What God Thinks of You

[Below you'll find the text of the message shared during worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio today, as well as live stream videos of both services. Have a good week!]

Matthew 9:9-13

Years ago after worship at one of the churches I’ve served as pastor, a woman asked if she could speak with me briefly. She was a young woman, active in the church. I could tell she was uncomfortable, but trusted me and after a while, got to what she wanted to discuss. “Pastor,” she said, “I’m gay.”

I could see what her question was. She wondered what God thought of her.

I knew her to be a person of earnest faith who understood the will of God regarding sexual intimacy. She was troubled by her feelings. There was no way I was going to pour heaping coals on her. She needed the Gospel Word of Jesus. I touched her hand and, calling her by name, told her, “God loves you.”

I went on to remind her that Jesus died and rose for sinners, whatever sin they may be oriented to commit, and that He calls all of us to repent–to turn our backs on our sins–and believe in Him. I went on to assure her that God stands by those who struggle with their temptations and will always forgive the repentant.

We talked for about an hour. She continued to be an active member of our church and I prayed for her regularly. That conversation happened a long time ago. Since then, I’ve lost touch with that woman. So, I don’t know what’s going on in her life these days.

But, fellow sinners, this incident and our Gospel lesson for this morning bring to the fore an important question for us all: What does God think of us?

In the Gospel lesson, Jesus is in Capernaum, a town on the Sea of Galilee. He’s just come from forgiving the sins, then healing, a paralytic man. He catches sight of a tax collector named Matthew. We know just a few things about Matthew. We know that he was also known as Levi, telling us that he was from the tribe of priests, the Levites, and because of this, that his life has apparently gone off the rails. We know that he was one of the two apostles–John being the other one–to write one of the Gospels that appear in our New Testament. And we know he was a tax collector.

You’ve heard me speak often about the tax collectors of that time. They purchased franchises for the privilege of collecting taxes and tolls in a given region from the Romans or the Romans’ agents. Tax collectors like Matthew routinely charged the people in their region way more than the Romans expected to be collected and the Romans ignored their extortion. Tax collectors were dishonest. They were hated. Unlike most of their fellow Jews, they were extremely wealthy. Usually, they were unafraid to flaunt their ill-gotten wealth.

Jesus tells Matthew, “‘Follow me,’...[and] Matthew got up and followed him.” (Matthew 9:9) Now, rather than bogging ourselves in questions about why Matthew immediately responded to Jesus and whether Matthew knew Jesus already, I think the more important question to ask is where Jesus led Matthew?

We might think that Jesus would lead Matthew off for a time of intense discipleship training. Instead, Jesus seems to lead Matthew to Matthew’s house, where Matthew is going to host a dinner for “many tax collectors and sinners.” (Mathew 9:10)   

You see, Jesus doesn’t walk away from sinners. He goes to them. That’s how Jesus is able to call them–it’s how He is able to call you and me–to turn from sin and turn in faith to Him for forgiveness and new life with God.

Jesus also doesn’t call His disciples, people like Matthew and you and me, away from sinners. He calls us to them.

That’s the only way we can be, in Saint Paul’s phrase, “ambassadors for Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:20), representatives of Jesus Christ in a world under the dominion of sin, death, and darkness.

And it’s the only way we can, as Saint Peter puts it, “give the reason for the hope that [we] have” because of Jesus Christ, (1 Peter 3:15)

The gospel–the good news–is that, “[w]hile we were still sinners, Christ died for us” and has done everything needed for we sinners to be, despite our sin, the saints of God Who will, on the day Jesus returns, be called from our graves so that we can live with and serve God “in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness.” (Romans 5:8; The Small Catechism, Article II)

Not everyone is happy that Jesus is eating with notorious sinners, of course.

The Pharisees, the members of a prominent first-century Jewish sect, are offended. Now, the word pharisee comes to us from both the Hebrew and Aramaic languages and means “one who is separated.” The Pharisees separated themselves from others both because they thought their adherence to God’s Law was greater than that of others and to avoid getting polluted by others’s sins. The Pharisees are self-righteous. They’re also people Jesus called “whitewashed tombs” and “hypocrites.” “Why,” the Pharisees ask some of Jesus’ disciples, “does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” (Matthew 9:11)

Jesus hears this question and answers: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” (Matthew 9:12)

Look, friends, if you think you’re righteous because you’re a good person, Jesus has nothing for you. He has nothing to say to you.

But if you know that you are, by nature, inclination, and action, sick with sin, filled with an inborn resistance to love for God or love for others, Jesus has everything for you: forgiveness, eternal life, the assurance of His constant presence by your side!

