“For I Have Come to Call Not the Righteous, but Sinners.”

Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26; Psalm 33

Psalm 33

¹ Rejoice in the Lord , O you righteous. Praise befits the upright.

² Praise the Lord with the lyre; make melody to him with the harp of ten strings.

³ Sing to him a new song; play skillfully on the strings, with loud shouts.

⁴ For the word of the Lord is upright, and all his work is done in faithfulness.

⁵ He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord .

⁶ By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth.

⁷ He gathered the waters of the sea as in a bottle; he put the deeps in storehouses.

⁸ Let all the earth fear the Lord ; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him.

⁹ For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.

¹⁰ The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the peoples.

¹¹ The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations.

¹² Happy is the nation whose God is the Lord , the people whom he has chosen as his heritage.

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.”

Matthew 9:18-26

¹⁸ While he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader of the synagogue came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” ¹⁹ And Jesus got up and followed him, with his disciples.

²⁰ Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, ²¹ for she said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.” ²² Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And instantly the woman was made well.

²³ When Jesus came to the leader’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, ²⁴ he said, “Go away; for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. ²⁵ But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. ²⁶ And the report of this spread throughout that district.

The Sermon

There is a man sitting in a booth, a small tax office, and when Jesus walks by and sees him, Jesus will say, “Follow me.”

And that man will get up and follow Jesus.

What do you suppose he was waiting for?

And what does it mean to get up and go when God says, “Follow me”?

As the four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, sit around their card table, swapping great stories about Jesus, Luke and Matthew tend to be the ones who butt heads the most—maybe because they agree on so much that when there’s a difference between them, it tends to stick out like a sore thumb.

But today, there is a kind of reconciliation in the air.

Mark and John are so different, it’s like a NASCAR guy with a Bud Lite trying to talk to a theoretical physicist over hors d’oeuvres and aperitifs. Each of them is fascinated by the other’s existence, but when they actually try to talk to each other, it’s like root canal; they both keep looking at their watches going, “Oh, gee, is it that time already?”

But it’s Luke and Matthew who actually tend to argue it out with each other, because they speak pretty much the same language, they just emphasize different things.

Luke, the physician, is always irritated when Matthew spiritualizes everything. That’s what people do who have it all, and don’t have to worry so much about having enough to eat, or clothes to wear, or having adequate health care. They have the profound luxury of saying, “Well, when Jesus says ‘Blessed are the poor,’ he means, ‘blessed are the poor in spirit.’ When he says, ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst,’ he really means us, because we hunger and thirst for righteousness.’”

Luke doesn’t like that. The Good News of Jesus Christ isn’t all that lofty and airy stuff; the spiritual is in the real; the theological is in the tangible, the physical: to be healed is not just symbolic; Jesus really healed people, and when it was time for him to leave his earthly ministry, that was the signal that it was now up to us, the Body of Christ, to continue the ministries of healing and feeding and caretaking. That’s what Luke says.

And so, today, Luke is quite happy with ol’ Matthew, and he offers a nod of appreciation across the table to his friend. Because, today, Matthew has made it clear that from the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus is doing two major things: calling disciples to follow him, and healing and curing every kind of sickness.

Whenever Jesus says, “Follow me,” and a new disciple is added to the flock, it’s not long before he’s out in the countryside and in the towns, and people are flocking to him with all the things that are wrong with them, and his love is so immense, his healing is so powerful and his power to heal is so overflowing that everyone who comes into his path experiences healing and restoration and wholeness.

He called his first disciples, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea—they were fishermen.

And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” And they left their nets and followed him.

And then he saw two other brothers, James and John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left their father in the boat and followed him. (I’ve always wondered how Zebedee felt about that.)

And they went through Galilee, and every step of the way, he was teaching, and telling the good news, curing every disease and every sickness among the people.

And now, he comes to the booth where the tax office is.

And who knows if Matthew was telling his own story here? Some say of course it’s him; some say it’s another Matthew that he’s talking about.

But it doesn’t matter very much. Because when Jesus walks by the booth today, he’s going to look inside, and the person he’s going to see in there is you.

There is a person sitting in a booth, a small tax office, and when Jesus walks by and sees that person, Jesus will say, “Follow me.” And that person will get up and follow.

What has that person been waiting for?

Does the person in that booth spend a significant amount of time wondering “what if?”

What if my grades had been better? What if my family had been a little more stable? What if I had taken that other job offer?

What if I hadn’t been able to snap out of it that time I let my mind wander, and the car started to cross the median?

What if I had asked Mom what was wrong, the day I found her crying in the kitchen, and she acted like it was just the onions, but I knew that she knew that I knew that no food was being prepared?

What if my hand had gotten caught in that machine when I was a little kid in the wood shop?

What if I had picked up the phone and called when I knew there was too much tension between me and the person I used to be so close to?

What if the cops had found me out, back when I used to run on the wild side?

What if I hadn’t been in the room when my future marriage partner and I met for the first time?

What if nobody had ever bothered to bring me to church before?

Maybe the person in that little booth, without even fully realizing it, is waiting for someone to come along and say, “It’s all right.”

The things you didn’t do when you might have are fine. The world is not on your shoulders, and you don’t have to solve everybody else’s problems.

The things you did that you shouldn’t have done—they can all be forgiven, every one of them. Yes, they can. And you can be forgiven. Yes, you can.

And the things that happened to work out just fine, thank Heaven, are not accidents and dumb luck.

You have a right to be here, and you have a right to be the person you are, living the life God has given you. You are not a mistake, and neither is your continued health and well-being and presence.

Look who the people are who are with him! He eats with tax collectors—the most despised people on the planet in his day, and not without reason. And sinners! What’s a man like him doing with a crowd like that?

No, seriously—why?

Well, he says, it’s kind of like those people who don’t want to come to a Bible study because they don’t know enough.

What does that even mean?

It’s like saying, “I’m not healthy enough to go to the hospital; once I get better maybe

then I’ll go down there and let them take a look.”

It’s like saying, “I can’t have firefighters coming over to the house when it’s in this condition, with all this smoke billowing out of it and flames leaping through the windows. Let’s wait till the fire dies down a little, and then invite the fire department over.”

“What do you think I’m here for? To congratulate the righteous?”

I notice he’s not doling out a whole lot of congratulations, according to any of the four guys around the card table.

There’s a poor widow who gives the equivalent of about a tenth of a cent as a holy offering; it was all she had. And then there’s Mary, the sister of Martha, who sits at Jesus’ feet, listening, rather than tending to the mundane things that can be done any other time.

Other than those, it’s a pretty short list of people whom Jesus came to pat on the back for doing such a crackerjack job of doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God.

But these are the people whom he has come to call: the ones who have not succeeded. The ones who have not yet learned to love their neighbors as themselves. The ones who have no practical idea what in the world it would really feel like to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

The ones who—even we, the body of Christ—have as of yet failed to do as he did, bringing healing and hope with us everywhere we go, leaving everything and every person whom we have touched better off for the experience.

Today, he will find you sitting in that booth. And if when he sees you, you happen to be thinking, “This little booth, these close walls, are really all there is for me in this wide open world,” then meet his eye when he looks at you as he walks by.

And when he says to you, “Follow me,” you go.

Keith Grogg

Carolina Beach Presbyterian Church

Carolina Beach, NC

June 8, 2008