Morning Prayer: Bill Galbraith Choral Amen Hymn of Faith *Bread of the World, in Mercy Broken* Witness of Scripture: Matthew 9: 9-13 Anthem *Lord, For Thy Tender Mercies' Sake* Richard Farrant. FCC Chancel Choir Sermon *Still Learning* David Spain
Recorded on June 11, 2023
There is a commercial on television running almost every morning that would have had a favorable hearing in Jesus’ hometown, which is the setting for today’s story as told by the gospel of Matthew. The modern-day commercial begins with a very stern-looking man conveying a very serious message about taxes. Whatever the content of each particular commercial, the predominant message is that the taxing authorities are to be feared and resented. However, there is hope because one call to this firm will put you in the good hands of those who know how to take on the evil taxing entities. No doubt if that commercial had run in Jesus’ hometown, the phone lines would have been jammed with calls.
In the list of professions in Jesus day, tax gathering was near the bottom of being honored and near the top of being despised. When Rome moved in to occupy a region, they assessed taxes to fortify the throne and its defense. But they did not bring in people from far away to assess taxes; instead, they hired a neighbor to work for them. Suddenly the person with whom you shared recipes and lawn equipment, talked about the weather and had over for a cookout, is now working for the enemy. And, as the system was set up, the tax gatherer working for Rome was not paid by Rome but had to take a little extra from your pocket to line his pocket. The animosity for tax gatherers was thicker than any previous friendship had ever been, and why wouldn’t it be?
The modern-day commercial would have had a good market share in Jesus’ hometown, right up until the 9th chapter, when the story line of hatred for tax gatherers gets interrupted, and dramatically so. Jesus had been on the road we remember. He had been in all kinds of places and done all kinds of things that had raised some eyebrows. He had forgiven sin which many did not think he had the authority to do; he had been among the Gadarenes and the demons where decent people were rarely seen; he had been to the edge of survival on a stormy sea with his disciples; he had been with a centurion whose faith Jesus praised as unlike anyone else’s in Israel which did not sit well with pretty much everyone in Israel; he had dared to touch a leper; and before all that, he had gotten his ministry rolling with the sermon on the mount which 2,000 years later still has most people baffled most of the time. But if there was one thing that is a sure thing, it is that as Jesus walks down Main Street in his hometown, when he meets up with the local tax collector, he will send him on his way much like he had dispatched those demons into a herd of swine and into the sea. Oh boy, this is going to be good…and it was, but not like anyone thought.
So there is Matthew sitting in his booth, something like a customs officer perhaps and as people pass by with their catch of the day or their produce or whatever can be excised, Matthew slices off a portion for taxes. Matthew is doing his job, oppressing his neighbors as Jesus comes along and speaks to him words that no one on that day and no one to this day has ever forgotten: “Follow me.” Wait, what?How about a little “do unto others as you would them do unto you,” or “do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume…but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven,” or “no one can serve two masters, for you will hate the one and love the other…you cannot serve God and wealth.” None of that…just ‘follow me,” and without fuss or objection, Matthew gets up from his position and goes with Jesus which if nothing else reminds us that following Jesus most likely means leaving behind something, or getting out from behind something, or getting on with something new because when Jesus calls and people answer, life tends to get reoriented.
At some point, Jesus calling all these unlikely and unlikable people gets just a bit irritating. If Jesus is from God, then he seems bent on giving God a bad reputation. Jesus is not the commercial most people had in mind for God. Convention exists for good reasons, and Jesus seems to have little regard for any of that. Unsettling as his call of Matthew is, the next scene becomes even more troublesome.Ron Ruthruff writes it this way. “Jesus sits in the house of Matthew, a tax collector who has invited his friends to dinner with his new friend, Jesus…Table fellowship in the first century mediated communal relationships. It defined who did and did not hold power and social status. Who you ate with said who you were spiritually, socially, and economically.This is not so different from many of the tables we sit at today. The Pharisees ask a legitimate question: Jesus knows the holy intent of the law, yet he sits at the table of sinners—especially a tax collector, who in his very job description is complicit with and benefits from Roman occupation.” (The Christian Century, June 2023, p. 25)Sometimes in the gospels, the Pharisees are too easily villainized. While there might have been times when the Pharisees questions were trying to trap Jesus, this time their question feels different because they ask the disciples, who are most likely about as uncertain as the Pharisees.