“For I have not come,” Jesus tells us today, “to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Matthew 9:13)

Hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus, God revealed through the prophet Isaiah what He would do for sinners who are reached by Him and His grace, in eternity. He announced His intention to host a feast that never ends:

“...the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine—the best of meats and the finest of wines…he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove his people’s disgrace from all the earth.” (Isaiah 25:6-8)

During dinner at Matthew’s house, Jesus was giving the notorious sinners around Him a foretaste of the heavenly feast that awaits all who, by the power of His Gospel Word, turn from sin and trust in Him. It’s a foretaste of what He does on the cross to save us from sin, condemnation, and death.

He does this same thing when He gathers us repentant believers at His table each Sunday to give us His body and blood. Jesus does again what He did at Matthew’s house: He takes our sin into Himself and gives us His righteousness, He erases the power of sin and death over us and makes us whole and new in His grace.

So, what does God think of you?

For you, “God made [Jesus] who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)

That’s what God thinks of you and everyone else born sick with sin. He thinks you are worth the sacrifice of His sinless love to give you life with Him.

Friends, today receive, cherish, tastes and see, and hold onto this promise from Jesus, God the Son: “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Matthew 9:13)

And rejoice that He has called you. Amen

Only Sinners Need Apply

Thank God.

Mercy, Not Religion

[This sermon was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
Some of you have heard me tell the true story of what happened at the end of a Lutheran worship service in Cincinnati a few years ago. This was at a church not far from the one I previously served.

A family that had just moved into the area was checking out this congregation when the husband and father was approached by one of its members. “Did you have a good experience here today?” the member asked in a friendly tone. The visitor responded that he had. “I’m glad,” said the member. “But,” he continued, “you know, there are several other Lutheran churches in our area and we already have about as many members as we need. Why not look elsewhere?”

Whatever that church member’s motives, it seems that he would have fit right in with the Pharisees in today’s Gospel lesson from Matthew. They too, were less interested in letting people enjoy fellowship with Christ and His people than they were in keeping their little religious club afloat.

Our Gospel lesson says that after calling the tax collector Matthew to follow Him, Jesus settled down for dinner with other tax collectors and a number of notorious sinners. The Pharisees, those good religious folk, were horrified. But like many good religious folks, they decided not to speak directly with the person whose behavior offended them, Jesus. Instead, like centuries of religious gossips, they decided to talk behind Jesus’ back. They slithered up to some of Jesus’ disciples, apparently not wanting their words to be directly attributable to them. “Why,” they ask, “does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

But Jesus heard them, we’re told, confirming a truth I have learned through the years: No matter how confidential we think the gossip we pass on is, it always gets back to the person we gossip about.

Now, Jesus could have just ignored the Pharisees’ question. Instead, He decided to confront it. Quoting passages from the Old Testament books of Hosea and Malachi, Jesus tells the gossiping Pharisees: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I [the speaker is God] desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”

Jesus doesn’t deny that He’s focused on spending time with sinners, a category of people that includes tax collectors, prostitutes, swindlers, good Pharisees and even good Lutherans. It’s sinners, people who were born alienated from God Who need Jesus to bring them God’s mercy, forgiveness, hope, and new life. “That’s why I’m here,” Jesus is saying. “That’s why I mix with the riff-raff and do things in the Name of God that good religious folks think is outrageously wrong.” The incidents that follow in our lesson underscore Jesus’ words.

It was while speaking at this dinner that, we’re told, Jesus was interrupted by a synagogue leader. “My daughter is dead,” he says. “Touch her and she will live.” On the way to the dead girl, you’ll remember, Jesus encounters a woman, afflicted with hemorrhages for twelve years. She says to herself, “If I only touch His garment, I have faith that He will make me well.” The woman touches Jesus and Jesus tells her that her faith has in fact, made her well.

Then, Jesus goes to the corpse of the dead girl, touches her, and brings her back to life. Three times in the space of the these verses in our Gospel lesson, Jesus violates the rules of good religious folks—dining with sinners, allowing himself to be touched by a hemorrhaging woman, and touching a corpse and not undergoing ritual cleansing—all to drive home the point that He desires mercy more than religion and wants everybody—everybody—to experience the love of God.

A pastor named E. Carver McGriff once identified three major lessons that Jesus gives us in these incidents. First: Jesus loves us just as we are. I used to think that to be a Christian, you had to be good enough to merit Christ’s love and attention. Sometimes, in my pride, maybe a bit like the Pharisees in today’s Gospel lesson, I alternately thought that I was good enough. But Jesus didn’t ask the tax collectors and sinners to repent before He had dinner with them. He spent time with them just as they were. He didn’t ask the synagogue ruler or the hemorrhaging woman to confess their sins. He saw their faith in Him and He moved to help them immediately.

