very next sentence they are at dinner … the story is just ticking along! The pharisees catch a glimpse of this, and it might be like if I were to find a few drug addicts or sex workers to have supper with at a picnic bench down by the water. Why is she sitting with “those people”? Well, its not the ones who are following all the rules and doing everything right who necessarily need help … it is those who are sick who need that hand of compassion extended to them. That hand of covenant-love, love like the love God has for us that doesn’t depend on our ability to follow rules, but rather on our ability to extend mercy.
The story ticks right along as we next hear of the physician who is there – not only for the sick, but even for the dead!
Another leader, perhaps another kind of leader than the Pharisee (although we do not know for sure), comes hurrying up to Jesus.
“My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” [2]
Here, we have Jesus taking a different point in the circle of life … instead of being the one inviting others to follow, he follows the one who has the need … this is what a physician does, this is what a healer does, this is what a disciple or follower of Jesus is invited to do – follow the one who has the need.
Jesus is following the man whose daughter has died, and some random woman in the pressing crowd reaches out, probably very tentatively, probably quite surreptitiously, to touch the hem of his garment.
Why do I say – probably tentative, probably surreptitiously? Because she is a woman who has been (there’s really no delicate way to say this) seeing her period non-stop for 12 years! She isn’t supposed to touch men in this culture while she is on her period. She isn’t even supposed to be out in a crowd. But here she is breaking the rules because she is so hungry for healing, and believes so deeply that Jesus CAN heal … she doesn’t need to talk to him or ask him anything, she doesn’t need him to lay hands on her … she believes so much in him that even just touching his cloak, the very fringe of his cloak will heal her! She knows this … she pushes forward … she touches it.[3]
Jesus doesn’t turn back to this woman and say “hey lady, whadya think you’re doing, touching my cloak when you’re on your time!” he doesn’t respond to her according to her disobedience to the laws laid out to Moses by God. Rather he turns to her with mercy, with covenant-love and compassion … he sees not her sinfulness, but he sees her faith … he sees not her illness, her frailty, but rather her faith, and he addresses her with the affection of a father “take heart, daughter, your faith has made you well.”
When he arrives at the house of the synagogue leader, where those who have gathered have already pronounced the girl dead, Jesus says she is only sleeping. They laugh. Yeah right, they say.
We might think as congregations that we are dying or dead … but perhaps in this circle of life, we too are only sleeping, perhaps Jesus has followed our father home, to bring us back to life?
Because he goes in to the girl and when he takes her by the hand, she gets up. She walks again. She is alive again. He comes to heal not those who are well, but those who need healing.
So, I leave you again, not with answers, but with questions …
where is the start point on the circle of your relationship with God?
Is it when Jesus calls you to follow him?
Or is it when Jesus follows you to bring healing to your world?
Or is it in that space between the following and being followed when he finds you dead and holds our his hand?
When he joins you at the table breaking bread to share, lifting a cup to share?
Whereever the start point – we are in this circle with God. Amen.
[1] I remember going to a youth gathering one year, and hearing a preacher describe mercy and grace like this:
Mercy is when you do not get what you deserve to get (ie punishment is bypassed, even though perhaps you deserve to be punished)
Grace is when you do get what you do not deserve (ie generosity is not withheld, even though perhaps you do not deserve this generosity)
[2] (in an interesting reporting difference, we find this same story in the Gospels of Mark & Luke, where the daughter isn’t yet dead when the help is requested but is at the point of death, or dying, but in Matthew’s Gospel, she is already dead … different points on the circle of life – Mark 5, Luke 8).
[3] (how do I know all this extra info about the crowd pressing in, about her belief? Because I read the same story from a different reporter – both gospels of Mark and Luke give account of her in more detail).