Revelations of Mercy
June 7, 2026 • Proper 5 • Year A
Hosea 5:15-6:6| Psalm 50:7-15| Romans 4:13-25| Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
Jesus, what are you up to?
That’s the question that kept running through my mind, wondering at this selection of readings from Matthew. It’s not a bad question, centering the focus on Jesus’s actions and words. Focusing on what Jesus is actually doing in the midst of the people reveals a truth about Jesus in his life and ministry: Jesus is always up to fulfilling the will of God.[1]
So many of us wonder about the nature of God, especially when it comes to God’s will for us, but we often end up thinking, “How can I know the will of God? I’m merely human.” Truly, God surpasses our understanding, which is why our scriptures are fundamental to our tradition, key to our understanding of God because they reveal what we can know–or at least begin to comprehend–about God.
In the Gospel according to Matthew, the writer is most concerned with scriptural fulfillment. The God who was is the God who is, and Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of God. So who Jesus is, what Jesus says and does, reveals volumes about God to those who encounter him. While each person we hear about today–Matthew, the young daughter, and the sick woman–could each warrant a sermon in their own right, collectively they reveal God’s mercy through their encounters with Jesus. Mercy is an aspect of God’s will that Jesus not only reveals but embodies in calling Matthew to follow a new way that will be life-giving and fulfilling, in granting renewed life for the leader’s daughter, and in healing the bleeding woman of her prolonged illness. God is always calling the people into right relationship with the Creator, a relationship rich in mercy and full of life.
For those who know the stories of God in relationship with God’s people, the mercy of God is not surprising, nor is the disdain for false piety or empty religious devotion. Looking back to our readings from Hosea, we’re reminded that God doesn’t want empty sacrifices or inauthentic devotion. Through the prophet we hear that God “desire(s) steadfast love and not sacrifice, / the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6). When the people genuinely repent and return to God, God’s mercy is there.
Through the ages the faithfulness to God and the knowledge of God morphs into some kind of hierarchy, with social determinants originating from all realms of life, secular and religious. Then comes Jesus, who, once baptized, defies temptation in the wilderness, temptations that would have aligned him with the disordered earthly powers. Jesus proclaims the right order of God’s reign through the Sermon on the Mount. And Jesus sets about realigning dis-eased people into health and wholeness. God’s mercy is constant, as Jesus continues to reveal in his life and ministry. The variable is always our response to God’s mercy, God’s power, God’s love.
So we can see what Jesus is up to, bringing God’s mercy to Matthew. Would Matthew’s response to follow Jesus have been different if he were comfortable with his position as tax collector? If Matthew’s heart had been hardened to the injustice he was perpetuating on his neighbors, would he have been able to step away? I don’t think we can know whether Matthew was relieved at Jesus calling him away, or if the mere presence of Jesus softened his heart in a way that made him keenly aware of his role in exploiting others. The why of it doesn’t matter as much as that Jesus called to Matthew directly, and Matthew followed him. Matthew was at the table with his former colleagues and others of ill repute when Jesus announced to the Pharisees that he had come to heal the sick, to call the sinners. We don’t get the inside view of Matthew’s reckoning with his own self-awareness, how he takes the reality that he is among those who need healing. Those who commit to self-examination know that it’s no small thing to reckon with one’s own shortcomings or sins. As much as knowing might help our understanding, what is important is recognizing what is, having true awareness. As much as Jesus called Matthew, knowing fully well who he was and what he did, so, too, does Jesus call all of us. It is humbling to realize that being called by Jesus means that there’s a great equalizing force at play that blankets us all in compassion, mercy, and unconditional love. We know and experience this through faith. Faith, it seems, requires us to be honest about who we really are, realizing how great God is and that no matter what we might build up about ourselves or our righteousness, we are equally children of God. Faith can overcome the pride that prevents us from realizing our need for God's mercy expressed in its many forms.
The leader who comes on behalf of his daughter directly to Jesus for healing has set any notion of pride aside. Whether a leader of the synagogue or in civil administration, persons of high social standing aren’t the usual folks clamoring for Jesus’s help. From Mark and Luke’s telling of this story, we learn that the father’s name is Jairus, that this is his only daughter, and that at the young age of 12, the girl is on the verge of death. The father acts on behalf of the sick and the dying, a voiceless one. In desperation, he kneels before Jesus. Jesus doesn’t hesitate to follow him, perhaps because of the resonance of steadfast love, of knowledge of God manifest in recognition of God’s power through Jesus–the father pleading on behalf of his child, doing for her what no one else could do, reflecting the merciful justice of our heavenly Father. Life itself obeys Jesus: when Jesus takes the child’s hand, she arises from death. Our faith recognizes God’s merciful power, and we realize more of what Jesus is here to do.
God’s powerful mercy can be recognized quietly, too. The hemorrhaging woman would undoubtedly have preferred for her healing to remain between God and herself. In her interior monologue we hear her thoughts, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.” From the stories in Mark and Luke, again, we get more detail. She has spent all she had, she’s as desperate as Jairus but without any power. She has to advocate for herself, act for herself; no one else can help her. Her great act of faith brings to mind the faith of Abraham. She trusts in God’s mercy and faithfulness through Jesus, and she acts on it, even if no one else comes to know; it’s between her and God.
But Jesus doesn’t let the woman remain hidden. In Matthew, Jesus turns to see her right after she touches his cloak. He tells her, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well,” and she is then healed, rescued, saved. There’s an intimacy in the exchange even amongst the crowd that saves some of the calling-out and further embarrassment that can be read into the accounts from Mark and Luke. Here it is enough that she has been made well, restored to new life as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Such a little thing in Jesus’s ministry, but to those who are cast aside in society, it is no small thing that Jesus tells her to “take heart,” to have courage, and to recognize that it is her faith that has saved her. Her story is not one to be hidden but to be acknowledged, known, shared, and celebrated with thanksgiving. Jesus is here to make God’s mercy known.
Our psalmist reminds us that this is what God desires: our gratitude, our confession of faith, our prayers for help, our praise. God doesn’t need these things or anything, but the desire to be in relationship with one another sincerely and wholeheartedly is a full expression of love, celebrated in mutual devotion and faithfulness. When we come to God in sincere praise and thanksgiving, we do not leave unchanged. God’s presence, God’s relationship with us, God’s revelation to us transforms us. I wish I could manufacture that kind of divine transformation for you as much as for myself, but there is no magic expressway. There are moments–sudden epiphanies or even theophanies–that are gifts of insight, but the life of faith is one mostly lived in hope of faith. Like Thomas Merton, we desire to be in relationship with God, to do what we think is pleasing to God, even if we do not know the way.[2] Following Jesus closely is our way to live a life so faithfully that we, too, are always up to fulfilling the merciful will of God.
~The Rev. Sara Milford
[1] While the statement that Jesus is about fulfilling the will of God is plainly stated in John (eg Jn 6:38), it is also spoken at Gethsemane when Jesus prays, “not my will, but yours be done” (Mtw 26:39, Mk 14:36, and Lk 22:42).
[2] “The Merton Prayer” from Thoughts in Solitude by Thomas Merton. Copyright © 1956, 1958 by The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani. https://reflections.yale.edu/article/seize-day-vocation-calling-work/merton-prayer