Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Last year, I went to my doctor for my annual physical. (Who he is, is irrelevant for this conversation;
please, don’t ask.) On his office door was a sign that said something like this: “If you have a fever, cough,
sore throat, body aches, or chills, please do not come into our office.
Instead, please return to your car and call 555-555-5555 for instructions.”
Having none of those symptoms, I went in. When I finally saw the doc, I said
something like, “I never expected to see a doctor’s office with a sign that
basically says, “'Don’t come into my office if you’re sick'.” He looked very sad
for a moment and then said, “I never thought I would have to tell people they
can only be seen if they are reasonably well.”
I’m not being critical of the
doctor. It was, please pardon a sad pun, a sign of the times. But that came to
mind again this week because Jesus’ words: “Those who are well have no need of
a physician, but those who are sick…I came not to call the righteous, but the
sinners” (9: 12b, 13b).
In order to expound this familiar
reading from Matthew 9, I want to take us first of all back into the Gospel of
Matthew to the Sermon on the Mount, to a saying of Jesus that we modern readers
actually might misunderstand, it's Matthew 6, verse 22. Jesus said this, “The eye
is the lamp of the body, so if your eye is healthy, then your whole body will
be full of light, but if your eye is bad, then your whole body will be full of
darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness?”
Now here's the problem. When
Jesus says that the eye is the lamp of the body, we automatically interpret the
metaphor in light of (pun intended) how we scientifically understand light to
work and our eyes to work. We know scientifically that light comes into our
eyes and it connects with some complicated neuro stuff and then it sends
messages to the brain and then we know stuff. In other words, we think of the
eyes as openings through which light and images comes into the body. Yeah, of
course. There's a sense in which that's correct. But there is actually an
abundance of evidence that Jesus words would not have been understood in that
way and that he did not intend them in that way. Rather, he meant something
quite the opposite. For the ancients, light comes out of the body, through the
eyes: just as a lamp shines out and enables light to fall on an object, here or
there, so it is with your eyes. The eye is the lamp of the body. The body goes
in whatever direction the lamp points. When the light chooses to rest on
something good, well, that tells you about what's in the body. The light comes
out and it chooses, for instance in Matthew 6, to serve God the Father and Him
only. On the other hand, if the eyes rest on something flawed or evil, in order
to serve that reality, then the light is really darkness. And that means that
there is darkness inside of the body where it’s really, really dark.
Now in Matthew 6, Jesus uses this
image to warn his disciples not to serve mammon. He says don't shine your lamp
on that. Don't let your eyes light on that, don't set your heart on that, for
no one can serve two masters. You cannot set your light on, you cannot serve, both
God and money. So, the point is this: where you look and what you see when you
look there says something very important about what's inside of you.
Now, why do I bring this up as a
way of introducing the reading from Matthew 9? Well, here's the reason: Matthew
writes that after Jesus called him to discipleship, “Behold, many tax
collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples.”
And then this: “When the Pharisees saw this...” When that lamp of the
Pharisees, when their eyes came to rest on what was going on in that house,
then they revealed the darkness. That was what was inside of them.
Now notice that they don't
actually criticize Jesus, at least explicitly, or confront Him, and they don't
say anything about Him particularly. They're actually willing to call him
teacher. But they're not happy about what's going what they see. There could be
any number of reasons why they're not happy, I suppose, but what they are
actually objecting to is the presence of those people, the tax gatherers and
the sinners with Jesus. Why are those people there with him. Whatever
objection they may have with Jesus is caused by the people that they see around
Him.
To be fair, there could be more
than one way to see those tax gatherers and sinners. It was actually true, objectively
true that these were people who typically had made really, really bad choices. We
often think of them as the Big Three: sinners, tax collectors and prostitutes.
