Calling All Sinners

Text: Matthew 9:9-13

Focus: inclusion

Function: to see how Jesus included everyone and the religious people objected.

⁹As 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.

¹⁰And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with Jesus and his disciples. ¹¹When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” ¹²But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. ¹³Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

Jesus ate with sinners. I love that phrase. I love the way Jesus included everyone, and tried to include even those who excluded others by their self-righteous attitude.

When I first choose this scripture for today’s sermon text, I was thinking of the contrast and the negativity of the self-righteous people and was going to preach against negativity.

We might think that as people of faith we should have a generally positive outlook on life. But, I just hate shame and I don’t think it is a good motivator. I had a dear colleague in the ministry say that shame was always a tool of the Devil itself. And it is. Satan is called the accuser of the Brethren.

But sometimes people of faith have trials that can be quite overwhelming. It is those times like the feet in the sand poem where at the end, we realized Jesus was with us, or maybe even carrying us but in the middle of the trial, it feels real.

And then there are traumas and physical issues that are included in our suffering. Don’t be ashamed if you are suffering. Our prayer is that you are held in the hands of the God during those times of suffering and I often pray that at times, God would let people feel or sense God’s presence.

So. Jesus ate with sinners. Jesus, I believe, was the incarnation of the Christ, the Messiah, Immanuel, God in human form sent to show us what God wants from us. And therefore, the divine presence itself was eating with sinners.

As a matter of fact, he seems to prefer them over the proudly religious folks.

The word piety and the word religion have the same root in the Greek language. Piety is practice that is devoted to God, and it can consume an entire being or sense of being for a devout person. We might call them saints.

They are righteous. And Jesus says that he did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to God.

Apparently the righteous are already with God.

Who were the righteous? Those who, like Joseph, Mary’s husband, Jesus’ earthly father, was a just, or righteous person, because he did the right thing by Mary who was found to be pregnant out of marriage.

There were may righteous people in the Old Testament and walking the earth during the time that the Christ was incarnated as Jesus the Nazarene.

So, who are the sinners that Jesus dines with? Sinners are people who, according to the root of the word “sin” who have missed the mark of God’s ideal.

Jesus hung out with those people who were sinners and also the just people who loved to love others and practice the ways of the new kingdom and were open to the revelations that Jesus was giving to them. Those the humble and those who loved mercy were already righteous in the eyes of the Christ.

The self-righteous, whom Jesus appears to criticize in this passage are those who believe that those whose sins are different than theirs are the reprobates while their own sin is merely them “missing the mark.”

It isn’t pride that Jesus is speaking against as much as being judgmental toward others. I suppose that being judgmental comes from an attitude of superiority, which is pride, so maybe pride is the root behind being judgmental, but the sin we are focusing on is being judgmental.

And remember, sin means we missed the mark.

And the lesson is that if we are judgmental, we have missed the mark of God’s ideal.

Last night my granddaughter got disciplined for being mean to her brother. And then she felt remorse for her actions and apologized but continued to fill herself with shame because she couldn’t take back what she said and did.

It broke my heart to see her covered in shame when shame is not from God.

I’m not talking about shame here, I am just talking about honest self-evaluation about the ways that we contribute to mercy toward others.

That, I believe is what Jesus meant when he told us that he desired mercy over religious action, in this case, sacrifice.

So, sinners are simply people who confess that they have missed the ideal of what God wants for them.

And Jesus’ presence with them, and acceptance of them is what leads them to this point where they are ready to confess that they have missed the mark.

I remember a day when I went forward at church during an altar call. I didn’t go forward in shame, but in hope that God’s grace was there for me to cover me and to keep me in God’s love and presence.

I didn’t go forward in shame but in faith.

And faith may be the opposite of shame. I know that faith is the opposite of fear.

I hope that because I do not employ a fear based system of retributive justice where we have a God in some other place who is perfect and is just waiting for us to fail so that he can be proven right you do not fall into a shame based Christianity.

I don’t worship a god of wrath and fear. That is a god of shame and that theology doesn’t come from the teachings of Christ.

Christ is here and with us. We are sinners, not because we are covered with shame, but because we confess that we have missed the mark and we trust in the power of the one who is transforming us into a people who love others as much as they love themselves.

So, what about those who are suffering? Sometimes when we are suffering, we simply can’t “feel it.” The pain distracts us. Don’t be ashamed. Richard Rohr suggests that we look at the suffering of Christ as a way of the Christ, the One Sent From God, identifying with our own suffering.

He says, when we suffer we suffer with the Christ and can find the divine in it. I think I see what he means and I hope to be able to understand my own suffering in a similar way.

Christ ate with sinners. By including them he called them to give up a selfish lifestyle and start living for a greater purpose. I call it the survival of humanity, but Jesus called it the Kingdom of God.

It is a spiritual kingdom that spreads like yeast rising in a loaf of bread. We can’t see it, but it spreads on a cellular level. I mean, from individual to individual. It might happen by the calming Christian witness of music playing from a camper trailer, to a feeling of something greater than ourselves when we gather at this table, or in the sanctuary.

Jesus promised us that whenever we gather together like this, Christ is with us.

We sense and feel the move of the Holy Spirit in our midst and we can’t quite describe, or at least, I can’t quite describe it, but I know it is real and that God is manifested in community.

M prayer is that more and more God manifests God’s power in our midst so that we too can be people who are able to walk in love toward those around us.