Gentle Reader,
Today I share with you an sermon I wrote over a year ago for a class on evangelism. I am not the cold-call, go door-to-door type. I dislike when others do that to me, so I won’t do that to others (unless the Holy Spirit specifically directs me to). For me, evangelism is relational, personal. I just don’t have the gift or the drive to go out and speak to complete strangers. I’m glad that there are people in the Church who do so, because I am sure that God uses them.
So, this was a challenging assignment. My preaching tends to be more discipleship and teaching oriented. Words aimed at an audience that is already somewhere on the road of faith. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but it is good to step outside the box. To remember that not everyone present knows who Jesus is. But Jesus knows them, and wants to be in relationship with them.
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Before we go any further, let’s read our text for today. We have four stories running, intersecting, in these verses, and I want us to have a wide view of all of them together. This may seem chaotic. The way these four stories play out the page in order to tell one unified story may not make sense at first – but hang in there. We will discover the thread that runs through them all.
Hear the word of the Lord.
As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax-collection station, 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 Jesus 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 not come to call the righteous but sinners.”
While he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader 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 a flow of blood for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, for she was saying 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 the woman was made well from that moment. 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 through all of that district.
– Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26 (NRSV)
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Keep what you’ve heard at the front of your mind. Jesus. Matthew. A dinner party. The Pharisees. A synagogue leader. A bleeding woman. A little girl. You may not know what a Pharisee is or why they seem so ticked off at Jesus; we’ll get there. You may not know what a synagogue leader is; we’ll get there. You may be wondering why it was such a big deal for this woman to touch Jesus; we’ll get there. We’ll get there with all of it.
What’s important for you right now, as you begin to try to patch this thing together, is to pick up on those three words: we’ll get there.
And we’ll get there, because you see, every story is a journey. It’s got a starting point, some movement along the way, and that movement leads you to a destination. We are here right now, but we’ll get there in the end.
Stories have inner maps to them, not always readily visible to us, but there nonetheless. Even the most out there, avant-garde author who writes the wildest things they can think of uses the beginning, middle, and end structure. There’s protagonists, antagonists, heroes, villains. When you pick up a book, or read an article on social media, or tune into your favorite content creator’s livestream, that structure is there. We can play with it – turn it sideways, throw in some loopdy-loos and some surprises, and do our best to obscure the structure. But we can never get rid of it. Because we are storytelling people, in every time and every place and every culture, and we always begin with some version of “once upon a time” and we’re always looking to conclude with some version of somebody “lived happily ever after.” This is just how we’re wired.
So how do these four stories fit into that structure? How can we begin to discern their internal map?
First of all, we’ve got to get some context.
To do that, we need to zoom way out. We’ve picked out four stories that are placed in the middle of a bigger story, that’s part of an even larger story. To understand the four stories, we need to understand what’s going on around them. Nothing in the Bible takes place in isolation from the rest of the Bible. Now don’t worry – I am not about to preach for five straight days and try to force you to become an expert on this. We’re just going to get some basics.
So, Matthew. That’s what this book is named, right?
What is Matthew?
Matthew is a gospel, and gospel is a word that means good tidings or good news. There are four of these “good news” books in the New Testament, which is the second part of the Bible, where we’re at today. These good news books are biographies of a person named Jesus, but the authors of these biographies do not have the same agendas/approach as a modern biographer does. They are not as concerned with strict chronology and setting as we are. As such, each of these good news books has a little different flavor to it. The differences don’t mean the authors are lying. Think of it in terms of two people observing the same event, but they’re standing on opposite sides of the street. When they tell the story of the event, they will tell the same story, but based on their different vantage points they will emphasize different things.
We don’t know exactly who wrote this good news book that we’re in today. Longstanding tradition says that Matthew – the Matthew we met a few minutes ago, the tax collector – is the author. This same longstanding tradition tells us that Matthew wrote his good news book to and for people who needed to understand how Jesus was the endpoint, the destination, of their story. People who needed to see that Jesus was the hero of the tale all along.
So let’s break this down.
We first meet Matthew, the tax collector. This is not a good dude. He’s working for the bloated federal government, taking money (and then some) from people who really don’t have any to spare. See, he’s probably engaged in what was a really common practice of overcharging people so he can skim some off the top for himself. Not a well-liked guy. So for Jesus, who at this point in this good news book has an established reputation of being a teacher, and a healer, to ask Matthew to come and be part of his crew…well that makes no sense.
Makes even less sense that Matthew gets up and does it. Jesus doesn’t have money. He doesn’t have position. He doesn’t have power. But Matthew gets up, leaves his cushy office job at which he is probably making bank, and joins Jesus. A poor, wandering rabbi. A teacher with no home to call His own.
