Summary: In Matthew 9:13 and Matthew 12:6-7, Jesus the Vegan Christ respectively quotes Hosea 6:6 -- "I DESIRE COMPASSION, AND NOT SACRIFICE" (Legacy Standard Bible) -- and urges us to refrain from sacrificing the innocent (animals). Actually, meatism is animal sacrifice offered to the idol god of the belly.
1. God Condemns Animal Sacrifice
Hosea 6:6 (KJV) reads " For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings", apparently meaning that God is compassionate and He condemns animal sacrifice. "Sacrifice" here must refer to animal sacrifice for the word is echoed and paralleled by "burnt offerings" immediately afterwards.
2. The first situation of Jesus quoting Hosea 6:6 is as follows:
Then it happened that as Jesus was reclining at the table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were dining with Jesus and His disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to His disciples, “Why is your Teacher eating with the tax collectors and sinners?” But when Jesus heard this, He said, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I DESIRE COMPASSION, AND NOT SACRIFICE,’ for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Matthew 9:10-13 Legacy Standard Bible).
"Sinners" in the context above could refer to sinners in general as well as people who had sinned by consuming innocent creatures of God, especially when it's twice emphasized here that Jesus was eating with them. In my interpretation, Jesus and his disciples (according to Eusebius' Proof of the Gospel, all the twelve disciples of Jesus' were vegan) were vegan because Jesus, like Jehovah, desired compassion, rather than animal sacrifice; and they let non-vegan sinners share their vegan dining table because Jesus came to wake up the non-vegan rather than the vegan.
3. The second situation is as follows:
At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath, and His disciples became hungry and began to pick the heads of grain and eat. But when the Pharisees saw this, they said to Him, “Look, Your disciples do what is not lawful to do on a Sabbath.” But He said to them, “... But if you had known what this means, ‘I DESIRE COMPASSION, AND NOT A SACRIFICE,’ you would not have condemned the innocent. (Matthew 12:1-7 LSB)
Here, as pointed out by Akers (2020: 120-121), Jesus is asking his audience to be compassionate towards the animals, instead of condemning these innocent creatures of God by sacrificing them on the altar and/or to the human belly. "The innocent" must mean the innocent animals. Who else could the Vegan Christ have referred to as being unjustly condemned? Admittedly, The Contemporary English Version, as noted by me, interprets "the innocent" as "innocent disciples of mine". But this is unreasonable for Jesus distinctively states that it is the Pharisees' being short of understanding of Hosea 6:6 that has brought about their condemnation of the innocent, and Hosea 6:6 is absolutely unrelated to the picking of the heads of grain (the protestation the Pharisees are putting froth in the preceding verses) but as closely related to the sacrifice of animals as possible.
4. Early Church Leaders Supported Hosea 6:6
The early Jewish Christians supported Hosea 6:6 as quote by Jesus:- “God wants kindness and not sacrifices... When they kept the Law without sacrifices, they were returned and saved...but when they returned to their place, after offering sacrifices, they were turned out and expelled from it" (Recognitions 1:37); “For by reason of the things called ‘sacrifices’ you are filled with evil demons, which craftily destroy you without your understanding the trickery that is upon you (Homilies 11:15; Recognitions 5:31–33).
Indeed, Eusebius, the 4th Century orthodox historian, explicitly says that Jesus opposed animal sacrifice:-"He left no command that God should be honored with sacrifices of bulls or the slaughter of unreasoning animals... He thought these mean and lowly" (Proof of the Gospel 3.3).
Moreover, in his second treatise, the Instructor or Tutor, Titus Flavius Clemens (50-95), the founder of the famous Alexandrian school of Christian theology, expresses a similar opinion on the subject of flesh-eating :-
"If...the deity needs nothing, what necessity has he for food? ...sacrifices were invented by men to be a pretext for eating flesh, and yet, without such idolatry, they might have partaken of it." (see Williams 1883:62).
5. Conclusion
In a word, eating animals is animal sacrifice disapproved by the compassionate Vegan Christ and detested by God. For eating animal flesh means sacrificing innocent animals' lives to the idol god of the belly (Philippians 3:19), and to gluttony (Proverbs 23:20-21) (cf. Hicks 2018). Thus, go VEGAN!
Article link: https://www.hkbnews.net/post/the-compassionate-vegan-christ-tells-you-not-to-condemn-the-innocent-animals-by-dr-chapman-chen
References
Gebhardt, Joseph Glen (2014). The Syriac Clementine Recognitions and Homilies. Nashville: Grave Distractions Publications. https://www.academia.edu/9843447/The_Syriac_Clementine_Recognitions_and_Homilies_The_First_Complete_Translation_of_the_Text
Akers, Keith (2000/2020). The Lost Religion of Jesus. New York: Woodstock & Brooklyn.
Chen, Chapman (2022). "Meatism is Animal Sacrifice Detested by God." HKBNews, Jun 29. https://www.hkbnews.net/post/meatism-is-animal-sacrifice-detested-by-god-by-chapman-chen-hkbnews
Hicks, Ryan (2018). Why Every Christian Should Be A Vegan. Dallas: Taughttoprofit.
Williams, Howard (1883). The Ethics of Diet A Catena of Authorities Deprecatory of the Practice of Flesh Eating. LONDON: F. PITMAN. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/55785/55785-h/55785-h.htm#VIII_CLEMENT_OF_ALEXANDRIA