Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26 (Year A June 5-11) contain the story of the calling of Matthew and the story of the daughter of the leader of the synagogue and her healing and the story of the woman suffering from a hemorrhage. In Jesus’ calling and healings, God’s reign is revealed as mercy that crosses human-made boundaries, inviting decisive discipleship and faith-filled trust—especially for those labeled outsiders. My purpose is to explain how each pericope functions in the Gospel tradition and to move readers toward self-examination and discipleship-shaped action. What I will keep referring to is the following. First, boundary crossing (social, religious, and purity rules) is a mark of the ministry of Jesus. Second, table fellowship is enacted theology, for meals symbolize inclusion, forgiveness, and community, thereby anticipating the reign of God. Third, in the second narrative we see that faith is active trust in present resources.
Matthew 9:9-13 (Mark 2:13-17, Luke 5:27-32) is a story about Jesus involving the call of Matthew and the matter of eating with sinners. The story shows how the disciple gathering by Jesus relates to the controversy he generated. Part of the ministry of Jesus in Galilee involves the testing and crossing of sacred boundaries in religion and culture. The friendship of Jesus with publicans and sinners was a feature of his ministry that attracted much criticism. Table fellowship is a sign of a broader and deeper fellowship. The emphasis of the story is on the saying.[1] The theme, based upon I Ki 19:19, is the sudden summons from business to following. It portrays an ideal scene with a focus on the Lord who calls.[2] The invitation of Jesus to the tax collector (Matthew, but Levi, son of Alphaeus in Mark 2:14) to follow him in words similar as that to Peter, Andrew, James and John, and the tax collector responding in similar fashion as those disciples, shows Jesus as in Galilee crossing cultural and religious boundaries. It is another way that Jesus proclaims forgiveness, everyone seeing that God accepted these people.[3] These first five responses to the invitation of Jesus to follow him represent an ideal response to this invitation. Jewish contemporaries viewed tax collectors as crooked and unclean since they were the intermediaries of the Roman taxation system. This tax collector profited from his association with the Roman occupiers of Galilee, but he was on the bottom of the system. He was an outsider to both the Roman and Jewish culture, and to this person, the invitation of Jesus comes. Such a story ought to always challenge us as readers to look for the boundaries made by human beings to see if Christ is calling us to cross that boundary. The willingness of this tax collector to leave the job security, home, and other possessions he had may stimulate us to reflect upon whether Christ is calling us to depart from our setting and embark upon something riskier but fulfilling of the vocation given us. These are not easy questions to raise or to answer, but such a story invites us to see and to hear our world and even our lives differently than we did before.
This invitation from Jesus leads to a pronouncement story concerning eating with sinners (verses 10-13=Mark 2:15-17, Luke 5:29-32). The gathering of disciples by Jesus in Galilee contributes to the controversy he will have with religious authorities. It may even seem like a mundane thing, yet the company Jesus keeps generates controversy. Part of the ministry of Jesus in Galilee involves testing and crossing sacred boundaries in religion and culture. The inclusion of tax collectors and sinners at the table shows their participation in eschatological salvation. This act is rescuing the lost. Those who accept the message are no longer outcasts. They share in the salvation of the rule of God. The presence of salvation also relates to the removal of the barrier that separates from God.[4] The Pharisees condemn social intercourse with tax collectors and sinners because something about it constituted a violation of ritual purity laws. Pharisees and the disciples gathering around Jesus shared common concerns. Both were reform movements within Judaism that challenged the temple system and the ways in which that system had served to confine the expression of their faith. As a domestically based tradition, Pharisaism was very much concerned with table practice, the serving of meals and the extension of hospitality. Mark Twain called it “being good in the worst sense of the word.” They were trying to revive religious observance by making some of the purity rules usually reserved only for the Temple be part of the daily home life of the people, especially regarding meals. Jesus did not seem to look down upon people because he knew they were struggling with something in their lives that brought them to this moment. Jesus is an example of accepting love. Yet, his table fellowship with tax collectors and sinners was part of what surrounded the ministry of Jesus with ambivalence that led to rejection and offense of his person.