Mercy Not Sacrifice: Embracing Restorative Justice

Devotional

Day 1: The Scandal of Dinner with Collaborators

Jesus’ choice to eat with tax collectors wasn’t a polite outreach effort – it was a radical act of solidarity with society’s most complicit. Tax collectors weren’t just “sinners” but active participants in systemic oppression, collaborators with Rome’s violent occupation. By calling Matthew and sharing a meal, Jesus redefined mercy as more than pity for victims – it meant confronting perpetrators with transformative relationship. This mercy unsettled the Pharisees’ sense of justice, exposing how our categories of “deserving” often protect our own moral superiority. True grace disrupts the systems that let us feel safely righteous. [28:15]

“As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he rose and followed him. And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples.” (Matthew 9:9-10, ESV)

Reflection: Who do you instinctively label as “complicit” or “beyond redemption” in our world? How might Jesus’ disruptive table fellowship challenge that categorization?

Day 2: When Victims Become Perpetrators

Tax collectors weren’t cartoon villains but people caught in systems of exploitation – both victims of Roman oppression and perpetrators against their neighbors. Jesus’ mercy acknowledges this complexity, refusing to reduce anyone to their worst choices. The Pharisees’ outrage reveals how trauma (like living under empire) can calcify into rigid moral binaries that dehumanize others. God’s justice sees beyond our roles as oppressor or oppressed to our shared need for liberation from cycles of harm. [33:36]

“Tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to John, ‘Teacher, what shall we do?’ And he said to them, ‘Collect no more than you are authorized to do.’” (Luke 3:12-13, ESV)

Reflection: When have you been both victim and perpetrator in a broken system? How might this dual reality soften your judgments of others?

Day 3: Mercy That Feels Like Injustice

The Pharisees’ anger wasn’t petty – it mirrored our visceral reaction when abusers go unpunished. Jesus’ response (“I desire mercy, not sacrifice”) reframes justice not as balancing scales but healing relationships. This stings because it confronts our desire for retribution, our secret hope that someone will pay for the harm done. Yet God’s mercy doesn’t ignore sin – it absorbs the cost through Christ’s cross, making restoration possible without minimizing wrongs. [30:16]

“For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. But like Adam they transgressed the covenant; there they dealt faithlessly with me.” (Hosea 6:6-7, ESV)

Reflection: What unresolved hurt makes you crave punishment over restoration? How might Christ’s cross both validate your pain and challenge your vision of justice?

Day 4: The Roof and the Rain of God’s House

Buechner’s metaphor of justice as a house’s structure and mercy as the life within it reshapes our either/or thinking. The Pharisees saw only collapsing walls when Jesus dined with Matthew; Jesus saw a home being built. God’s justice provides boundaries that make mercy possible – not leniency, but space for transformation. Our limited perspective often mistakes structural repair (punishment) for the ultimate goal, missing God’s deeper work of making all things new. [31:25]

“Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.” (John 7:24, ESV)

Reflection: Where are you demanding God tear down “walls” (justice) when He might be nurturing “rain” (mercy) inside them? What hidden growth might He be fostering?

Day 5: Restorative Justice at the Detention Center

Reverend Jimenez’s forgiveness of his son’s killer embodies Jesus’ call to “learn what this means.” Restorative justice isn’t weakness – it’s the harder work of holding accountability and grace together. Like Christ with Matthew, it says “What you did matters” and “Who you’re becoming matters more.” This path transforms both offender and victim, refusing to let evil have the final word by writing new stories of redemption. [36:27]

“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.” (Colossians 3:12-13, ESV)

Reflection: Where are you clinging to retribution in your relationships or society? What first step could you take toward restorative curiosity instead?

Sermon Summary

Jesus calls Matthew in the thick of scandal. The line, follow me, lands not on a harmless outsider but on a collaborator with Rome who profits from an occupied people. Matthew rises, and Jesus sits at a table full of tax collectors and sinners. The Pharisees ask the burning question anyone under the boot of empire would ask: why does he eat with them? Jesus answers with a doctor’s image and Hosea’s summons: it’s not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick; go and learn what this means, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. He has come not to call the righteous, but sinners.