I once got a telephone call from a psychologist at Lutheran Social Services. “Mark,” he said, “I’ve been counseling with a man for some weeks. But we’ve hit a clearly spiritual snag. I don’t know what to do. Would you see him?” I wasn’t sure if I was competent to help a therapist with the treatment of one of his clients. But I said that I’d be glad to talk with the man.

The man's “snag” was that he had committed what he considered an unpardonable sin years before. He refused to believe that through Jesus Christ, his sins could be forgiven by God. I tried to show him that the only sin that is unpardonable, according to Jesus, is “sin against the Holy Spirit,” by which Jesus meant any sin which we refuse to allow the Holy Spirit to either convict us for committing or convince us that God is willing to forgive us.

The sin against the Holy Spirit is willfully blocking God’s mercy from our lives. But, I told this man, if we were willing to be forgiven, God wanted to forgive. God loves us just as we are. I don’t know whether that man believed me or not. But his reluctance to believe in God’s mercy was an object lesson for me on how important it is for we who bear Jesus’ Name in the world to share His merciful love with everyone.

Second: We see from our Gospel lesson that Jesus’ love has a strange and wonderful effect on us. When Jesus called Matthew to follow, He didn’t give Matthew a fifteen-step program for acceptance into Jesus’ fellowship. Jesus just called Matthew. And here’s the strange result: Matthew followed!

You’ve heard me speak of my mentor in the faith, Martha Schneider. Martha was in her sixties, a mature believer in Jesus, who took me, this snot-nosed, often flippant and sometimes irresponsible, twenty-two year old, under her wing, to help me get rooted in my relationship with Jesus Christ. Years later, Martha told me how crazy I drove her when I first came to faith and got involved in the church.

Once, at a meeting for a committee she was chairing and I’d volunteered to be a part of, for example, I stood off to the side with another young member of the group, pitching pennies and yucking it up. During the meeting. I think that if I’d been in Martha’s place, I would have blown up. She would have been within her rights to do so.

But she showed patience with me. Over time, the love of Christ that Martha patiently showed to me, had its effect. God used her patience to work faith and genuine repentance in me.

Who, among our acquaintances and friends might be turned toward Christ if we allowed ourselves, like my mentor Martha, to be instruments of Christ’s love? Who knows what strange and wonderful effects would result?

Third: We see from our Gospel lesson that when people encounter the love and mercy of Jesus, something good happens. Matthew, the synagogue leader, and the hemorrhaging woman all found that once the love of Jesus and the possibilities of His power touched them, their perspective on life changed. They saw things differently.

• Matthew thought that it would be okay to invite the Savior of the world to his house, no matter what the neighbors might think.
• The synagogue leader dared to believe that his dead daughter might rise again.
• The hemorrhaging woman, who would have been an outcast in her society, dared to think that Jesus would let her touch Him and that He could heal her.

Once the amazing grace of Jesus Christ soaks into our psyches and our wills, everything changes. Lives gone stale are enlivened with new possibilities.

True story. This young doctor had been hurt when his wife suddenly left him. He’d become a cynic with no place for God or others in his life. One day, he assisted in surgery and the chief surgeon began to sing a complicated piece the young doctor once sang as a Music major. He joined in with his bass voice.

The chief surgeon introduced him to the choir director from his church. The choir director, seeing the young doctor's apprehension and bitterness toward God, the world, and other people, invited him to go out for a beer. Intrigued by a church choir director that met people for beer, the younger man went.

Over time, he got involved with the church choir and eventually, the church. In the warm Christian fellowship of this congregation, a Lutheran church in the Chicago suburbs, his cynicism melted away. Christ came to be the center of his life.

It gets better. On Sunday mornings, he couldn’t keep from eying a particular young woman who always sat in the same pew. Eventually, they met and they married. Jesus Christ, the Lord of fresh starts and second chances, enlivens those touched by His love to the new possibilities of life. And that’s true whatever our ages.

Today, we can be thankful that...

• Jesus’ love accepts us we are,
• that Jesus’ love has a strange and wonderful effect on us, and
• that when we encounter Christ’s mercy, we see life with new eyes.

That’s as true today as it was on the day that Jesus called Matthew to follow. He’s making the same call to you and me and our neighbors today.

May we be quick to follow!

A Look at This Sunday's Bible Lessons (June 8, 2008)

This week's look at the Bible lessons for Sunday will be brief.

The Bible Lessons:
Genesis 12:1-9
Psalm 33:1-12
Romans 4:13-25
Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

The Prayer of the Day:
O God, you are the source of life and the ground of our being. By the power of your Spirit bring healing to this wounded world, and raise us to the new life of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

A Few Comments:
1. As I've mentioned in previous posts, the Bible lessons appointed for the Sundays after Pentecost attempt to answer the question, "Now what?" They direct us to how we live our lives in light of our faith in the God born, died, and risen in Jesus Christ and come to us in the Holy Spirit.

