Hosea 5.15-6.6; Matthew 9.9-13, 18-26
“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” Yet did you count needs for a physician, in today’s gospel, the number of healings? There are three. Two are obvious: the daughter of a synagogue leader dies, mourners gather, Jesus restores her to life; a woman suffering from chronic bleeding sees an opportunity for healing, touches Jesus’ cloak, and is made well.
As for the third healing? It’s not as obvious but it is just as real. “As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at a tax booth; and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he got up and followed.” Now that may not strike you as a healing story. It’s certainly different from the other two; it hardly fits the medical definition of healing. But when Jesus responds to the religiously serious people who are criticizing him for being seen in public with the wrong sort of people—of having supper with tax collectors and sinners—he makes clear that this is a healing, too. “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.”
To say that Matthew needed a physician is an understatement. Vincent Taylor, in his writings on the Gospel of Mark, says, “Tax collectors were universally despised for their [greed] and low morals.” They were so despised that they were classified together with robbers and murderers and excommunicated from worship.
At the time, Judea was under the military occupation of the Roman Empire. Tax collectors were Judean citizens who bid to get a franchise from the empire to collect taxes against their own people. To make a living, they set a mark-up between what they were supposed to charge and what they actually managed to get out of you, skimming the extra off the top for themselves. If, for example, you had six geese and were supposed to give two as an in-kind payment, a tax collector like Matthew took three and kept one for himself; if you had a flock of sheep, he took half, gave to Caesar what was Caesar’s, and kept the rest for himself; if you had no sheep, he took a child, your child, and had that child sold into slavery to pay your debt to the emperor while keeping some proceeds for himself.
And to do this work, tax collectors needed the help of accomplices, henchmen. It’s easy to picture Matthew, in his tax booth at the corner of Broadway and Main, with a militia of armed guards standing next to him. What would you think of someone who worked for the government and took that job not to be a public servant but to be self-serving?
As far as the people of the day were concerned, tax collectors were to be treated like dead bodies or human bleeding: all three were considered infectious, to be avoided. To look Matthew in the eye meant risking impurity, becoming unclean yourself. Yet Jesus does that very thing and says, “Follow me.”
Here is the astonishing depth of Jesus’ power to heal. Throughout the gospels, Jesus breaks down barriers that divide people one from another and celebrates God’s kingdom with all the wrong people. What we see in Jesus’ power to heal is that nothing unclean in Matthew or about Matthew affects Jesus or makes him unclean. Instead, the opposite happens. What’s in Jesus affects Matthew, flows from Jesus to make Matthew clean and heal him. Like the woman suffering from chronic bleeding, Matthew was healed. Like the young girl who died, Matthew was restored to life.
Now, as we heard in the gospel, the crowds are skeptical that these healings are a sign that the Kingdom of Heaven had come near, not least because Jesus was welcoming a tax collector. You would likely share that same skepticism if you heard Jesus say, “Follow me,” to the modern version of tax collectors and their ‘associates.’ Only what did Jesus say about the purpose of his life? ‘Who needs a doctor: sick people or the well? It is the very people you consider sick—even rightfully so—that need the healing balm of my grace.’ “I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Consider, then, what this means for us in the church as we—guided by the Spirit and as a living sign of God’s kingdom come on earth—make our Lord’s healing and mercy the guiding principle and purpose of our life. How might we as the Body of Christ in the world show others what Jesus shows the woman, the girl, and the tax collector: that they are human beings created in God’s image and that the healing grace of Jesus is for them. We, as Jesus’ followers, are called to look around and discover all the places where people are dehumanized—by families or lack of them, by hatred received or hatred passed on, by bitterness, anger, or distrust—and are called to reach out and show them a better way, the healing mercy of God in Jesus Christ.