The text refuses a tidy story about the “margins.” Tax collectors in Judea are not merely misunderstood. They skim off the top in a system that bleeds the poor and funds imperial luxury. Think Vichy collaborators, blood diamond dealers, sweatshop bosses. No wonder the Pharisees bristle. Their anger is the sting of real injustice, not petty prudishness. And here is the difficulty: the mercy of God sometimes feels wrong. It can look like letting people get away with it. The gut wants a reckoning. Someone should pay.

Hosea, though, pairs judgment and mercy in the same breath. Frederick Buechner’s house helps: justice is the pitch and the walls; mercy is the rain on the roof and the life inside. From God’s vantage point, mercy and justice are one thing. Only from street level does mercy to Matthew feel like injustice to those harmed. So the call is to go and learn. First, humility and curiosity about others. Sorting people into “innocent” and “guilty” flattens their stories and inflates human certainty. C. S. Lewis reminds that God judges by moral choices, not appearances. The closer the look, the clearer the truth: everyone needs healing from something and restoration for something done.

Second, shift from retributive to restorative justice. Retribution measures debt and exacts payment. Restoration seeks a repaired people. Jesus practices restoration when he calls Matthew closer. Come be my disciple. Come learn another way to live. Calling in, not calling out, creates room for transformation.

Cristobal Jimenez’s story brings this home. A father meets the boy who killed his son and chooses mercy that costs. Forgiveness becomes freedom, not denial. It rebuilds a life that could have been thrown away. That is mercy, not sacrifice. What good is so-called justice if it wastes another son and chains another father in resentment? The call of Jesus holds mercy and justice together, opening a path where Pharisees, tax collectors, and sinners can all be made new. Follow me. And Matthew got up and followed him.

Key Takeaways

1. Mercy can offend a just conscience The call of Matthew lands on a real perpetrator inside an oppressive system, so outrage makes sense. God’s mercy does not blink at harm, but it does move toward the wrongdoer to heal what retribution can’t touch. When mercy feels like a scandal, the text invites a longer view of what God aims to restore. [29:10]
2. Justice and mercy belong together Hosea sets “judgment” beside “mercy,” and Buechner’s house image shows their interlock: structure and shelter, law and life. From God’s perspective, these are not rival goods but one coherent work. What looks like unfairness to the harmed can be the beginning of a deeper making-right. [30:58]
3. Choose humility and curiosity first Quick labels of “innocent” and “guilty” hide complex stories and overestimate human certainty. Lewis’s insight about moral choices cuts to the heart: only God sees what a costly kindness may have required. Curiosity does not excuse sin; it opens a path where truthful mercy can actually land. [32:22]
4. Trade retribution for restoration Retribution settles an account; restoration repairs a people. Jesus’s “Follow me” draws Matthew into relationship where a new life becomes plausible, not just required. Justice that calls in rather than calls out creates space for repentance, repair, and durable change. [34:04]
5. Forgiveness frees and rebuilds lives Cristobal Jimenez’s mercy toward his son’s killer did not erase grief; it broke resentment’s grip and sparked a future. Restoration spared another life from being sacrificed to “what’s deserved” and turned pain into work that heals others. Costly forgiveness became the doorway to real justice. [36:48]

Youtube Chapters

[00:00] - Welcome
[21:07] - The doctor for the sick
[23:15] - Jesus calls Matthew
[24:12] - Eating with tax collectors
[24:31] - Mercy, not sacrifice
[26:48] - What tax collectors were
[28:15] - Scandal in today’s terms
[29:28] - When mercy feels wrong
[30:58] - Mercy and justice as a house
[32:22] - Humility and curiosity about others
[34:04] - From retribution to restoration
[34:25] - Calling in, not calling out
[35:06] - A father meets his son’s killer
[36:27] - What forgiveness really does
[37:40] - Mercy that transforms all