But, the Pharisees could also be seeing them as those who didn't measure up to
the oral tradition of Moses and the Ten Commandments and the 600-plus rules and
standards that have been put into place over the centuries. That's probably
going on here as well. But the basic problem is that they're looking at the tax
collectors and the sinners and they see them as “them.” As in, “Not us, but
them.” They think, “We’re not like that. We study the word of God and we try to
do what's right and even though we fail (and yes, Pharisees did understand that
they failed), at least we are not like that.”
The Pharisees, it seems, were all about
comparison. Remember the parable in Luke when the Pharisee prayed, “I thank you
God that I am not like other men”? And
here they look at Jesus and they say to his disciples, “Why? Why them?”
Jesus is giving them a new way to
look at these troubled and broken people who are all around him. He says, in
fact, that they're sick. And if they're sick, and Jesus is spending time with
them, then that means that Jesus is a doctor. Yes, they're sinners. But after
all, as Jesus reveals, that's the only kind of people for whom he has come. “I
did not come for righteous people” (because there really is no such thing) but
sinners I came to call. Sinners. I came as a doctor for people who are sin-sick
just like these people.
Now, what I'd like you to do at
this moment is to use your imagination, your memory and perhaps also your own
pain. If it helps, close your eyes. And I'd like you to imagine a person, or
maybe a certain kind of person, that you are actually tempted to despise; or,
perhaps, someone that you are actively despising; or, someone for whom it would
be really easy to begin despising. Imagine a person, someone on whom you shine
the lamp of your eyes and think, “Oh God, I thank you that I'm not like that.”
Now it might be someone out in society, it might be someone that you read about
on-line. It could some sort of a radical, non Christian, evil sort of person,
or it could be someone in your family, place of business, or even our
congregation. This is someone of whom you think so little that it's actually difficult
for you to talk about them in a civil sort of way. If your pulse has upticked a
few beats, if you feel some tension in your arms or neck, of you have had to
take an extra breath, you’ve got the idea.
And now I'd like you to imagine
that person sitting with Matthew and reclining at table with Jesus.
Because people who are well don't
need a physician. It's sort of common sense, right, that people who are sick need
a doctor?
Now, I want you to imagine Jesus
reaching out in love to whomever it is that you're imagining. But not just him
or her, but to lots of those kinds of people. Because Jesus does want to love
them and forgive them and yes, to change them, although perhaps not in all of
the ways that we think He should. You see all those people that you're thinking
of? All those sinners - and they are that, they are sinners - all those people
and all of us, we're just sick people who need a doctor.
The God of Israel, the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit, that one true God desires mercy for all - even His
enemies. Even though He knows that many will spurn His mercy and turn away
forever from it. Even when they crucified Him, even when they mocked Him, even
when they tried to seal the tomb and make Him go away, even after they spread
the lie that the body had been stolen, even then - Jesus desires mercy for
everyone. For “them,” and for you. And so Jesus became God's mercy for all. And
Jesus called people like Matthew, people like “them,” to follow Him and to be His.
Do you desire a cure for the us
vs them mentality? Change the question. Ask these two questions. First: Who am
I? Who am I, other than someone to whom mercy has come and someone with whom
mercy is having its way.” Then, second,
“Who are you, other than someone to whom mercy has come and with whom mercy is
having its way.” When you get rid of “us” and “them” and simply stand under the
cross of Jesus, the name is changed to simply “Mercied.”
And if you want know what mercy
is, think of it like light. It's like light that can fill the whole body. And then
the light fills the body, and it becomes gleaming and shining and full of
light. And then when I look at others who could easily be “them,” and the light
of the mercy that fills every nook and cranny of our being, then it's hard to
have “them.” There's only mercy. And there's wonder that at the table there is
a place for someone, not like “them” but for sinners like you.
Jesus told the Pharisees, go and
study Hosea. That’s where we read this morning, God desires mercy, not
sacrifice. So, to you, go and study the Bible. You need Scripture to form you. Grow
in mercy. Let there be no “them.” Let there be only sick people for whom the
physician has come. Let there be no “them.” Only troubled, broken, outcast
people to whom Jesus had mercy and said, “Follow me.” In the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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