June 11, 2023 St. Andrew Church Rev. Anne McAnelly
First Lesson: Hosea 5:15-6:6
15 I will return again to my place until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face. In their distress they will beg my favor:
“Come, let us return to the Lord; for it is he who has torn, and he will heal us; he has struck down, and he will bind us up. 2 After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him. 3 Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord; his appearing is as sure as the dawn; he will come to us like the showers, like the spring rains that water the earth.” 4 What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes away early. 5 Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets, I have killed them by the words of my mouth, and my judgment goes forth as the light. 6 For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
Second Lesson: Matthew 9:9-13
9 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. 10 And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 12 But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 13 Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”
Before I read our gospel lesson, I need to set the stage. Jesus just healed the paralytic saying, “your sins are forgiven” (9:2). But when questioned by the scribes, Jesus asks, “Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven’ or ‘Stand up and walk?’ Healing and the forgiveness of sins. The story that follows our lesson, which I chose not to read, is the healing of both Jairus’s daughter and the hemorrhaging woman. We know these stories. We trust that Jesus can heal people. But what captured my attention are the four verses in between about calling, sinning, and learning. Read Nadia Bolz Weber is an Evangelical Lutheran pastor in Denver who started her own church called House for All Saints and Sinners. She has a powerful story as a recovering alcoholic and drug abuser, she is covered in tattoos depicting the gospel, and worked as a stand-up comedian. I had seen glimpses of her for years but was a bit put off by her tattoos. But Diana Butler Bass, one of my favorite theologians, posted one of her sermons on her weekly offering. So I dove in. Bolz Weber tells a moving story about starting her church as a young female pastor and noticing those who came to her church. You see there is a theory that pastor attract people like themselves to their congregation. But when she looked out, she saw a bunch of people who were socially awkward. At first this confused her. Why am I not attracting funny and tattooed people? Instead, she was attracting those who like her were bullied, different, and ate their lunch all alone in middle school. They resonated with her woundedness, her vulnerability, and her way of looking for grace, mercy and compassion like a sonar that blips every time she sees it. She spoke to people who were marginalized, LGBTQ persons, people with addictions, people that just did not fit in.
She tells a story about looking at farmland from the sky and seeing all these circles. She thought how funny it was to plant crops in circles within plots that are truly squares. But then she discovered center point irrigation, a revolution in agriculture. This is where the watering system moved in an arch, a circle, only reaching the plants closest to the center. The outside plants died from lack of water. The teachings of the church she described as a center point irrigation, fine for those planted in the center, but a lot of people are planted in the comers. The church is supporting and nurturing those who fit in quite well, but leaving those in the comers, on the margins, without life giving water. (Can you hear Jesus talking about living water and the invitations he made to so many marginalized people; the ones in the corners without life-giving water?) Nadia Bolz Weber ministers to those in the comers. Leaming about Bolz Weber reminded me how I would like to have a more compelling faith story. The power of the gospel is displayed in the before I was, fill in the blank, got in trouble with the law, hurt people while drinking, was abusive to my family, but since knowing Jesus my life is totally different. But I was born and raised within that central irrigation system of the church, without such an account. Matthew on the other hand does have a powerful conversion story. He was a tax collector. Tax collectors were the stereotype of sinners. Known for cheating people in the nonnal course of business, they had a wicked reputation. In the sermon on the Mount Jesus teaches to love your enemies yet Jesus calls out tax collectors. “For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even tax collectors do the same? (5:46). Ouch! Then it is tax collectors and sinner who eat with Jesus and tax collectors and sinners that irk the Pharisees just by association. I think the Pharisees like the central irrigation system, and really don’t care too much about those in the comers. But Jesus is all about the people in the comers, on the margins.
Matthew tells of his call, his repentance from his corrupt profession to the following Jesus. Mark’s gospel doesn’t speak of Matthew, but rather Levi. This is a personal telling of his transformation. I used to cheat people, now I follow Jesus. Jesus shows no judgement or criticism for Matthew and his sinning friends. Jesus not once reproves sinners, in this gospel. He does not criticize them. He does not demand their repentance. He simply eats and drinks with them. Jesus receives their hospitality and breaks bread with them. The Pharisees however, perceive “tax collectors and sinners” as natural companions, and Jesus himself compares them not to those who are well but to those who are sick” (Working Preacher, Greg Carey).
When do you go to the doctor? When you are well or when something hurts or troubles you? We seek out medical help when we are sick. Yet I never liked that line, “Those who sin are sick.” It implies our sins make us sick. Yet Jesus often forgives someone while healing them. It is true that sin separates us from God, and we need God’s forgiveness. One commentator writes, “Forgiveness is our greatest need. Disease, depression, sorrow, poverty, injustice, and all other ills are tme needs; ultimately, however, all these ills exist because sin has corrupted creation. Not all of our problems are caused by our specific sins, but all of them are due to the fact that we live in a fallen world and suffer from sin’s corruption” (https://www.ligonier.org/leam/devotionals/ forgiveness-and-healing). Healing and forgiveness go hand in hand. So, it is good when we can see, admit our sinfulness. When we repent and turn towards God and away from our egos. Then not only are we forgiven, we are also made well, made whole.
Claim your own call story, the time Jesus became real to you and you invited him into your heart and home.
Acknowledge that you are a sinner so that you can be forgiven and healed.
Finally learn what it means to “desire mercy, not sacrifice” (13). Jesus in the context of forgiveness and healing reminds us it is in relationship, not laws, that we experience the fullness of God’s grace. Hosea expressed God’s similar expectation, “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offering” (6:6). Following all the rules, doing what is expected, coming to church every Sunday is not how we know the love of God, rather it is our relationship with God through Christ that provides this mercy, this love. The contemporary translation the Message says it this way, “Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? Go figure out what this Scripture means: ‘I’m after mercy, not religion.’ I’m here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders” (12-13). Jesus does not want us to stay within the center point irrigation system of the church and pat ourselves on the back for all we do. Be religious. Rather God wants us to go out into the margins, the corners where people might not know God’s love and to share the mercy and grace we have received. We have repented and returned to the Lord and we are to help others find their way, so that on the third day God will raise us up so that we can live before God.
The se1mon I read of Holz Weber was an Easter sermon focusing on the scars we have, the visible and the emotional ones. She reminds us that Jesus was known by the scars on his hands and side, encouraging us to own our scars and not hide them away. She writes, “He knew that he would be known by his wounds. And isn’t that true for us as well? We can only really know and be known when we show our scars” (Resurrection is Messy). We can only be known when we show our scars, own our sins, be honest about our failings and then receive grace. The grace of healing and forgiveness. As sinner we long for healing and forgiveness. Bolz Weber ends her sermons with:
“What if the most reliable way to know God is to look at how God chose to reveal God’s self in Jesus, even in Jesus’ wounds.
Because that changes everything. In Jesus we see a God who would rather die than be in the sin accounting business anymore. A God who does not lift a finger to condemn those who crucified him, but went to the depths of Hell rather than be separated even from his betrayers. A God unafraid to get his hands dirty for the ones he loves. This is the God who raised Jesus from the grave-still wounded and who chose a woman with a past to tell everyone else about it. .. Our scars and our sorrow will always be part of our story but they will never be the conclusion of our story. Which means that even when you feel trapped in your pain, trapped in your past, trapped in your own story like it is itself a tomb, know this – that there is no stone that God cannot roll away. (Nadia Bolz-Weber, The Resurrection is Messy, The Cottage June 6, 2023) Amen!
