Let It Be a Plowshare: for mercy, not sacrifice

based on Matthew 9:9–26 for June 7, 2026

This sermon is for the person who's been hurt by religion and isn't sure what to do with that. It's for the one who's tired of performing faith, or who suspects the loudest versions of Christianity they see right now aren't the whole story. It's for anyone who needs permission to just... reach, or keep reaching.

The reading:
As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax-collection station, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And Matthew got up and followed him. And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with Jesus and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”
While he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” And Jesus got up and followed him, with his disciples. Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from a flow of blood for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, for she said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.” Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And the woman was made well from that moment. When Jesus came to the leader’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, he said, “Go away, for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. And the report of this spread through all that district.

Take a moment and ask yourself: Who is Jesus, to you?

Before we read this Gospel together on Sunday, I asked everyone the same question.

Maybe he’s a healer type. Maybe he’s a prophet. Maybe he’s more of a community organizer. Or maybe, for you, he’s truly divinity walking the earth, emanating light wherever he goes. My answer doesn’t matter here. What matters is who Jesus is for you.

The Jesus Who Doesn't Quite Fit
Now — and this is the hard part — read the Gospel excerpt again, and see if you notice a Jesus who is not quite like your Jesus.

You know what I mean, right? If your Jesus is the one doing miraculous healings, it might strike you that here he tells a woman it’s her own faith that heals her. Or if your Jesus is the one who dies on the cross to wipe your sins away, it might snag you that here he’s telling the Pharisees he’s come for mercy, not sacrifice.

Hold onto whatever didn’t quite agree who Jesus is for you. It will matter, a bit later on.

As I sat with all three of our readings this past week, I found a thread running through them, and it’s a strange one for a religion with such a loooong history of altar-building. Hosea, speaking for God: I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. Paul, to the Romans: the promise comes not through the law but through faith (through trust, through relationship) and so it’s guaranteed to everyone, not just the people who got the rules right. And then Jesus, sitting at a table with tax collectors and sinners (the “wrong” people) when the religious professionals start asking their scrutinizing questions, he quotes Hosea right back at them: Go and learn what this means. I desire mercy, not sacrifice. You gotta love Jesus with a pithy response, quoting scripture to the scripture professionals. 

So God is not asking for sacrifice. No need for the burnt offering. (Though I do love me some incense.) No need for the performance of religion—and not just the temple-or-church kind. I mean the kind we still do, inside the building and out. The self-sacrifice that hollows you out and calls itself holiness. The exhausting project of being good enough, clean enough, sure enough, perfect enough, caring enough, etc., etc., etc. God keeps saying, across centuries, in three different readings on this one ordinary morning: that’s not what I’m after. I’m after you. I’m after a thing between you and me.

Thing is... This is also the famous weekend where Jesus says, Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have come for the sick. We love this verse when we get to be the ones welcomed in. Or when we're quoting it as a justification in the face of our (many, and quite human) failures. And we should. This is good news. Jesus didn’t come only for the wealthy and the perfect. 

The Sickness That's Easy To Miss
But I want to turn it slightly, because I think there’s a sickness here that’s easy to miss. The sickness I mean has to do with our Jesus. Remember that little exercise we did, listening for the Jesus who didn’t quite line up with the one who is “ours”? The gap between the Jesus you brought with you and the Jesus who is showing up in the text?

I don’t need you to tell me what your gap is. That gets to stay private. I didn't ask for share time because I genuinely want you to think about this and be honest with yourself about it. Consider what the Jesus in this story actually does, or doesn’t do:

The woman with the extensive bleeding reaches out and grabs his clothes. And Jesus doesn’t perform a miracle according to this text. He doesn’t wave magic hands. What he does, according to this story, is turn and say: Take heart, daughter. Your faith has made you well. Except the Greek doesn’t quite say “made you well.” It says sesōken se, or, your faith has saved you. The reaching saved her. The trust saved her. Jesus is saying: this was you.

That is not a powerful "I did it for you" Jesus, by the world’s measure. That is a Jesus who tells a woman her own desperate reach was the thing that healed her. And that is very different from the version of faith on the loudest stages of our country right now.

