Our greening of the cross this morning coincides with the greening of my vestments. In churches where it is the custom for ministers to vest in liturgical colors, you will begin to see them in green at this time of year. Green is a symbol of growth. Look around you and you will see lush and expansive growth in fields, in gardens, and in woods (although, admittedly, we sure could use more rain).
Growth is evident not only in nature but also among us. June is the month for weddings. A wedding signals growth by the promise of new life together, the birth of children, the growth of a new family.
It is appropriate, then, that our theme for ordinary time is growth. Today we refer here to the growth of a movement. To be more precise, we mean the Jesus’ movement.
How would you launch a movement, one that would have traction? What would occur to you to do?
You’d curry the favor of powerful and influential people. You’d tap donors whom you know to have deep pockets. You’d appoint beautiful people to represent your movement to the public, of the sort who say, “follow me on Instagram.” Who has the most followers on Instagram? The most beautiful people on the planet. The Instagram models and the Gigachads
“Follow me.” Today these words do not come from an Instagram model. Rather, they come from a Jewish rabbi named Jesus. The Gospels nowhere give us a description of his physical features, though Isaiah prophesies of him that “he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him” (Isa. 53:2).
And he does not address the words to one who is good for his movement. Quite the contrary: he directs them to a tax collector named Matthew.
Now remember that in Jesus’ day the Holy Land was subject to Rome, the hated occupying power. Rome placed the administration of their colonies in the hands of officials chosen from local elites, who often bid for the more lucrative positions. Tax collectors were among them.
In effect, then, tax collectors worked for the enemy. They collected the required taxes for the Roman governing authorities, and the extra they charged constituted their own commission. So then, not only did they betray their own people by working for the enemy, but they extorted them for financial gain. For good reason, then, their people despised them.
In fact, by law the tax collector was excluded from the assembly of God’s people. He was disqualified from serving as a witness in a court of law. Robbers, murderers, and tax collectors were categorized together. In short, they were regarded as defiled, as sinners.
Not exactly the sort you want as a poster child in your movement, at least if you want it to be a reputable movement.
But Jesus calls the tax collector named Matthew to follow him. Not only to be a part of his movement, but to make him a member of his inner circle.
Jesus makes good this intention by accepting an invitation to have dinner at his house. Now don’t misunderstand. This was no casual affair. In Jewish circles in Jesus’ time, the act of eating together was invested with religious significance. Boundaries between who was worthy and who was unworthy to share the meal were observed. Rituals such as ceremonial washings, table prayers, and tithing surrounded the meal.
Traitorous tax collectors and sinners, that is, those who live outside the law, were certainly not deserving of a place at the table.
This helps explain the indignation of the Pharisees: “how is it that your teacher eats with tax collectors and sinners?”
In our lesson the Pharisees stand on the opposite side of Jesus and his movement. They do not associate with him. But Pharisaism as a religious attitude has been found among his followers, through the centuries to the present day. “How is it that you allow those people in your church?”
Have we ever heard these words? Have we ever witnessed this Pharisaism in the church? Have we ever known of a church that self-righteously imposed its own boundaries by which it excludes those it regards as unclean, as unrighteous?
It has denied by its actions that Jesus embraces sinners. Not only does he embrace them, he calls them to follow him. He even appoints them a place in his inner circle. In this regard, Calvin observes that with the example of Matthew, Jesus teaches that the calling of us all depends not on our merits, but only on his sheer grace.
To be sure, the church has often lost sight of this. More than a few of you recounted to me examples of an excessively punitive stance a church in your past has taken toward a sinner, even to the point of subjecting him or her to public shaming.
Pharisaism can and always will pose a threat to the church and to its witness.
That is why we absolutely affirm that Jesus desires to show mercy and compassion to all. That is why we readily hear and welcome the words that he has not come to call the righteous, but sinners. We applaud his opposition to those Pharisees. We’ve had enough of those religious bigots anyway.
But all this is also why Pharisaism is not the most pressing problem in the church today, especially in, but certainly not limited to, the Protestant mainline.
“I have come to call not the righteous, but sinners,” says Jesus. Yes, but it is sinners that he has come to call. “It is not the well who need a physician, but the sick, Jesus declares. Yes, but it the sick he has come to heal.
I’m afraid that the words “sinners” and “sick” are a lot harder for us to hear in our cultural moment.
Abigail Favale is the author of a very thoughtful book on a controversial topic. I refer here to transgenderism, a phenomenon that is certainly definitive of our cultural moment.
In this book, The Genesis of Gender, she observes that doctors of patients suffering from gender dysphoria have increasingly adopted an affirmation model of care, unquestioningly affirming a patient’s interpretation of his or her own condition.
She reports that in story after story she hears symptoms of excruciating mental pain and distress, all traced to a single cause, gender, and “treated” through the unproven, catch-all solution of medical transition (196).
She is not surprised that sufferers find such a drastic solution as a panacea to all their problems. What does surprise her is that so many clinicians are uncritically embracing this affirmation model of care, totally dismissive of the lack of high-quality evidence that justifies medicalization (196).
Favale notes further that the affirmation model departs radically from proven therapeutic methods like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which tests distorted perceptions of reality against objective facts (196).
Gender dysphoria needs to be acknowledged and treated as a psychological disorder. People who suffer from this sickness need a real doctor.
