Eternal God, pour out your spirit upon us, that we might be sensitive
to your presence, attentive to your Word, and faithful always in your way.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord we pray. Amen.
We are a people always trying to run on something new. We are always looking
for some new source of fuel or energy. This is true for our personal lives as
well as for our vehicles. In our personal lives many people have fueled their
lives with different diets: the Pritikin Diet, the Atkins Diet, no-carb, low-carb,
high-carb diets, grapefruit diets, peanut butter diets, the South Beach Diet.
However, my favorite is the Midwest Diet: bread, meat and potatoes, and ice
cream for dessert.
Because gasoline prices are rising so, many people are trying to run their
cars on alternate fuels: steam, propane, LNG, electric, ethanol. Gas is
expensive but things could be worse if we had to run our cars on Lipton tea at
$9.52 per gallon, or Evian water at $21.19 per gallon, or Scope mouthwash at
$84.48 per gallon, or Pepto Bismol at $123.70 per gallon. One person on TV
observed that with gas at over $4.00 a gallon wherever you are going this
summer, it may be cheaper to mail your car, than to drive it there. Ethanol
seemed to be “the answer” until demand for it drove food prices so high. In West
Virginia, where I come from, entrepreneurs in the hollows have been making
ethanol for a long time. They just called it moonshine. It would run both you
and your car insane.
In the passage from Matthew today, Jesus is running around Galilee. He has just
descended from the mountain where he preached the Sermon on the Mount, in
chapters five, six and seven. A great crowd follows him and he heals a leper. He
travels to Capernaum where a Centurion asks him to heal a servant. He then goes
to Peter’s house and heals Peter’s mother-in-law. Then he sets off to the other
side of the Sea of Galilee, and subsequently returns to Capernaum. Jesus appears
to be running. He is running on his faith, his total trust in God.
As a Jewish man, Jesus would know by heart the story of Abraham, the father
of the Jewish people. Jesus would know that God had called Abraham at age 75,
and God had called him to do something entirely different from his earlier
experiences. God calls him to leave his homeland and move to a new country,
hundreds of miles away, where there are people who speak a different language,
worship different gods, and are suspicious of outsiders.
Scripture gives us no evidence that Abraham did anything to earn God’s favor.
God simply chooses him for no apparent reason and Abraham faithfully responds.
Abraham trusts God and does as God directs, and as Paul says in Romans “His
faith is reckoned to him as righteousness.” (Romans 4:9)
Abraham was the first, but many have followed: Oscar Romero, the archbishop of
San Salvador, had a conversion experience at 59. Dave Thomas the founder of
Wendy’s got his GED (high school equivalency certificate) at 60. Colonel Harlan
Sanders began franchising his chicken restaurants at 65. Nelson Mandela became
president of South Africa at 75. “Grandma” Moses began painting at 78. Not only
did they do these things at relatively late ages, but like Abraham, what they
did was totally different from their previous experiences. God calls us at any
age to run on faith, total trust in God.
In Abraham God began to constitute the people of God. In the second anthem today
we hear God’s words of blessing to Abraham. In Jesus God begins again. Just as
with Abraham, God chooses inconsequential folks to be God’s people. In the
Matthew passage Jesus relates to three individuals who are non-people. We all
know of people who do not seem to matter. Think of the thousands left dead or
homeless in Myanmar, or the person with the cardboard sign begging on the street
corner, or the child used and abused by a “trusted” adult. What may be just as
real for some of us, is we do not know if we matter. Some of us exist day-to-day
and wonder whether anyone out there thinks of us as important, or meaningful in
any way.
We read daily about another corporate layoff. The economics are simple, really.
Run your employees hard, and when they begin to lose productivity due to
exhaustion, dump them so you can run others into the ground. The model of
“employee as consumable” says we do not matter.
The landscape has not much changed since the days of Jesus. Matthew might have
had some sense of self-importance as a tax collector. With a Roman soldier on
either side he had the right to enforce the taxes and the means to skim a bit
off the top for himself. However, to the Romans he was expendable and to his own
people he was a traitor, a disgrace to his family who were forced to disown him,
and he would not have been welcome in a synagogue. The rules of collaboration
were strict. Those who collected taxes for the infidel occupation army were
considered as dead. Clearly he has done nothing at all to warrant Jesus’ favor,
just the opposite. Yet, Jesus calls him, and Matthew follows.
Jesus then runs to a dinner with many tax collector and sinners. The Pharisees,
practicing blatant triangulation, challenge Jesus’ disciples about his behavior.
Jesus answers them directly. He quotes Hosea, “I desire mercy not sacrifice.”