Why?
Why does Matthew do that?
The Pharisees, who meet next, are asking the same question. The text doesn’t spell it out explicitly, but the dinner Jesus goes to, at which He’s hanging out with a bunch of people that the wider society doesn’t really like, is likely at Matthew’s house. He’s honoring Jesus the best way he knows how. There is something in this singular encounter with Jesus – these two words, “follow Me,” – that have hooked Matthew. And for him to invite a bunch of people over, people like him, well that means he wants them to have this encounter, too. He doesn’t have all the details. He doesn’t know exactly how his life is about to change. But he knows it’s going to be different, and that difference is worthwhile enough for him to risk it. And he wants people like him, the cheats and thieves and government collaborators, to have the opportunity to take this risk too.
The Pharisees don’t get it. Now, I want to slow down a little bit here. When you read other parts of the good news books, you’ll find that the Pharisees are often the bad guys. The villains. And that’s not a totally undeserved reputation. They try to trip Jesus up. They try to catch Him doing or saying the wrong things. But here’s where the Pharisees are often misunderstood. They care about God. They love God. They want to do the right thing in order to be in relationship with God because their people suffered greatly in their past by ignoring God and what God wanted of them. So they’re not antagonizing Jesus just for the sake of being jerks or holding onto power; they really didn’t occupy positions of power for the most part. They thought Jesus was leading people the wrong way.
So that’s why they don’t understand. Read this as misdirected passion here. How can this guy, this Jesus, who is the great teacher and healer, be hanging out with these awful people? These people who don’t do the right things, who don’t follow the rules?
And Jesus basically says, “Because I have to. Because that’s what I came to do.”
God desires to save these people.
And what the Pharisees don’t see in that moment, is that they are just like the ones with whom Jesus is eating. Jesus quotes from one of their ancient prophets, from Hosea 6:6 – “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” In this quote Jesus tells them that they’ve lost the plot for focusing too narrowly on who should be defined as a good guy or a bad guy. They’ve forgotten that there is one hero, and that that hero desires to save them all.
And then the scene shifts. Our reading today skipped over verses 14-17, which is a discussion about fasting between Jesus and some friends of His cousin John the Baptist. Maybe this takes place hours after the dinner, or days. We don’t really know. But while they’re having this discussion, as Jesus is making the point that He’s here to do a new thing – to embrace those on the outside, to bring healing, to speak truth – a distraught father interrupts. His daughter is dead. But he knows, oh he knows, that if Jesus will just come with him, and lay His hand on her, she’ll live again.
Do you begin to see the movement?
Jesus, the initiator and hero, sees beyond what others see of Matthew, and invites him to join Jesus’ story. Jesus sees beyond what others see of Matthew’s compatriots, and invites them to join in. Jesus sees beyond what others see of the Pharisees, and invites them to join in.
Now – this father. This father is daring to hope, to see beyond what others see of Jesus. He dares to say of his daughter who is dead, “she will live.” She will live when Jesus enters into her story.
And Jesus does. He follows this father.
And then a woman touches His coat.
A woman who has been bleeding, having her period, for twelve straight years. In her world, that means nobody will touch her, because if they do, they are contaminated by her. She is unclean. She’s an outcast, living on the fringes and in the shadows of society. She’s got nothing left to lose. She must’ve heard something of Jesus, because she believes that just touching His coat will make her well. She believes that there is something completely unique about Jesus.
Jesus is on His way to do something else. He could have been annoyed by her, or yelled at her. Instead He turns, He sees her, just as He sees Matthew and sees the Pharisees, and says, “Your faith has made you well.” The gamble, the risk, has paid off.
The woman is left to reflect as Jesus enters the home of our final character: the little girl who had died. Seemingly without compassion, Jesus tells everyone to calm down. She’s not dead. She’s sleeping. They think He’s lost His mind. But Jesus goes and sits beside her on her bed, and takes her hand. He sees her. She gets up. She’s fine.
Four stories of injustice and suffering. Some of the characters, they bring it on themselves. Others, don’t. Some live in the center of society, helping to construct its parameters. Others live on the outside, just doing their best to survive. Why they each made the choices they did, and how they got to where they were, we don’t and can’t know that exactly. Because you see, as interesting as that information would be, these characters aren’t the main characters. They aren’t the heroes.
Jesus is.
These four stories are part of the story of Jesus.
The Jesus who, according to the introduction to John, one of the other good news books, is both completely God and completely Human. He “became flesh and lived among us” (John 1: 14a). Why?
Why would God do that?
Because whatever your concept is of God today, my guess is that you have some understanding of God being beyond you. Bigger than you. Different from you.
So why?