But in our culture we resist the language of “disorder” and “pathology.” We fear that such language is labeling. We are afraid that we are judging. We are afraid of backlash from the culture (which itself has become very Pharisaical). Or we want to be sensitive; we do not want to offend anyone.
We understand this resistance, but in the last analysis, we must disagree with it. To reclassify “disorder” as “order,” to redescribe the “sick” as “healthy,” is to foreclose on the possibility of healing and recovery (196).
Favale shares about her own struggles with anxiety, depression, and self-harm. She doesn’t want a doctor to tell her that those things are normal and good and a part of her identity that she should proudly affirm. She wants to be healed (196).
Then she calls to mind all those passages in the Gospels that portray Jesus as healer. Jesus heals people from all kinds of afflictions. They cry out to him, they reach for him, they call upon him. They are aware of their need for healing (196).
Just like the woman in our lesson. She’s been hemorrhaging for 12 years. Matthew adds the detail to impress on us that her condition is chronic and therefore more and more hopeless, with each passing year.
Moreover, not only does she have to cope with the illness. She also has to bear its stigma. According to the Levitical code, a woman who was bleeding was considered unclean and therefore could touch no one, lest she defile him or her. That perhaps explains why she comes up behind Jesus. She wants to escape detection and avoid direct contact with anyone.
Nevertheless, she has faith in the power of Jesus to heal. She believes that even the touch of his cloak will be enough to heal her. And Jesus rewards her faith. He turns to her and says: “Take heart, daughter, your faith has made you well” (Matt. 9:22).
“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” The woman was sick. She did not reject the language of pathology. She did not renounce her identity as one afflicted with a sickness. She came to Jesus with her sickness, together with her faith, and was healed.
Does the fact that even in the church we are uncomfortable with the language of pathology reflect our lack of confidence in the power of Jesus to heal and transform?
Perhaps our attitude in the church, if we are honest, is really like that of the flute players and the crowds whom Jesus encountered when he arrived at the house of the leader of the synagogue.
When he intimated his intention to heal the daughter of the synagogue ruler, they laughed scoffingly at him.
Do we scoff at Jesus? Do we laugh when we hear the preacher preach about his power to heal and to transform a life, our lives or the lives of others, even the most desperate?
Oh, if we are good church people, we probably don’t laugh openly. We are probably like Sarah in the tent. When she overheard that she was to bear a son, she laughed to herself, saying “shall I indeed bear a son now that I am old?
“The Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son.” But Sarah denied, saying, “I did not laugh,” for she was afraid. He said, “Yes, you did laugh” (Gen. 18:13-15).
Our epistle lesson commends the faith that believes in the face of the desperate. “Hoping against hope, Abraham believed…. He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb…. But he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised… (Rom. 4:18-21).
The church that believes in Jesus does not retreat to the tent and laugh to itself. The church that believes in Jesus, the church that is confident in the power of the gospel to save speaks the truth in love.
To speak the truth in love… Granted, the phrase too easily becomes a platitude, too simple and trite, and too often co-opted by churches to draw up party lines (Favale 206).
And indeed the churches tend to break down along these lines and split into two opposing camps.
There are churches that stand on truth. They have a high view of Scripture. They adhere to the creeds and their confessions. They inculcate in their people a coherent ethics that is thoroughly biblical.
Then there are churches that stand on love. They extend mercy and compassion. They are concerned for the poor. They advocate for the marginalized, oppressed and the exploited. Many of them speak about social justice. They promote inclusivity and acceptance.
But love and truth are inseparable in Jesus. The Gospel of John tells us that grace and truth come to us through him (John 1:17). If ever we find ourselves sacrificing one for the sake of other, we are departing from the narrow path.
In his First Letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul gives us an image of what truth without love sounds like: a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal (207).
Perhaps the counter image of what love without truth sounds like would be the advertising jingle: insipid and lame (207).
Love separated from truth degenerates into mere flattery. It is not loving to validate a lie. It is not loving to be complicit in someone’s self-deception (207).
What would it look like to be a church that speaks the truth in love, a church that refuses to choose between the alternatives of the church of truth and the church of love?
No two churches are alike. But one hopes that they’d all have people in them like a woman named Madison and a man named Sean.
Madison, a college professor, came to faith in Christ. But she did not immediately adopt every teaching of the faith into her personal life. She had no family members or close friends to guide her.
She then found out that a former student turned seminarian, Sean, was a member of the church she was attending. She shared with him all her objections, all her unresolved questions.
Sean listened to her attentively. He was open and patient. He took her concerns seriously. He wanted her to come to him with her questions rather than confront her directly. And when she did, he answered them as truthfully as he could. He did not sugarcoat or equivocate, but spoke to her even the difficult truths.
This often irritated her, but what he said to her worked on her, and later she came to faith.
Looking back, Madison reflected that if Sean came out with both guns blazing, calling her out for her defiance, for her disobedience, she may not have come to faith in Christ. She may have stayed ambivalent, defensive and suspicious, admiring Christ and the Christian faith from afar, but never becoming a follower herself (adapted from Favale, 213-14).
May we all have the faith and the courage of the Seans among us. May we all have confidence in the power of Jesus Christ to heal and to transform lives. Jesus Christ indeed takes us as we are, but he remakes us into who he wants us to become. Amen.