Each Sunday during this season then, we confront one or two important elements involved in following Jesus through our daily lives.

2. This Sunday, maybe the largest theme is the centrality of heeding God's improbable call. People of faith are called to follow where and when God calls. This is underscored in the lessons from Genesis and in Romans, both of which discuss God's improbable call of Abram and Sarai (later Abraham and Sarah) from their native Ur (in what is modern-day Iraq) to become, despite their advanced years, the ancestors of Israel. It's also seen in Jesus' call of the tax collector, Matthew, in our Gospel lesson; tax collectors were lowly regarded by Jesus' fellow Judeans, seen as notorious sinners.

3. A curiosity regarding our Gospel lesson is that Jesus' call of Matthew and Jesus' confrontation of the Pharisees horrfied by Jesus dining with tax collectors and other sinners is set amid a long string of healings and miracles recounted in chapters 8 and 9 of Matthew's Gospel.

But maybe this shouldn't surprise us, especially in light of Jesus' response to the Pharisees criticism of Him. “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick," Jesus tells the Pharisees. In other words, the condition of sin, separation from God, is more fatal than any physical ailment. Jesus, the great physician, was willing to make housecalls, in order to do battle with the condition that, untreated by His grace, is eternally fatal. He still makes such calls through the Word, the Sacraments, prayer, and the fellowship of believers.

We saw Jesus implicitly connecting the forgiveness of sins to healing earlier in this chapter, Matthew 9:2. There, He forgave a paralytic of His sins. Sin is a bigger problem than disease. Notice too that there, as well as in this Sunday's Gospel lesson, Jesus forgives without any indication of repentance on the part of those to who He brings forgiveness/healing. This isn't to disdain repentance. But those who trust in Jesus, believe in Him, trust Him also to take dominion over their sins, even when they're not fully aware of them. You see, all sin is rooted in our failure to allow God first place in our lives. When we trust (have faith in) the God we see in Jesus, our sin is supplanted by God's authority. Repentance inheres in authentic trust in God. Repentance, turning to Christ, is a daily and ongoing part of the lives of Christians, who nothing but recovering sinners who trust God.

4. In our lesson from Romans, Paul discusses the nature of faith, our relationship with God. God blesses us with new life and His constant presence not because we are good people. Abraham's blessings came to him not because he was a good man, Paul says, but because he believed in God. (I laugh a little at Paul's portrait of Abraham. While what he writes of the ancient patriarch of faith is true, it overlooks those moments when Abraham's faith wavered. Twice, you'll remember, unsure that God could be counted on to protect him, Abraham told foreign kings that Sarai/Sarah wasn't his wife, but his sister. The kings briefly prepared to take her as their wives, each avoiding consummation and offense to God simply because God warned them not to go forward with their plans.) The blessings of new life in Jesus Christ belong to all with faith in Him.

5. A major point of interest to me in this Sunday's lesson from Matthew is that Jesus responds to the Pharisees' criticism, although they don't express it directly to Him. It required no supernatural abilities for Jesus to be aware of their criticisms.

Gossip always gets back to the person being gossiped about. Always. And it never contributes to the resolution of conflicts.

Jesus nipped gossip in the bud by confronting the gossips, as we see in our Gospel lesson.

This is an enormous problem in congregations, fostering feelings of distrust and enmity. This is why Jesus commands us in Matthew 18:15-20 on how to deal with situations in which we feel fellow church members have wronged us. We're not to bellyache to others. We're to go directly to the person we feel has wronged us...and we're to do so with the idea that we could be wrong and they could be right.

If their offenses against us don't rise to such a level that we feel it appropriate to confront, then we shouldn't say anything at all to anyone but God.

This has been a hard lesson for me to learn. I'm still learning it.

During this coming Sunday's Small Catechism moment, we'll be considering Luther's explanation of the Eighth Commandment, "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." As always, Luther sees the manner in which God seeks to protect us in this commantment. What does the commandment mean? Luther says:

We are to fear and love God so that we do not betray, slander, or lie about our neighbor, but defend him, speak well of him, and explain his actions in the kindest way.

Notice that the commandment calls us to be co-conspirators with God in protecting, enhancing, and shoring up the reputations of others. That means not just refraining from telling lies about them, it also means speaking well of them when others are talking them down.

[Each week, I present some thoughts on the Bible lessons for the succeeding Sunday. In doing so, I hope to help the people of the congregation I serve, Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, to prepare for worship. And because, we will almost always use the appointed lessons for the Church Year, I also hope that these thoughts can help others prepare for worship too.]