June 8, 2008

Scripture:         Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

Sermon:           “You Won’t Believe This”

            Let’s read a few stories of the Lord together this morning.  I want to invite you to read with me from Matthew’s gospel.  In the 9^th chapter there are a couple of stories there in verses 9 through 13 and then 18 through 26.  If you’re using the pew Bible, that’s on page 11 of the New Testament. 

We’ll skip over the part about John the Baptist for now.  What we’ll focus on is Jesus’ summoning of Matthew to be his disciple.  Matthew was one of those folks known to others as a tax collector.  And then we’ll put that next to stories of Jesus healing a young girl and a desperate woman.

            This is the Word of the Lord…

            As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.”  And he got up and followed him.

            And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples.  When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”  But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.  Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”

            While he was saying these things to them, suddenly and leader of the synagogue came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.”  And Jesus got up and followed him, with his disciples.  Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, for she said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.”  Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.”  And instantly the woman was made well.  When Jesus came to the leader’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, he said, “Go away; for the girl is not dead but sleeping.”  And they laughed at him.  But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up.  And the report of this spread throughout that district.

            Tax collector.  How do you end up with that job?  Tax collector.  That’s a bad job ‘ole Matthew’s got for himself.

            You ever end up like that?  Workin’ for the man, just earnin’ a paycheck, doin’ what nobody else wants to do.  Bad jobs.  I’ve had a few of those myself.  My sister and I glazed hams for three weeks straight at one of those honey covered ham places.  Right there at Christmas time, too, when everybody wants a holiday ham, you know.

            And I collected tolls at a hospital parking lot for a while.  That’s a thankless thing to do.  Some folks are downright mean about paying to park their car.  And I don’t blame them one bit.  You have to pay who knows how much at the doctor and then fork over a couple of measly dollars on the way out.  Seems like the doctor could afford your parking.  That’s a bad job.  And I knew folks who did it for years.

            You read the gospels and get to the words “tax collector” and you’ve got what amounts to the worst job of the day.  That’s the man who’s stopping folks on their way in and out of one place or another and making sure that they’ve paid their dues to the powers that be.  And you know how we all feel about taxes.  That’s a bad job.  Matthew’s a tax collector.

            Now what’s happened to this man?  Dead end job.  Dead end life.  How’d he end up where he was?  I mean, how does anybody get there?  You wake up each day to go and do that thing that nobody respects.  You probably thought you’d do it for a while until something better came along.  But better never came along.  That’s how you wind up there.  Better never came along, I guess.  And so this guy’s just kind of given up.  He’s collecting taxes.  Been doing it for years.  Probably do it until, well, you know.

            And Matthew’s working for a bad man.  Everybody knows it.  Herod Antipas.  Matthew’s the guy that makes sure ‘ole Herod Antipas takes his cut on things and lives off in his palace on the hill.  This bad job that Matthew’s working is just a cog in the machine of how the rich get richer and the rest of us, you know.

            Matthew’s working for the man who decided one day to have John the Baptist murdered as a kind of party trick.  Herod Antipas.  I wonder how Matthew got so jaded.  He’s collecting taxes for this thug of a local ruler.  Probably hasn’t made a friend in years for what he’s been doing.  And he just keeps getting up every day and going to that same rotten, thankless job.  This is a man who’s given up, isn’t it?  How else do you end up there?  Matthew’s given up.  Nothing’s ever gonna’ change.  He’s given up.

            I guess that’s why the man just jumped to his feet and ran after Jesus as soon as those words were spoken.  “Follow me.”  There’s something real about this man and Matthew’s been on the dark side of real for so long he had to get up and go.  He’s about given up on ever seeing a ray of hope that when it does come, well, Jesus didn’t have to say it twice.

            Do you think that most of these folks, tax collectors and sinners, you know, have really just given up?  You have to, I think.  You have to give up in order to keep on doing the kind of stuff these folks did every day.  Dead end jobs.  Dead end lives.  Tax collectors.  Sex workers.  All kinds of stuff.  You’ve got to give up on life ever getting’ any different to keep on with that.

            Well, Matthew’s the kind of guy that Jesus seems to have a thing for.  The lost.  The broken.  The despised.  The downtrodden.  The guilty.  And not everybody appreciates that.  Folks may think you’re a nice guy if you help out a person every now and again.  But, eventually, you know, it’s gonna sully your reputation to be sittin’ around the house with more questionable company.  Why do you like these people so much?  Seems to imply that you might really just be one of them, you know.  You’re known by the company that you keep, after all.