Bible Study Guide

Bible Reading
Matthew 9:9-13 (ESV)
9 As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him. 10 And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. 11 And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 12 But when he heard it, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 13 Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Hosea 6:6 (ESV)
6 For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

Observation Questions

What specific action by Jesus caused the Pharisees to question his choices, and how did he respond?
How does the sermon compare tax collectors in Jesus’ time to modern-day examples like “blood diamond dealers” or “sweatshop bosses”? [28:15]
What two images (from Hosea and Frederick Buechner) does the sermon use to explain the relationship between justice and mercy? [30:58]
What practical steps did Cristobal Jimenez take to pursue restoration instead of retribution? [36:27]

Interpretation Questions

Why might Jesus’ choice to call Matthew—a collaborator with oppressive systems—have felt like a betrayal to those harmed by tax collectors? How does this challenge common assumptions about “marginalized” groups?
The sermon argues that mercy and justice are “one coherent work” from God’s perspective. How does Buechner’s house metaphor help reconcile the tension between these two ideas? [30:58]
How does the story of Cristobal Jimenez illustrate the difference between “calling in” and “calling out” as methods of justice? [36:27]
Why might labeling people as “innocent” or “guilty” hinder our ability to show mercy, according to C.S. Lewis’s insight? [32:22]

Application Questions

When has someone’s wrongdoing made you feel like they “didn’t deserve” mercy? How might seeing their story through humility and curiosity change your perspective? [32:22]
Retributive justice asks, “What punishment do they deserve?” Restorative justice asks, “What healing is possible?” What would it look like to apply the latter question to a broken relationship in your life?
The sermon says forgiveness “frees and rebuilds lives.” Is there a resentment you’re holding onto that, if released, could create space for healing—for you or someone else? [36:48]
Jesus’ call to Matthew required him to leave his old life and “learn another way to live.” What habits, relationships, or systems might God be asking you to walk away from to follow Him more fully?
How can you actively “call in” rather than “call out” someone this week—offering grace while still honoring the need for accountability? [34:25]
The Pharisees’ anger was rooted in real injustice, not pettiness. When have you dismissed someone’s pain as “overreacting”? How could you listen differently to their hurt?

Sermon Clips

41s

#MercyAndRestoration

“What good is it for anyone if giving someone what they deserve also leaves you trapped in resentment? But restorative justice opens the door for something good to come out of what had previously only been tragic. That's what Jesus was inviting Matthew to become a part of when he called him from his booth, a life that holds mercy and justice together, one that paves the way for transformation for all of us, pharisees, tax collectors, and sinners alike. Follow me, Jesus told him. And Matthew got up and followed him.”

38s

#JesusWelcomesAll

“So you see, when Jesus is hanging out with tax collectors and sinners, he's not showing kindness to a group of misunderstood civil servants. He was partying with Nazi sympathizers in Vichy, France. He was sitting down to dinner with blood diamond dealers. He was passing the bread and pouring the wine for the man running a child labor sweatshop in China. Imagine the last time you heard a news story about something that really upset you. Whoever was the bad guy in that story for you, that's who Jesus was inviting to become a member of his inner circle.”

32s

#RighteousOutrage

“In this story, it's the pharisees who have been oppressed. And to them and everyone else who had suffered under the brutality of Roman rule, when Jesus called a tax collector to be his disciple, he was rewarding behavior that was so wrong and unfair that it makes your blood boil just to think about it. So of course, the pharisees were upset. Their question is not the petty finger wagging of a bunch of killjoys. It's the very real outrage that we feel when we witness something wrong.”

35s

#ForgivenessHeals

“Secondly, forgiveness is a huge tenant of my faith. I couldn't say that I'm a practicing Christian if I can't forgive. It was the hardest thing I ever did. Don't ever think that forgiving someone for putting your little boy in the ground is ever going to be easy, but it sure was freeing. That's what Jesus means when he says, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. What good is it to anyone if the supposed justice for one boy's death is the total waste and sacrifice of another boy's life?”

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