We don’t know why, but Jesus does not give the disciples a chance to respond. Instead, he answers the question for them. At one level, Jesus’ answer is so obvious that it seems almost ridiculous.“People who are well don’t need a doctor, only those who are sick.” Well, yes of course and had he stopped there everyone might have been satisfied because it is obvious people like Matthew (and others on the list of sick people) need a physician. But, Jesus does not stop there. He goes on to quote the prophet Hosea by saying “I desire mercy not sacrifice,” for I have come to call sinners not the righteous. Quoting Hosea would have evoked the Hebrew Scripture story in which the prophet Hosea remains faithful to Gomer even though Gomer has not been faithful. God, ever committed to the truth and never saving anyone from their consequences, nonetheless remains searingly faithful and searchingly merciful to Israel.It is a powerful image of God’s steadfast mercy to every generation, as the Psalmist is resolute in affirming.
As God’s faithful one, Jesus has come for the sick not to condone but to transform and reform, to restore and return people to who God has made them to be. Jesus, who is divine love, comes close to all who are sick and need a doctor, which is to say Jesus has come to those who are sin sick and sick of sin, to those who are sickened by life at times, to those who are sick to death, which is to say Jesus comes to anyone and everyone in pain and feeling separated, scared, grieving, uncertain, angered which may well happen to be any of us at any time and all of us from time to time because while there are many wonderful things that happen in life, there are also many traumatic things that happen as well.
To be sure, we are a community of faith in pain, each of us carrying our particular pain that is part of life and all of us carrying the broader pain of these days that nevertheless impacts each of us particularly. There are moments when the pain is almost all-consuming, and its many understandable depths have all but dominated much of our thinking for the last two weeks.That the vast majority of us would avoid simple conflict not to mention deep pain is always an option and there are moments when it is a way of surviving and therefore not necessarily bad.But in the long run, avoiding what hurts tends to keep us stuck and afraid. So does getting trapped in our pain, which is to say whatever happens in life can stop us dead in our tracks and nothing ever feels safe and therefore life becomes embittered, withdrawn, and lived in a world of enemies. It is the saddest form of surviving if it becomes the only way of surviving, because God never made us simply for surviving.
Author Frederick Buechner who wrote mostly from places of loss and sadness, nevertheless writes of being a good steward of pain, and it is such an intriguing phrase because one seldom thinks of stewarding pain, which is to say attending deeply to it and caring faithfully for it. In his wonderful words that at least personally, I am only beginning to understand, Buechner writes, “Life is hard as well as marvelous. Hard and terrible things happen to us in this world that call us to be strong and brave and wise…when it is all we can do just to keep our heads above water …What we have [in life] is essentially what we are, and what we need is essentially each other. We are never more alive to life than when it hurts—never more aware both of our own powerlessness to save ourselves and of at least the possibility of a power beyond ourselves to save us and heal us if we can only open ourselves to it. We are never more aware of our need for each other, never more in reach of each other, if we can only bring ourselves to reach out and let ourselves be reached. Being a good steward of pain means keeping in touch with pain as well as the joy of what happens, because at no time more than at a painful time do we live out of the depths of who we are instead of out of the shallows. There is no guarantee that we will find a pearl in the depths, that our pain will have a happy end, or even any end at all, but at least we stand a chance of finding in those depths who we most deeply and humanly are and who others are. At least we stand a chance of finding that we need not live alone in our pain…But humanness involves joy as well as pain, and it is of course that experience too that we are bidden to live out of and to trade with and to meet on the ground of if we are to be good stewards not just of our most hurtful times, but of our most blessed times as well.”(Adolescence and the Stewardship of Pain, pp. 215,217, 219)
Buechner’s wisdom fully appreciated or not, his words do call to mind Matthew’s gospel, for Jesus says he comes to those sin sick souls and those sickened by sin which is to say anyone in pain. Jesus is not aloof, indifferent, uninterested; instead, he is engaged to bring healing to the world’s pain. Someone once turned a phrase that seems particularly poignant—“I used to think that where Jesus is, there is no pain; but now I understand that where there is pain, there Jesus is.” Matthew wants us to know that, and all I know to say is thanks be to God.