[5] The story arises out of the controversy Jesus had with the Judaism of his day and had continuing significance as the church in Israel continued in its struggle with Judaism. The matter of table fellowship remained a struggle within the early church, for even Cephas, who had come to Antioch, ate with Gentiles until representatives from James came into the city. He withdrew table fellowship out of his fear of those parts of the early church who thought that circumcision should still be an important Christian rite (Galatians 2:11-12). When Jesus overheard the criticism, he responded in verse 12 with a secular proverb: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Jesus has taken a secular wisdom and made it his own to defend his own way of ministry.[6] His saving work as physician is to come to the sick and make them strong and healthy, doing so by drawing them into the fellowship of the community he is forming. In this fellowship they see their plight and find in Jesus their savior. The strong or healthy can make nothing of this mission or passion of Jesus.[7] Sinners are like the sick, and the sick need a doctor.[8] Jesus uses the secular proverb to instruct the religious people of his day. There is a parallel in Gospel Fragment 1224 5:2, which says, “Those in good health don’t need a doctor.” Some scholars think it may reflect an earlier version of the saying than we find in Mark. Such a parable is an apt response to the criticism against an important feature of the ministry of Jesus.[9] Only by being willing to engage those who are considered impure can one reach them with a message of a better way of living. However, in verse 13 (unique to Matthew),[10] Jesus also invites them to learn the meaning of Hosea 6:6: ‘I desire mercy not sacrifice.’ He is placing covenant loyalty to other Jews above the need for ritual purity that was required for participation in Temple life. Jesus then admits that his mission is to call sinners rather than the righteous. His point is that Pharisees are already inside the circle of the covenant, but that he wants to broaden the circle or expand the table. The saying reflects solid early Christian teaching concerning the reason God sent Jesus. Yes, Jesus came to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10) and Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners (I Timothy 1:15). The contrast between "religious folks" and "sinners" reflects Jesus' social habits: he elects to associate with toll collectors and prostitutes, but not in a way that meant he refused to associate also with the socially respectable. Jesus wants his contemporaries to see that the reality of the rule of God is near and among them, especially in those religious authorities have labeled as outsiders. He wants his righteous contemporaries to see, know, and taste the goodness of the rule of God among us. Yet, Jesus gave offense due to those included in his table fellowship. The meals Jesus held or shared characterized his coming and the conduct of his disciples. When he accepted invitations from others, he made known his readiness to grant fellowship with him to those who issued the invitation. Others felt this to be especially scandalous in some cases because by his participation the table fellowship that he granted or accepted became a sign of the presence of the reign of God that he proclaimed and a sign of the acceptance of the other participants into the future community of salvation. The granting of acceptance of table fellowship by Jesus removed everything that separated people from God and his salvation. It meant the forgiveness of sins, so that table fellowship was a real symbol of fellowship with God and of participation in the future of the reign of God.[11]
Application
Few people make important life choices with any degree of decisiveness. We backtrack here and compromise there. We lack the courage to stand by our decisions. The result is that many of us remain in a continual state of anxiety. Thus, we may have the attitude of those without a plan for our lives. We have the day-to-day attitude of receiving whatever comes our way. We may have a fatalistic and defeatist attitude. We have no clearly defined opinion of the direction of our lives. We can then cling so strongly and stubbornly to an idea that we become fanatical. Our vacillation is a symptom that we can trace back to our fear of responsibility. Our indecision is the fruit.[12]
Is the risen Lord calling us to re-evaluate how we are spending our time, our lives, and our careers? Is he challenging us to break down and bust up the barrier between office and vocation, between what we do for a living and what we do to serve God? Is he inviting us to use our time, talents and treasures for more than business building and wealth creation? While we certainly can serve God wherever we are, we may be at a Matthew moment in our lives. We have been going along with what is familiar, but the risen Lord may call us to embark upon a path toward something greater. The greater issue is not so much career, but the call and challenge to become increasingly like Christ.