(Hosea 6:6) The same words are used later in the dispute about Sabbath
observance. Jesus is speaking against the pious posturing of the Pharisees,
especially in their rigid rules about worship, and for demonstrable compassion
to those in need. Worship, in whatever form, means nothing if we cannot see,
hear, and respond to those in need around us. Jesus then demonstrates what he
means. He shows mercy to a leader of the synagogue whose daughter has died. As
only a father could, this man searches for someone to help him. But we must
remember that in the first century only boys were the sought-after children.
When older, girls could be bartered as brides, especially from upstanding
families, but otherwise they were a liability. Women were considered property to
be bought and sold. Death may have been kinder to most female children than the
difficult short lives most would endure. Certainly this girl, already dead, was
of no consequence to anyone other than her father and presumably her mother.
In the middle of this story we meet a woman who has been suffering from
hemorrhages for 12 years. Her bleeding was no doubt painful physically and
mentally but it also likely prevented her from marrying and having children.
Certainly it made her ritually unclean and robbed her of any kind of life except
for begging. Yet she mattered to Jesus. He shows her mercy. He calls her
“daughter,” a term of endearment, commends her faith, and states it is her
faith, her total trust, that has made her well.
All of these people Jesus has encountered here were untouchables: a man who
turned traitor against his own people, a dead female child, and a woman
chronically unclean. Yet, Jesus pulls them out of their situations and restores
them individually to a place of dignity and life again. God, thorough Jesus’
actions, is establishing the new age, the kingdom of God, in the midst of the
present one. God is inviting all people, even “the least of these,” to run on
faith, to run on total trust, to be a part of God’s Kingdom.
Sixteen years after graduating from high school I moved back into my old
community. I was walking in a local mall when a tall muscular man in a sheriff’s
uniform stopped me and said, “Jim, is that you?” “Yes,” I answered. I recognized
him as a person I had gone to elementary and high school with, but was not a
close friend. He said, “I’m Chuck, remember? I’m a sheriff now (as if I couldn’t
tell with the uniform, badge and gun!). What are you doing now?” I answered,
“I’m a United Methodist preacher.” He turned and walked away without saying
another word, end of conversation. It was either me, or preachers in general, or
he suddenly remembered an appointment he had to keep; but I was a non-person to
him. My guess is he just couldn’t see the likes of me being a preacher. (He has
not been alone in that perception!) Yet, what our faith tells us, and is made
clear in this passage, is God’s far-reaching grace gathers and restores even the
likes of us. We are initiated into God’s emerging Kingdom by our baptism, and
our forgiveness, our healing, our new life, our restoration is underway.
In the next chapter of Matthew’s gospel Jesus will send the disciples out to
do the same kind of running on faith as he does. They will be called to restore
folks and include them in the Kingdom. That is also our task. In total trust in
God’s grace, we live God’s grace with others. It is what we do at the Rescue
Mission, in our food ministry, in our Big Mission Project’s reading program in
elementary schools, in mentoring with SPIN families, and in many other of our
ministries. Our youth are going to the Navajo people this summer on the Sierra
Service Project. Many of the folk they will work with have been used, abused,
and forgotten by society. The youth’s care, compassion, and sweat-labor are
gifts that say to these people, God includes you too. Friends, you have a chance
to be a part of this mission as you support our young people. Through these and
many other ministries we proclaim that none of us are consumable. None of us are
trash to be thrown away. None of us are inconsequential.
Vincent Van Gogh was not always an artist. In fact, he wanted to be a pastor
and was sent to the Belgian mining community of Borinage in 1879. He discovered
that the miners there endured deplorable working conditions and poverty level
wages. Their families were malnourished and struggling simply to survive. He
felt concerned that the small stipend he received from the church allowed him a
moderate lifestyle, which, in contrast to the poor, seemed unfair.
One cold February evening, while he watched the miners trudging home, he saw
an old man staggering across the fields, wrapped in a burlap sack for warmth.
Van Gogh immediately laid his own clothing out on the bed, set aside enough for
one change, and determined to give the rest away. He gave the old man a suit of
clothes and he gave his overcoat to a pregnant woman whose husband had been
killed in a mining accident. He lived on meager rations and spent his stipend on
food for the miners. When children in one family contracted typhoid fever,
though feverish himself, he packed up his bed and took it to them.
A prosperous family in the community offered him free room and board. But Van
Gogh declined the offer, stating that it was the final temptation he must reject
if he was to faithfully serve his community of poor miners. He believed that if
he wanted them to trust him, he must become one of them. And if they were to
learn the love of God through him, he must love them enough to share with them.
He ran his life on faith, on total trust in God. May you and I so live, that no
one around us feels inconsequential. May they know by our actions that they
matter to God. May we run on faith.*
Thanks be to God.
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[*] Notes: The Van Gogh story is from Steve Goodier, “Life Support System.”