            Now, some folks were saying that Jesus was a holy man.  But, how can you get the holy all mixed up with the unholy?  The righteous with the sinners?  No.  That’s not how it’s supposed to be.  We good church folks know better than that.  And good religious folks in Galilee knew better than that.  Don’t say that Jesus knows God.  Don’t say that.  Don’t say that this man knows God and then spends so much time around tax collectors and sinners and such.

            So, he says, “nobody goes to see the doctor when everything’s okay.  They only go when they’re sick.”  And how are good religious folks gonna argue with that?  You’re not gonna believe this, but this man who knows God is out there looking, searching, calling out to folks who just seem so far away from anything holy.  Maybe that’s you.  Is all of that gonna sully this man’s reputation, too?

            Well, you’ve got folks talking behind his back for all of this mingling of the holy with the unholy.  And that must have been quite a day.  Not everyone finds this offensive.  It’s not so offensive when you’re the one Jesus might come to.  I mean he knows God.  And there’s a lot of folks who want to know God like that.

            He no more got these words out of his mouth, the ones about sick people and doctors, you know, and the sick began knocking on the door.  Didn’t they?  While he was saying these things, it was suddenly.  Suddenly a leader of the synagogue a couple of miles away came into the house where all these sinners and righteous folks were eating together.  It must have looked like a place where God would be, at least to some.  Some people recognize the presence of God because it’s in the very midst of such places.  And the man was just broken and beside himself.  That’s when you want to be with somebody who knows God.  His daughter had just died.

            So, Jesus got up from the table and started on his way to do something about it.

            And I’m telling you it was suddenly again.  Folks are just seeing that God is with this man.  Suddenly a woman who’d been in bad shape for a long time, twelve years, ran up after him.  She’d been bleeding for all that time.  “Good Lord, if I could only touch a thread hanging down from his clothes I’d somehow be touching God.”  That’s what she thought.  And she was right.  This man knew God.

            You might not believe this, but she didn’t have to be running after Jesus.  She didn’t have to be running after God.  God was already running after her and everybody else who was missing.  Jesus was on his way to find another one at that very moment.

            Have you ever had somebody running after you like that?

            Julie’s sister, her name’s Joy, was in all kinds of trouble a couple of years ago.  Her appendix wasn’t just infected, it had reached this terrible condition.  Sometimes it’ll get that way where the infection contains itself and grows, threatening to take the whole body with it when it can’t hold itself any longer.  And Joy’s not even 30 years old, her whole life ahead of her.

            And she was in the hospital where they’re trying to get things under control.  Julie was there with her.  And their parents are there.  She’s hooked up to all kinds of monitors and life support.  And suddenly everything starts beeping and the screens don’t look like they’re supposed to.  She was in real trouble.

            Now John is a big man.  I think he knows God, too.  That’s Julie’s father.  And he’s usually reserved and at peace and carrying around a hot cup of coffee.  You’d swear that he knows God.  Those machines started yelling out their warning signs and John was on his feet and running full bore down the hall of the hospital.  He was yelling out “Code!  Code!  Code” as if to say, “you’ve gotta come down here and help my daughter!”

            Joy’s just fine, by the way.

            But, I get the sense that God’s just always running after us like that.  Like Jesus.  Running after us.  Trying to get to us in time.  Running after us.

            I think we’re under the impression that it’s us that’s doing all the running.  But, what if it’s God that’s running towards us all the time with all of the intensity and desperation of a father trying to save his daughter’s life?  Would you believe that?

            Maybe that’s why folks were laughing at Jesus.  You know he got to where that poor little girl had died and people were laughing at him for saying, in effect, “everything’s gonna be alright.  God’s here in the midst of this and everything’s gonna be alright.”  They laughed at him.

            Maybe that’s why folks were sneering at Jesus.  He’s at the table with tax collectors and sinners, you know, and they’re talking behind his back.  He’s with those lost souls as if to say, “God’s here in the midst of this and everything’s gonna be alright.”

            You might not believe this, but God’s just running after us all the time.  If you believe in this man named Jesus, that’s just gotta to be true.  His whole life says, “God’s here in the midst of this and everything’s gonna be alright.”  His whole life says that.

            I imagine that’s why that man Paul once said, “God shows us how much He loves us in that while we were still sinners, you know, Christ died for us.”  He saw God running after him, too.  And when you see that, nothing’s ever the same.

Rev. David James Brown

Park Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)