Where do you see yourself in this story?[13]
I expect that there are people who would identify most closely with Matthew. I am afraid I am not one of those people. I have been in the church since I was ten years old. Every moment since I have thought of myself as a Christian or at least as someone trying to be one. Mom and Pastor Joe were instrumental in those early years.
Therefore, I have never thought of myself as among the "lost." Of course, that means I have not thought too much about myself as among the "found." I suppose you must be lost to be found. I cannot point to anytime in my life when I in any real sense of the word was lost from Jesus and the church. I have always been here.
However, I am sure some people who read this story can identify with Matthew and the lost. When you sing “Amazing grace,” you really mean it when you sing, “I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see.”
I will be honest with you. Something about me envies those of you who were lost and have been found by Christ. I envy you because you have experienced one of the great miracles of the Christian faith, the miracle of the way that God graciously reaches out to seek and save the lost. When Jesus says that he has come to seek and to save the lost, he is exemplifying one of the great claims of the faith of Israel. That is what the Old Testament prophets saw themselves as doing. They were proclaiming God’s word to the lost, the lost sheep of the house of Israel, those within Israel who had forgotten, or perhaps had never heard, the truth that they are chosen by God, selected for a special mission in the world. Jesus is acting like one of those Old Testament prophets, proclaiming and enacting the kingdom of God for the lost.
I would like to say that I see myself with Jesus, inviting the lost to come to Christ. I am a preacher. I hope I have stood with Jesus to make that invitation more often than I think.
The challenging word for me is that I may be among the Pharisees more often than I care to admit. I do not need a physician to heal the sickness of my soul. God help me to see that I may well be more lost than I know. In fact, behind the words of Jesus is the implication that sometimes the sickest of the sick are those who do not know how sick they really are. Have I, who speak a great deal about grace, truly experienced it to the depths of my being? When I hear words like conversion, repentance, and change, have I experienced grace in my own life in a radical, utterly life-changing way?
In May of 1945, American troops entered the German town of Nordhausen. With them was a young soldier, Stephen Shields. There, they liberated the infamous concentration camp where thousands of Hungarian Jews had been murdered. At Nordhausen, there were no gas chambers. Rather, prisoners were simply worked to death in an ammunitions factory, starved and exhausted, and then their bodies were dumped in ovens and buried in mass graves.
Battle-hardened soldiers were stunned at what they saw in Nordhausen. A few hundred prisoners were all that remained and these were walking skeletons. The skeleton-like figures had not the strength even to speak. When the liberators opened the doors of the camp, the prisoners silently moved toward the doors and started walking toward the town of Nordhausen. “Hundreds, perhaps thousands of the former inmates were walking toward the town in a great mass, through the fields and on either side of the road. They were silent. The only sound they made was the rustling of their long, ragged coats against the grass of the fields. They looked like an army of scarecrows, a phalanx of living cadavers.”
Despite all the horrible scenes which were encountered at the camp, Shields says that the worst sight he saw was shortly thereafter. On the road between the concentration camp and the little village, two German teenagers encountered the ghostly prisoners, “They were about 15 years old, and each wore the brown uniform of the Hitler Youth. They were blond, pink-cheeked, and healthy looking. As they passed along our column, when they were opposite my jeep, they suddenly saw the vanguard of the starving Jews, who were coming up behind us and were now walking on the highway. The two boys stopped in their tracks, then, incredibly, they began to laugh. They nudged each other, pointed at the Jews, made comments, and continued to laugh uproariously. It was as if the devil himself were hurling a final insult at those tormented people. We were dumb- founded and enraged. In desperation I turned to the lieutenant. “Sir! What should we do? Shoot them?” Shields remembered that incident as the worst experience of all of the war, a vivid depiction of the banality of human evil.[14]
Matthew 9:18-26 (Mark 5:21-43, Luke 8:40-56) is a story of the healing of Jairus’ daughter and the healing of a woman.
