Boundary Crossing

Matthew 9: 9-13; 18-26

FPC; 6-8-08

          Matthew was hired by the Roman government to collect taxes in the region of Capernaum.  The government set the assessment; whatever money Matthew collected beyond that amount could be kept as profit.  Matthew profited much from his unsavory work.  He profited much at the expense of people who knew him as a boy, people who were his childhood playmates, people who once loved him. 

          Now they all despised him; they rightly believed that he had sold them out to the pagan, oppressive government of Rome.  The Romans didn’t think much of him either.  In their eyes he was a dishonorable man who gouged his own people. 

           The only people who socialized and kept company with Matthew were other people who lived disreputable lives.     

          Drowning in a pool of isolation and self-centeredness, Matthew was encountered by Jesus one day.  Jesus spoke two words: “follow me”.  Never before had anyone invited Matthew’s allegiance or his company.  This sinner instantly recognized the warm acceptance and unconditional love Jesus exuded.  Perhaps for the first time, Matthew saw a way out of no way; a release from his prison of shame; a new road was laid out before him, a road full of promise, hope and new life.  

          “Follow me”.  

The risk would be great!  In following Jesus, the Roman government might pursue him with a battalion of soldiers.  In following Jesus, Matthew might lose his wealth. 

          But the prospects of new life and the promise of enjoying new conversations with God compelled him to stand on his feet, drop his ledger pad on the table and go to Jesus who probably was waiting with open arms.

          Matthew uses part of his wealth to throw a big party.  The banquet hall was full of the only people who would dare be his friends, people who, like him, had compromised their consciences for selfish gain.  Right in the middle of this collection of scoundrels and swindlers is Jesus. 

          It is enough to cause the Pharisees to grumble because any righteous person would never be seen associating with known sinners.  Jesus responds to the grumbling, “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.’”[1]

           Reynolds Price, theologian, author, and professor at Duke once wrote, “Jesus of Nazareth was a man above all else, merciful and welcoming… “Jesus the Jew,” he wrote, “dined by free conviction and desire with the furthest outcasts of his time and place,…. the sheep despised by all other shepherds: and he did not apparently exhort them to shame but pledged them first entry rights into God’s kingdom.”[2]

This picture of Jesus sitting at table with sinners and scoundrels is a picture of life in the Kingdom of Heaven. 

          At the beginning of the day, Matthew could not have envisioned such a picture nor could he have imagined being included in such a wide embrace of unconditional love. 

          “Follow me!”  Only two words!  But those two words and the one who delivered them compelled Matthew to leave behind his known life of self-absorption and join a family whose mantra is unconditional love and boundless mercy, a family of unbiased inclusion. 

          With Matthew tagging along Jesus then encounters two ritually unclean people: one, a girl who has just died; the other, a woman who has been hemorrhaging for twelve years.   One receives Jesus’ touch and, with it, new life.  The other receives a new identity as Jesus speaks the words: “Take heart, daughter, your faith has made you well.” Both are embraced as part of God’s family. 

          “The report of the two women who received from Jesus the gift of new life spread throughout the district”, the text says.  But, also, I think the report of Matthew’s new and redeemed life spread throughout that district and all districts, and across the centuries and now is delivered to us.  

          Perhaps you can relate to Matthew.  Perhaps you also have lived a life of compromises-one scene after another of compromised integrity, honesty, dignity, faith.  Perhaps you have remained silent when you should have spoken; spoken when you should kept your mouth shut.  Perhaps you also have lived a life of self-absorption, sold out your Christianity for a bowl full of money, or career advancement or popularity.  Perhaps, as you heard this text read, you saw yourself seated alongside Matthew at the tax table, a sinner desperately in need of love and redemption. 

          “Follow me”.  If we follow, we will discover a Christ who redeems, a Christ who eats with sinners and who claims all sorts of disreputable people as his own sisters and brothers.  If we follow, we will find a Jesus who rejects attitudes of elitism and exclusion that are practiced by the established religion.  If we follow, we will see Jesus reaching out to people the world has rejected, even using the church to do so.    

          In one of her books Anne Lamott tells about her life of alcoholism and drug addiction, of self-absorption, a life of dead end streets and of poor decisions made.  In one of the chapters she gives a detailed description of her involvement in a church in which she was embraced by the inclusive, unconditional love of Jesus. 

          Every Sunday, she would go to the flee market.  One Sunday morning, from the parking lot of that place, she heard music coming from the church across the street.  St. Andrew Presbyterian Church, she writes, “Looked homely and impoverished, a ramshackle building with a cross on top, sitting on a small parcel of land with a few skinny pine trees.  But the music wafting out was so pretty that I would stop and listen….”  [Soon] “I began stopping in at St. Andrew from time to time, standing in the doorway to listen to the songs.  …it had a choir of five black women and one rather Amish looking white man making all that glorious noise, and a congregation of thirty people or so, radiating kindness and warmth.  During the time when people hugged and greeted each other, various people would come back to where I stood to shake my hand or try to hug me.  I went back to St. Andrew about once a month.  No one tried to con me into sitting down or staying.  The church smelled wonderful, like the air had nourishment in it, or like it was composed of these people’s exhalations, of warmth and faith and peace.  Eventually, a few months after I started coming, I took a seat in one of the folding chairs, off by myself.  Then the singing enveloped me.  It was furry and resonant, coming from everyone’s heart.  There was no sense of performance or judgment, only that the music was breath and food.”

          One Sunday, after a week of binge drinking, Anne came to church.  “I was so hung over”, she writes, “that I couldn’t stand up for the songs,… the last song was so deep and raw and pure that I could not escape.  It was as if the people were singing in between the notes, weeping and joyful at the same time, and I felt like their voices or something was rocking me in its bosom, holding me like a scared kid, and I opened up to that feeling-and it washed over me.”  The inclusive, nonjudgmental, non-prejudiced church played a critical role in what she calls “my beautiful moment of conversion”.[3] 

          “Follow me”.  Only two words!  With those words new possibilities are born, new life is made possible; a way is carved through the brambles of hopelessness. 

          As   George Herbert once wrote, “here in dust and dirt…the lilies of his love appear.”[4] 

          Following Jesus we put on the clothes he wears, clothes of unbiased compassion and unconditional love. Like the St. Andrew Presbyterian Church, we become Christ’s ambassadors through which he offers people a way out of no way.  Our lives provide the world with a picture of God’s kingdom where the banquet table is full of sinners; where all sorts of disreputable people enjoy communion and redemption and recognize one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.  Amen.