Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
“Go and learn what it means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’”
This line jumped out from the Gospel text this week as I read and wouldn’t let me go. It’s an arresting statement, an axiom of a different kind of world. We live in a world that requires sacrifice at every level of existence. Capitalism requires the sacrifice of our bodies, our labor, and our relationships with one another to continue to function, for example. The Prison Industrial Complex requires us to sacrifice the highest per capita rate of our neighbors in the world in order for it to function and — allegedly — for us to be safe.
This sacrifice reminds me of the classic short science fiction story by Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.” In the disturbing bit of speculative fiction, there’s a town called Omelas that is happy by every metric you could imagine and prosperous, too. But Le Guin reveals that the happiness of Omelas is dependent on the suffering of a child, locked away in the basement of one of the town buildings. Everyone in the town knows it, but only some choose to reject the arrangement and leave. Most are happy to live in prosperity thanks to the brutal treatment of others.
Omelas is based on unjust sacrifice, not mercy. Our society is frequently the same. Popular understandings of safety, security, and even justice depend on the sacrifice of prisoners (guilty or not) and the sacrifice of policed communities (again, guilty or not). Jesus does not condone a world based on such unjust sacrifices and instead, in this passage, prefers the company of those often asked to sacrifice for the greater good. He commends the woman “suffering from hemorrhages” who reaches out to him for healing even though it would have been improper. To keep others ‘safe,’ it would have been better for her to sacrifice community and be isolated. But Jesus desires mercy, not sacrifice.
What would a justice system in our society based on mercy, not sacrifice, look like? What could our world be like if our economics were based on mercy, not sacrifice? We need to decide, as Christians, if that’s a world worth fighting for or if Omelas is worth living in as it is. N. K. Jemisin, who writes stories that are already or will be considered science fiction classics, wrote a rejoinder to Le Guin’s story about Omelas called “The Ones Who Stay and Fight.” Instead of leaving the Omelas we live in, how can we stay and build a new world based on mercy? How can we be sources of healing, justice, and mercy in a world that would rather sacrifice untold numbers to the prison industrial complex?
Abolition is the ultimate answer to these questions, the framework for how we achieve that world. But what steps can you take now to make that world in your midst?
Wesley Spears-Newsome (he/him/his) is a writer and Baptist pastor in North Carolina.