Matthew 9:9-13

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax-collection station, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.

And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with Jesus and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard this, he said, “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.’ For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

Sermon Text

Who is invited to sit at God’s table? Who makes the guest list for the grace of God? Is it you or me? The Magisterium of the Church? Who has authority to pull up a seat and say, “Tuck in!” Our lips may immediately say, “Only God! Christ alone! Whoever the Spirit calls!” but I am skeptical that we are committed to that truth. I am skeptical because I’m sure if I ask a different question we would probably have different answers. “Who isn’t invited?”

“Who isn’t invited?” That is a question that tantalizes more than any other. At first we may, again with a pious heart, say “All people are invited! None are barred!” Yet, our actions suggest differently. Look around this room and ask yourself how diverse a body we truly are in this congregation. I’m not just speaking in terms of race or place of origin, I mean in dress or attitude or disposition. Our incomes are not so varied as to shock, our manner of dress is comparable if nothing else, and we all have our Ps and Qs so aligned as not to distress our neighbors with too great a varied response to worship.

We are not alone in our homogeneity. The most segregated hour in America, along all lines, is a Sunday Morning. Churches attract their own little niche of people and they do so subconsciously. In the mode of worship they employ, in the time they offer it, and in the way they act throughout it. Some of this is inevitable. Though we wish to “be all things to all people,” at the end of the day there is only so much we can do in the bounds of our order of worship and within an hour and change on a single day of the week. There are different churches because there are different people and sometimes God needs us to employ our differences to save people with different needs. Yet, I feel, if we take that line of thought too far then Church becomes a place you have to shop around for, a thing you consume rather than are consumed by, it becomes a place we go to receive and not a place we become a symbiotic whole with.

Our Scripture today captures the scandalous nature of Jesus’s ministry well. Calling his disciples as he goes, he finds Matthew the Tax Collector. We do not know if Matthew was a Roman transplant into Judea or a native Judean who took on a Roman job but either way we know what his reputation was. Tax collectors in his day were seen as traitors and crooks – taking money to support the soldiers and empire that would throw you in the gutter for fun and crucify you for talking back. Matthew, Judean or Roman, was seen as someone working against the people of God, robbing them for his own health and for the good of their enemies.

Yet, when Jesus sees him, he knows what Matthew is to become and not what he is. He does not see a Roman traitor, he sees an Apostle, or someone who will become one at least. He calls for Matthew to follow him and Matthew follows immediately. Then, either at Matthew’s house or someone else’s, Jesus has dinner. People are coming to hear him speak anyway, so a crowd begins to gather. Yet, the people who are invited to be at Jesus’s table, those who he wants closest to him, are the rejects. He has the tax collectors and “sinners,” a catch-all term here meaning, “those people,” sit down right beside him.

As Jesus breaks bread and eats, some of the crowd gathered around the house leans in to ask his disciples a question. These are the local pastors of the area, the Pharisees and Teachers, and they’re concerned about this traveling miracle worker. “He does these wonderful things, teaches these wonderful teachings, but now he is sitting and eating with these people? Make that make sense to me.” The disciples do not get a chance to answer for Jesus, because he publicly answers their private accusation disguised as a question – “A doctor does not attend to people who are well, a doctor is called to heal the sick!”

Here enters in the contradiction that Jesus always leaves in the midst of his teachings. Jesus is saying that the folks he is sitting with need him more than the people coming in and criticizing him. Does that mean that the Pharisees and Teachers aren’t sinners in need of salvation? Of course not! They are, however, people who should know better. They have received God’s grace through the established means of the Temple and the fellowship provided by the Synagogue and the tutelage of the law. They are folks who are not “cured,” of sin, if such a thing is possible, but they are folks on their way to recovery.

They have, however, forgotten that they are only where they are by the grace of God. Only the accidents of how they were born and how the cards have fallen in their life to this point has allowed them to be Pharisees and Teachers rather than tax collectors and publicly known profligates. They have allowed themselves to forget that anything they do right they were taught and supported into doing and all they do wrong has left their mind is a sea of perceived righteousness. They may not break the rules as readily or as often as those they now criticize, but they have not been transformed by God’s grace – they have let their hearts harden if anything.

There are two main things that keep people from coming into Church, and neither of them have anything to do with Jesus. The first is past hurt from the Church, ways that the people of God have actively harmed them – that is a talk for another time. The second, however, is still tied to the failing of the Church. We stand on a hill of perceived holiness, we spread our arms out to the world and say, “We’re here if you want us!” Then we shake our head at all the people who don’t waltz into our sanctuary. We do not go out into the world and bring the Gospel with us, if we did that we’d lose control. We do not invite folks in with a wild and uncompromising invitation, because it would ask too much of us and our habits and expectations.

Christ our Lord not only sat with sinners when he found them, but actively sought them out. He did not ask them to get clean and perfect immediately. The Pharisees were not shocked by their sudden repentance or holiness, they still viewed them as sinners and thieves. It is unlikely that the people gathered around Jesus that night, sin sick their whole life long, were suddenly and permanently changed in that one night… Yet I’m willing to believe that several of them started the long, hard road of discipleship after coming close to Jesus that night.

The Disciples that night were serving a role that we often neglect in our role as Christians. They were standing around the table, letting people come to Jesus, and answering the questions of the people who would doubt the validity of the people coming to eat with him. They were not interrogating people to see if they were worthy of God’s grace, but refuting those who questioned it. The Pharisees could not get close enough to browbeat those seeking Jesus, because the Disciples stood in the way. What would it look like for us to do that? To be the sort of people who kept the judgmental eye off of those seeking Christ, and spared no expense in bringing his table to those who most earnestly wanted to eat from it.

People of God, the table of Grace is set before us. As we approach to take part in Christ’s passion, let us let this grace transform us. Let us become defenders and advocates for folks to make their way to this place of grace. Christ has come to save sinners, and that definitely includes us. Are we willing to let it stop with us? – Amen.