You can probably sense that this will be hard work. It is hard work. And it is holy work. It will be especially hard work, and holy, for churches that, for example, post signs stating, ‘All Are Welcome.’ Now I believe such an expression of inclusion embodies the life and ministry of Jesus; he invites everyone to come to him and takes a seat at table with sinners and tax collectors. Yet I wonder how genuine the invitation behind that sign truly is. Sometimes I wonder if it’s less of a genuine welcome ‘for all’ but is, in fact, limited to those who share the congregation’s prevailing values, as though ‘welcome’ means agreement and being like us. Only that’s hardly ‘all.’
To think this through this take, for example, the image that came to mind about tax-collectors as self-serving government officials surrounded by armed guards. How would you describe their welcome here, or within the life of God? You might well share the Pharisees’ shock and displeasure in today’s gospel as they wonder why Jesus is hanging out with the wrong sort of people and inviting them to his table. “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors?” Yet Jesus’ response is his own version of ‘All are Welcome.’ ‘Who needs a doctor: sick people or the well? It is the very people you consider sick—even rightfully so—that need the healing balm of my grace.’ “I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
The religiously serious people who saw Jesus taking the young girl by the hand, saw Jesus being touched by the woman, saw Jesus having supper with Matthew and his co-workers, would have felt disbelief at the very core of their being. They believed their task was to keep themselves, and others, away from moral, physical, and spiritual infection. There are holiness codes in biblical books like Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers that teach rigorous separation from corpses, human blood, and people considered outcast, alien, and unclean.
But Jesus found something else in the Old Testament scriptures, found a deeper word within the prophets, a word that Jesus himself makes a priority: today’s reading from Hosea. “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” Mercy. In the same way that Jesus elsewhere clears a path through all the commands of the Old Testament by saying everything is summed up in two commands—love of God and love of neighbor—Jesus today views his entire mission through the lens of Hosea. “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” There is nothing unclean in anyone that infects Jesus or can make him unclean. But something in him cleanses, heals, and restores people in whatever condition he finds them. People far from the center of life, those on the edges and margins to the extreme—a woman with a chronic ailment, a dead girl, a self-serving public official—are all the focus of Jesus’ mercy.
“What is most amazing to me,” says Chad Bird, “is not that Jesus welcomed public transgressors into his company. What astounds me is that they came to him with the full expectation of not being turned away.” Jesus embraces people that nobody could touch, rescues people that nobody would touch. It is the very people who need him most that receive the healing balm of his mercy. Today we see the depth of Jesus’ power to heal. And when the truth of what Jesus does for the life of the world gets hold of you, it’s like a clear sky on a summer night after days of oppressive heat, humidity, and wind: you feel like you’re going to make it.
Today, Jesus Christ reaches out to you to restore the life he desires for you. Nothing in you or about you, none of your faults or failings, will stop him from offering you a new and better way to live. “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.’” The three healings in today’s gospel reading then have a ‘part-four’ as Jesus’ gift of healing is given to you. Like the woman suffering from chronic bleeding, here is healing for you. Like the young girl who died, here life is restored for you. Like Matthew the tax collector, here is compassion and mercy and a new way to live—for you, and not for you alone, but for everyone who knows their need of God because all are welcome.
When we come to worship, to this Holy Eucharist in particular, we are met by the presence of the same Jesus who welcomed tax collectors and sinners to his table: not because we are good but because the Lord is good. We come, not because we have got it all together, but because Jesus holds the pieces of our lives in his reconciling hand. And if we come with a self-righteous spirit and pride, Christ’s healing power in the sacrament of his Body and Blood will restore us to the mercy he desires, with the grace and humble spirit that accompany it. “By the grace of God, I am what I am,” says St Paul.
With sinners and tax-collectors of every sort we are invited to the Lord’s Table and are met by the depth of Jesus’ power to heal. Nothing in us can change Jesus, but what is in Jesus can, and does, change us. At every Eucharist we kneel next to people whose need for healing might surprise us, just as they would be surprised by our need. Yet we come to the Lord’s Table not to separate ourselves from others but together to be filled with the mercy of God. And because Jesus gives mercy freely and generously, we who follow him do the same. The forgiveness, compassion, and healing we receive from Jesus makes us people of forgiveness, compassion, and healing toward others. This is our holy work. “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’”
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