Sermon for St. Matthew’s Day
September 22, 2019
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.”
Today we are
celebrating the fest day of Matthew our patron Saint. Yesterday was the actual feast day. We are allowed to transfer our patronal feast
to the nearest Sunday. The gospel lesson
today is the simple calling of Matthew to be one of Jesus disciples. It is a simple story. We are told that Jesus was walking along and
he saw Matthew sitting and collecting taxes – or tolls – in the tax booth. Jesus simply says to Matthew to “Follow me” and
remarkably he does.
I say
remarkably because being a tax collector was a lucrative position – even if it
didn’t earn you many friends. Tax
collectors acted as agents of the Roman occupation. Tax collectors had to collect a certain
amount of taxes, but they were also allowed to collect whatever they could get
and keep for themselves. Because they
were agents of Rome and able to demand whatever money they wanted the people
despised them.
After Jesus
offers the invitation to follow the scene shifts into Jesus having dinner with
Matthew and it says that “many tax collectors and sinners” where sitting at
table with Jesus. And the pharisee’s
wondered why this itinerate Rabbi would be eating with people who are political pariahs and would make him ritually unclean.
When they ask why Jesus eats with these people he says “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.”
The phrase “Those
who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” is well
known. And it has been used as one of
those verse to put people down. It
implies that the people Jesus are eating with are sick. It is easy for us to then come up with a
theology that says that people who do things that we judge as sinners are sick
people. And if sick then we need to heal
them. It is interesting that beyond this
phrase we do not hear Jesus telling those he is eating with to do anything
different. Instead we hear throughout the Gospel of Matthew – and the other
Gospels – that Jesus’ version of being a physician was to extravagantly heal
the sick with no required “payment” and to dine with those society saw as
outcasts.
Jesus told
the Pharisee’s to go and learn what “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” means. Jesus is asking them to remember the Prophet
Hosea who said “For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God
rather than burnt offerings.” Jesus is
reminding the pharisee’s that God is a God of love and a God of mercy. He is asking the religions leaders to look
into their hearts and see if they are practicing mercy.
Jesus is
enjoying his time eating and drinking with the Tax Collectors and sinners. He is befriending those that society casts
out. He is providing mercy by
companionship to those who have little.
He is not judging them as being outcasts and unclean as his observers
are. No. Jesus is having table
fellowship with the outcasts – an intimate action in first century Israel. Jesus is showing Mercy by welcoming “the
other” to table.
Michael Cranford
who manages the blog “One Steadfast” said “God desires mercy, not sacrifice.
.....it's not just telling us that God wants us to love people more than he
wants us to observe ritual holiness. It's telling us that his deepest desire,
the thing that is most important to him in all the world, is that people come
to him, experience his love, and find themselves washed clean. It's not only a
message to us, it is a message for us. God is a God of mercy. He doesn't want
perfection, he wants his children to experience his forgiveness and to draw
near.”[1]
We are
invited to hear the same offer that Jesus made to Matthew when he said, “Follow
me”. We are called to follow a Jesus who
offers healing and eats with those that society treats as unclean. That society sees as outcasts. We are called to learn what it means to
desire mercy. Not to judge others for
what we see as their lack of purity. Not
to judge others because they don’t make the proper sacrifices to God.
We are called
to find ways to offer mercy to God’s beloved children. The first way we do that is by recognizing
that all of God’s beloved children are indeed loved by God. All of God’s beloved children are invited to
the banquet. We show mercy when we offer
food to the hungry. We show mercy when
we offer clothing to those in need. We
show mercy when we eat at table with those that society judges as unworthy.
We also show
mercy when we are good stewards of this creation. We cannot advocate for policies that cause
environmental destruction and say we are being merciful. Climate change is threatening extinction to
more and more of creation. And while
some do not agree with the scientific assessment that climate change is
happening, we saw this past Friday that the youth in our world do understand
it.
I was struck
by the reports on the Climate Strike this past Friday. In Sacramento the leader
is a 13-year-old girl. She worked to
secure a permit at the capitol and expected a couple of hundred people I hear,
and more than a thousand young people and their parents showed up. Thousands gathered in protests in cities all
over the world. A movement that was
started by a young Swedish women Greta Thunberg who started protesting outside
of the Sweetish parliament in 2018. A
movement that has grown to a worldwide protest calling on our leaders to
acknowledge climate change and to do something to help.
According the
the Episcopal News Service The house of Bishop’s, meeting in Minneapolis took a
break from their meeting “for a moment of solidarity with the strikers. About
100 bishops gathered outside their hotel to pray and sing, having released a
statement in support of the strikes the day before, and Presiding Bishop
Michael Curry spoke about the Christian responsibility to protect the Earth.
“We are
bishops of The Episcopal Church. And we are leaders who share leadership with
other clergy and lay people in the church. But we are not here today as
leaders. We’re here as followers. We’re here to follow the youth mobilization
on climate change. We’re here to follow and support what they are doing to
stand in solidarity with them,” Curry said. “[Jesus] said, ‘God so loved the
world’ – not just part of the world, but the whole world. This is God’s world,
and we must care for it and take care of it and heal it and love it, just as
God loves it.”[2]
Cleaning up
environmental harm and preventing environmental destruction is showing mercy to
those who are growing up in our world today.
It is showing mercy to the creatures who are finding their habitats
increasingly hostile to their very survival.
The good news
is that we are being called to Follow Jesus.
We are called to open our hearts to those that society treats as “the
other”. We follow Jesus when we
advocate for policies that provide dignity to those who are in need. We do that when we advocate for simple human
necessities for those who find themselves homeless. Such necessities as bathrooms that are
accessible to people living outside – a concept that our government seems not
to understand. Yes public bathrooms are
abused by some folks but without them we find our rivers and environment
polluted by human waste.
This
congregation has a long history of being Followers of Jesus’ way of Love. You have a long history of welcoming all to
the table. You have a long history of
providing food to the hungry, clothing to those in need, and access to medical
screening. You all have a history of
following the call to mercy. A call that
is transforming this neighborhood by creating the Center of St. Matthew’s. A center that has this worshiping
congregation at the very heart. A
worshipping community that invites all of God’s beloved children to the
table. A community that uses its
resources to spread God’s love outside of these doors. We are following Jesus command to
follow. This very day We are striving to
love mercy.
Amen.
[1] https://www.onesteadfast.com/Blog/ScriptureStudy/I-Desire-Mercy-Not-Sacrifice-The-Limitless-Love-of-Our-God accessed September
21, 2019
