Rev’d Peter Balabanski
Pentecost +2– Gen 12 1-9, Ps 33 1-12, Rom 4 13-25, Matt 9 9-13 & 18-26
So Jesus just wanders up to Matthew and says, Follow me; come and belong; come and be one of us. It looks straightforward and friendly. But Matthew was a hated outsider, probably a local customs official, working for outsiders, taxing the goods ordinary people took across an imposed border. In your village, that makes you a real outsider. But when you look at what comes next, you see Jesus wasn’t so much calling Matthew back into the community, as offering to join him outside. When the religious insiders saw Jesus eating with Matthew and people like him, they challenged Jesus’ disciples; What sort of Rabbi keeps such unsavoury company.
And Jesus’ first disciples would have been hard put to answer. Customs officials like Matthew weren’t the sort of people you’d stick your neck out for. Peter, Andrew, James and John would’ve felt pretty uncomfortable. The more radical Jesus became, the more vulnerable they must have felt. And yet that’s the movement of this part of Matthew’s gospel. Jesus has come down from delivering his very counter-cultural Sermon on the Mount to take up a mission that he’s soon to send his disciples out on. And towards the end of today’s chapter we’ll see Jesus publicly denounced as a blasphemer, and in league with the prince of demons 9:34.
So with his disciples nonplussed and silent, Jesus answers the Pharisees’ question – why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners – by saying, It’s not the healthy who need the physician but the sick! Go and learn what this means, ‘I want mercy, not sacrifice.’ Because I’ve come to call not the righteous, but sinners.
Not the righteous, but sinners. Pharisees were ‘righteous people’. They dedicated their lives to righteousness. If Israel was meant to be a blessing to all families of Earth as we heard in the first reading Gen 12.3 – to reveal to the nations the virtue and blessedness of a people truly close to God – then they needed people who knew exactly what God expected of them – and who were prepared to demonstrate that standard by giving their lives over to the most scrupulously righteous lifestyle.
Jesus challenged their view: Go and learn what this means, ‘I want mercy, not sacrifice. Don’t be so fastidious; focus on compassion; on blessing. Matthew soon shows us Jesus getting right down to it with the synagogue-leader’s daughter and the woman with the bleeding. Jesus’ ministry is welcomed by the crowds; by ordinary people. If the contrast with the Pharisees wasn’t already stark enough, a leader of the synagogue bursts in on this confrontation with an amazing request: My daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her and she will live.
Where just before we saw Matthew immediately get up and follow, now it’s Jesus who immediately rose and followed him, with his disciples. His mission is mercy – Jesus’ way of costly love – and he takes it without hesitation. Had it been any of the Pharisees who asked Jesus for help, I’m sure he’d have gone with them too. But would a Pharisee have asked? So is an insider a prisoner, and an outsider free?
It’s not healthy people who need a doctor, but those who are sick. This is the chapter which ends with Jesus saying the harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few. On his way to the leader’s little girl, there’s another desperate need. A woman who’d suffered bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and, reaching out in faith, touched the fringe of his garment. Instantly, Jesus speaks the word of mercy, Take heart daughter; your faith has made you well. The ruler of the synagogue called his child daughter. With the same love, Jesus calls this woman his daughter.
Jesus continues on to the ruler’s house where the professional mourners and flute players are already busy with the ritual of lamentation. He clears the scene of these mourners and mockers who laugh at his apparent foolishness. Again, this is a gospel very much focussed on imagery of insiders and outsiders. What’s really striking is how far that imagery is taken – what’s done with it. Matthew, the outsider is called. But rather than call Matthew into an insider-space of boundaries and righteousness, Jesus opens his arms wider to include the space Matthew inhabits. And Matthew abandons a boundary post to follow Jesus. And just as we begin to lose a sense of what’s inside and what’s outside with this call, some guardians of the nation’s moral boundaries arrive with emergency event fencing.
We in the Church have always known that the Holy Spirit is most active on the boundaries – on the fringes of the Church. She pushes those boundaries out. And that should come as no surprise. We worship Jesus who took the boundaries of God’s love across the borders of the Holy Land, and he charged us, his followers to fulfil God’s promise to Abram and Sarai – to stretch out those boundaries of blessing to embrace every family of Earth.
How do we embrace like this – how do we trail wide the hem of Jesus’ garment for people to reach and touch, so they too can come to know themselves as Jesus’ daughters and sons – can come to discover their birthright? The gospel today challenges us to be that hem of his garment, trailing out, in reckless love for the sake of people whose lives are unravelling. Lord Jesus Christ, lover of all, trail wide the hem of your garment, bring healing, bring peace. Amen