Homily on Matthew 12
At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the sabbath; his disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. When the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the sabbath.” He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him or his companions to eat, but only for the priests. Or have you not read in the law that on the sabbath the priests in the temple break the sabbath and yet are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the sabbath.”
Matthew 12: 1-8
Whenever I flip through the Bible and come across the word “Sabbath,” I become filled with anxiety. This isn’t the feeling that I want to have when thinking about a holy day of rest, but throughout my life as a Christian, I’ve heard so many different things-- sometimes conflicting things-- about this day and what’s right or wrong, rest or work, holy or unholy.
I feel anxiety seeing the word “Sabbath” because sometimes I’ve been made to feel like I’m missing something so crucial, as though I could reach the maximum potential of power in my relationship with Jesus if I could just figure out how to do the Sabbath right. But reading this passage in Matthew, I was met with the comfort of God.
“For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”
In Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation, I also find comfort in Merton’s description of the kind of Lord our God is,
“What is serious to men is often very trivial in the sight of God. What in God might appear to us as “play” is perhaps what He himself takes most seriously. At any rate the Lord plays and diverts Himself in the garden of His creation, and if we could let go of our own obsession with what we think is the meaning of it all, we might be able to hear His call and follow Him in His mysterious, cosmic dance.”
I can hear Jesus saying the same as He admonishes the Pharisees, “I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. If you had known what this means ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent.” How often do we bleed out of our eyes, worrying about the appearance of things when the living God is embodied in the people around us, standing right in front of us? How tempting is it to condemn the hungry, the poor, the broken for receiving the things the Creator has freely provided because we think to ourselves that they don’t deserve it? Jesus would not rather that we pride ourselves on what we know, what we give, what we do and how often we do it. The Son of Man desires that we set ourselves aside in order to see the innocence in one another. To give mercy to one another.
This is to be like Jesus because He showed us the greatest mercy, the greatest gift by dying for sins He didn’t commit. And as we come to this table -- every time we come to the table -- we hear Jesus telling us, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” Every time we eat of His holy Body and drink of His innocent Blood, we receive His mercy, and we receive His rest.
“For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” So find your rest in Him.
Written by: Chlese Jiles
Preached at Friday Morning Eucharist Service, 7.13.2018