We can only answer that question by going back and briefly retracing our steps through the story. Matthew – exploiting his people for monetary gain. The Pharisees – trapping their people in long lists of rules out of fear. The distraught father – in agony over death. The bleeding woman – alone and lonely. The little girl – taken too soon.
Their world, like our world, is a place of injustice and suffering.
There’s a shorter word for that, a word that’s fallen out of fashion and favor.
Their world is a place marked by sin. Both the sin of individual choices and the sin found in oppressive structures and systems.
There’s no way for the characters in our story to fix that. There’s no way for us to fix that. Because I am sure they tried, and I know for a fact that we try. And while they, and us, are not completely incapable of doing some good things, we are incapable of defeating and dismantling that sin thing. No matter what we do. You can read the rest of the Bible, you can watch the news one evening, you can look in the mirror after you fight with someone you love – and you just know it. All our effort, no matter how well intentioned or well executed, cannot get to the bottom of this thing, this selfish divisiveness, that plagues us.
So what? What’re we supposed to do?
We just give up, like Matthew, and participate in the oppressive system?
We just fight on, like the Pharisees, and try to hedge ourselves in and keep others out with more rules?
We just lay down in the face of illness and sorrow and death, accepting that this is how it is?
If I had to guess, you don’t really like any of those answers. You find some logic in them, but you don’t like them. There has to be a better way. A better way to get there, to find resolution to our stories. Because there’s something in all of us that tends to rise up in the darkest part of the night when we’re all by ourselves, that just screams, “NO!” This cannot be it.
Matthew says that “no” by leaving his job to follow Jesus.
The Pharisees are invited by Jesus to rediscover their “no.”
The father, the bleeding woman, the little girl – “no, no, no!”
I, thousands of years after this story was written, screamed my own “no!” when the pain of anxiety and depression became too great a weight to bear and all I wanted was to close my eyes and never wake up again.
Enter Jesus.
The hero on the white horse wearing the shining armor.
Come to turn the tide of the story.
Completely God, completely Human, completely real.
This Jesus lived a life free of selfish divisiveness, of sin, that you and I never could. This Jesus then died a death He didn’t deserve, a seeming defeat, in order to conquer the power of sin, death, and evil – that you and I could be set free from that power. This Jesus then got up out of His grave three days later, an announcement to all the world that the job is done. The battle is won. The hero is victorious.
Jesus – who really lived, who really died, who really rose again, and who really will return.
Jesus – who did this for you, for me, for us together, for all of creation to be set to rights.
Jesus – who enters into our world and offers us a new pathway through it, just as He did for Matthew, the Pharisees, the father, the woman, the little girl. The pathway of love, and grace, and truth, and joy, and light, and peace. The pathway that has and leads to all the things we want. All the things that we have tried so hard to find elsewhere. We only find them in and with Jesus.
And I know – we don’t like exclusive claims. We want to say “you do you, I do me, all is good.” But I cannot stand up here today and tell you that’s the way to go. Because the only way we’ll get there, to the ending of the story that will bring us true and lasting purpose and peace and harmony and all of those things, is through Jesus. If you are in this place and you don’t know Jesus, you have not placed your trust in the life He really lived, the death He really died, His resurrection that really happened, and the fact of His eventual return to this earth – today’s as good as any to start that new chapter of your story.
If you have not looked at yourself and said, “I can’t make this right no matter how hard I try…I’ve gotta have help” – today’s as good as any.
Because you see, even though the claim is exclusive – that Jesus is the only way to be made right with God, as we have seen in our four stories today – it’s also radically inclusive. Anyone can join in with Jesus. A tax collector. A highly religious person who’s missed the point. A grieving parent. A woman in the shadows. Even a dead little girl. Those characters run the spectrum there, and all were embraced by Jesus. There’s just no way that you fall outside of that. If you in sincere honesty, talk to God right now – which is all prayer is, just having a conversation with God – no matter how wobbly and weird your words are, if you say some version of, “Jesus, I believe You’re my only way to get there” then that starts your new chapter. That places your story inside the larger story, in which the hero has come to rescue you.
Our time is winding down, but I don’t want to leave you here. There is so much more to joining in with Jesus than having one conversation with Him and going about your day. Please – talk to me, talk to one of my friends here that you see hanging out up front, talk to the friend you came with, heck talk to a random person in this place, I don’t care – talk to someone. And those of you are here all the time, you make yourself available. Because we are a people who choose to commit ourselves to being part of each other’s stories, as we are part of Jesus’ story. No one in this place has to or needs to or should go it alone. So as those of you who’ve been on the journey with Jesus for some time talk to anyone in this place who has just joined in, embrace them like Jesus embraces you.
GRACE AND PEACE ALONG THE WAY,
MARIE
Image Courtesy of Artem Kovalev