Jesus’ version, the one we find here, is frankly kind of timid. Supportive of people who are afraid and willing to try anyway. The versions of faith we tend to encounter on the loudest stages is strong, certain, armed, and frequently very sure of who’s in and who’s out. It supports golden statues and all kinds of agendas, some we easily name as a problem, and others that even our proud, educated selves are oddly fine with, because they might benefit us one way or another. 

That big-stage version of faith is powerful, yes. It is also a sickness. And it would have no idea what to do with this Jesus in the excerpt we got today. The one at the table, the one telling people to go learn what mercy, not sacrifice means, the one who lets himself be touched and then tells people their own faith is what healed them. This Jesus refuses that over-and-above "strong" kind of power. Jesus does not refuse power itself, though. Make no mistake, there is enormous power moving through these stories. But Jesus refuses the power of the sacrifice, the altar, the laws, the empires, the strongmen. He instead chooses the power that moves through bodies and relationships: through mercy, through trust, through the dangerous tenderness of letting someone touch you and then affirming that touch. That’s not weakness, but  it’s also not what the world tends to call powerful. And simultaneously...it’s the only kind of power that has ever actually saved anyone in any lasting way, from what I can tell.

So- at any rate: whatever snagged for you earlier — whatever in this text didn’t fit the Jesus that is "Jesus for you" — I hope you'll hold him gently this week. ​Because, God desires mercy, trust, and relationship rather than sacrifice. And one of the ways we resist that invitation is by clinging to a domesticated, personal Jesus instead of letting the living Christ challenge and change us. So maybe that Jesus who didn't quite fit is exactly the one who is trying to reach you, hoping to be heard and praying to that what he's showing or telling you will work. 

A Different Kind of Power
It's pride month. And, though almost every one of my sermons is incorporating something or someone queer, I'm going to be more overt about it in the coming weeks. So- as if this sermon weren't already queer enough just in its format... are you familiar with the (queer!) artist Spencer LaJoye? They recently moved to California from the eastern side of the US, and they have a song you might recognize: Plowshare Prayer. (That link is LaJoye singing it live — go listen before you read on. Really.)

The lyrics pray that if a prayer was once used as a sword against you, this one might instead become a plowshare — something that breaks you open so you can grow.

And if that line doesn’t bring you to tears, there’s another I can’t get past:
if you don’t want healing, I just pray for peace.

Here’s what I want you to notice: Listen to that song and see if you can hear Jesus in LaJoye's voice. Because to me, that's exactly who LaJoye is channeling. 

To the queer kid wrestling with life in a compulsory heterosexual world, Jesus turns and says, hey- I see you. Your reaching is faith, and it has already saved you. To the trans person who has been denied in entirely too many ways, Jesus says, you are not dead. Even if these fools are out here as if you are. To the one who is exhausted from running the Silicon Valley treadmill and just wants to be done, Jesus says, amen. To the person who got hurt by church and has been circling the door ever since, half-hoping, half-braced for it to hurt again Jesus says, if you don’t want healing, I just pray for peace. He doesn’t even assume a cure. He lets the woman reach. He takes the girl’s hand only when asked. He sits at the table and invites us grow and learn what it means: mercy, not sacrifice.

A Practice For The Week:

anyone can try this, you don't have to have been in a church on Sunday...
​
Put on the Plowshare Prayer. Then sit for a moment with the place where "your Jesus" and the Jesus in this story (or even in this song!) don’t line up. Don’t fix it. Don’t resolve it. Just notice it, and ask what the Holy Spirit might be trying to offer you. Maybe it's mercy, not sacrifice.

with joy,
Pr. Sam

A few sources behind this one, in case you want to chase them down: Spencer LaJoye, whose Plowshare Prayer carried the whole back half of this sermon; and the Jewish scholar Amy-Jill Levine, whose work keeps is awesome about keeping us Christians away from attempting to make Jesus' own Jewish tradition a villain — in this case, as Levine points out, the woman who reaches for his cloak isn’t breaking a purity taboo, she’s a person daring to be seen, and that’s the part that matters. ​