This version of the story has a leader of the synagogue, a respected leader in the community, kneeling before Jesus, as any desperate father would, to say his daughter has died, but still asking Jesus to lay his hands on her, expressing his faith in the power of Jesus to make her live. Jesus and his disciples follow. On their way, a ritually unclean woman, according to Lev 15:25-27. She has been ill for twelve years. Emphasizing her shyness, she touches the tassels (tallith) of the robe of Jesus, depicting Jesus as a Jew faithful to the Torah. She is engaging in non-traditional behavior, for oral tradition forbade a woman from touching this part of the garment of a man who was not a member of her family. She takes this risk because she seeks healing. Jesus turns, sees her, and offers encouragement to her, addressing her as daughter, and letting her know that her faith has made her well, and instantly she was made well. The restorative words of healing and peace finalize her healing. Here is an example of the kind of faith true disciples must maintain. She confronts lingering illness and the personal struggles that entailed, which makes the positive thrust of the story, her faith in Jesus, even more remarkable. Her appearance, gender, and status make her a surprising model of faithfulness. In this context, faith is the conviction that resources are present to meet the needs of this moment. The story becomes personal for the follower of Jesus. Do I believe I have the resources I need to face the challenges in this moment of my life? We know today that faith has certain characteristics, regardless of the content. As the story of the synagogue leader continues, however, Jesus arrives at the home of the man, witnessing the beginning of a funeral, flute playing and public expressions of grief. The sting of death is reflected in such public acts, especially when a young person dies. Such public action allows those affected by the death of this person to say that this person mattered, that something precious and irreplaceable has ended. Funerals close a door that needs to close so that we can move on with the rest of our lives. However, Jesus tells those gathered to leave, for the girl is sleeping. Their response is to laugh, for we live in a world where death is final. However, when the crowd left, he went to the girl, took her by the hand, and the girl got up, with the report of this spreading throughout the district, emphasizing the wonder working power of Jesus that directs readers to the divine authority of Jesus. The faith expressed by two people of different social status and gender become a model for readers.
Application
This woman is desperate and lonely. Do we truly see the desperate and lonely people around us? Do we see ourselves as in that situation? We know that the living Christ responds with compassion because Jesus of Nazareth responded with compassion. The followers of Jesus today are the hands and feet of Jesus as they respond to the desperate and lonely today.
This man is religious, respectable, and educated. He might be like a middle-class person in our world. He is also a desperate father. Beyond the external appearances of security and means, he had an anxious inner life. We know the living Christ turns to similar such persons today with compassion because Jesus of Nazareth responded with compassion.
In the crisis of the moment, Jesus invites the leader of the synagogue to have faith. It was fashionable to emphasize, as James Fowler, Paul Tillich and others were doing, that faith in its formal structure is the same whether you believe in Buddha, Allah, Moses, Jesus, Big Ernie or even in yourself. Fair enough, but we must face the content question. Who really can supply the resources for which the human heart aches?
This story also highlights the great power Jesus had. He will face great adversity in the course of his life that will lead him to the cross. He will remain in relationship with his heavenly Father and he will remain faithful, living out his life in obedience to the call of God upon his life. Yet, his life also exhibits power. Most of us recognize that life is about facing adversity and overcoming obstacles. Yet, if you want to have a test of the character of a person, give the person power.[15] How will the person use the power they have? The police officer has power. The FBI and other law enforcement agencies have resources at their disposal to exert great power that can destroy the lives of innocent people. The movie “Richard Jewell” (2019) demonstrates such abuse in a powerful way. The politician and bureaucrat have the power of government behind them. Abuse of that power can bring great damage to citizens who have done nothing to deserve it. Jesus throughout the course of his life shows how to use the power one has to give direction to the lost, healing to the sick, forgiveness to the sinner, and liberation to those imprisoned.
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[7] Grundmann, TDNT, III, 399.
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[12] Johann Arnold, Seeking Peace (Pennsylvania: The Plough Publishing House, 1998), 140.
[13] Inspired by William Willimon, Pulpit Resource 1999
[14] American Heritage, December 1989, p. 83–93, “Triumph and Tragedy.” by Stephen Shields
[15] “Nearly all men can stand adversity,” said Abraham Lincoln, “but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”
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