Hosea 5: 15-6:6 [track 2]:  The prophet Hosea calls for fidelity to the covenant with Yahweh.  Rather than ritual acts and sacrifices, this fidelity involves dealing justly with one’s neighbors, and exhibiting mercy, compassion, and a contrite heart.  Ritual acts and sacrifice are part of worship, but without a commitment to God’s moral imperatives they are meaningless.

Romans 4: 13-18: Here Paul summarizes two fundamentally different and mutually exclusive ways of relating to God.  One way involves relying on God’s promise, God’s grace; the other focuses on human achievement.  Paul uses the story of Abraham to illustrate his “Gospel of promise.”  Abraham’s righteousness preceded the law, which had not yet been given to Moses.  Abraham heard the call of God and responded.  Note while Abraham did act, his action was a response to God, not the basis for a claim upon God.

Matthew 9: 9-13; 18-26: This Sunday’s Gospel reading contains three elements.  The first is the call of Matthew, the tax collector.  The second portion describes Jesus’ table fellowship.  He ate with tax collectors and sinners.  This community of inclusion stood in marked contrast to the exclusive and hierarchical structure of both the Roman empire and the Pharisees.  Finally, the reading contains two healing stories.  Jesus heals a woman and raises a young girl from the dead, exhibiting God’s life-giving power.

The readings for this Sunday illustrate God’s steadfast mercy, God’s promise, and God’s life-giving power.  We are called to respond, “to follow Jesus.”  Jesus demonstrated what it means to live God’s moral imperatives and in so doing, challenged the “accepted practices” of His day.   He invited one employed by Rome to follow Him, He ate with known sinners, He allowed a woman to touch Him in public, and He touched a dead body.  We too are called to respond in faith, to learn from Jesus, and to be willing to challenge “accepted practices” in order to reach out to all of God’s creation.

God’s peace,

Bill+