Matthew 9:9-17

Matthew 9:9-17 NIV

As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. 
While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Then John’s disciples came and asked him, “How is it that we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?”
Jesus answered, “How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast. “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.”

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The challenges to Jesus' ministry continue in the calling of Matthew, a tax collector. You may know that tax collectors were hated in Israel. The tax collector was a fellow Jew, employed by Rome to collect taxes from his own neighbors. The tax collector made his living by charging more for tax than Rome needed. Whatever he charged the people, the Roman soldiers helped to extract by force when necessary. Tax collectors became very wealthy from overcharging to pay their wage. You can understand why they were despised.

For Jesus to befriend Matthew was scandalous. For Him to eat with Matthew and his associates was to broadcast friendship with sinners. It was unconscionable for a holy man to do so. Yet Jesus called Matthew to become His disciple and Matthew followed.

The simple invitation, "Follow me", means to assist Jesus in His ministry. It means to serve Jesus as a faithful attendant and to keep to His teachings. Matthew left his tax collection business to serve Jesus. He threw a dinner party in celebration and some in Matthew's circle came to join their host, Jesus, and the other disciples.

The teachers of the law, disgusted at Jesus for associating with sinners and tax collectors, asked why He did so. Jesus responded that the healthy don't need a doctor. The sick do. He came to call sinners not the righteous back to God.

Why wouldn't Jesus call the righteous? I can assume it is because the righteous were too busy hating the sinners to be any use to Jesus' revival of Israel.

Today churches everywhere are dwindling in membership, filled with the faithful frozen chosen. They are chosen by Christ as His disciples to go and make more followers of Jesus and thereby transform the world with God's mercy and compassion. They are faithful to the traditions of the church and serve church ministry and contribute to missions and other forms of service, but they do not effectively reach their surrounding community. Perhaps it is because they are too busy with church activities, or too afraid to reach out and associate with sinners and those marginalized by our society. The teachers of the law in this story could have been in attendance at a few church bible studies and committee meetings I've joined, for the same us-versus-them mentality prevailed. While the so called righteous consider themselves the inside crowd, Jesus is building His church with those considered outside of God's blessings.

Are you a church insider confident of your good standing before God? Or are you more like Matthew and his friends, outside of the entitlement of religious affiliation, but hearing God's call to join Jesus in helping to revive the lost souls around you with good news about God's love and mercy? Will you get up and follow? Will you stand with your arms crossed and wag your tongue about sinners? Will you love, reach and teach, or scold and obstruct? Ask yourself if your response is righteous in Jesus' eyes.

The disciples of John the Baptist also challenged Jesus and His disciples about feasting with Matthew, rather than fasting like the other observant Jews did. Jesus reasoned that you don't mourn when the wedding party is happening. No! You join in the celebration. The point is that Jesus is cause to celebrate, for He ushered in the era of grace. He is truly a friend to sinners. But unfortunately the religious gate keepers don't understand this new era. Faithfully defending the traditions of their fathers, they guard against any change or new interpretation that may cause them to live differently, like embrace sinners as brothers and sisters made in God's image.

Jesus said the disciples will mourn and fast later when the bridegroom (Jesus) is taken away, a reference to His crucifixion. Now, while Jesus walked among them, they are to celebrate. Jesus poured Himself into simple men and women. Many were poor like the fishermen He called, some were wealthy like Matthew, but all were far enough removed from the religious guard dogs that they were malleable and ready to be formed as His disciples. They are like new wineskins, able to stretch spiritually speaking. Those stuck in tradition were not able to accept Jesus. Even the disciples of John the Baptist may not have been able to embrace Jesus as their teacher and master.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not anti-tradition. I'm not. I love my Methodist tradition, most odd it anyway. However, traditions have a way of existing for their own perpetuation, and not truly for Christ's mission of redemption in the world. Insiders can become blind to what God is doing as they maintain what has been handed down to them.

The new wine is the gospel, which Jesus preached and which formed the church. The new wineskins were the apostles and others who answered His call to follow. Again this story of John's disciples challenging Jesus about fasting illustrates that the presumed insiders are outside the new thing God is doing.

What these stories of Jesus say to me is to always be open to the new thing God is doing. Right now there are many social issues that are hot topics in the church. These issues cause division. As I watch the rift forming and tearing at my own tradition, I wonder to myself, "What is God up to?" Few of our heated debates reveal the humility needed to consider that perhaps our tradition needs to change in order to follow Christ, in order to join Him in the new thing He is doing. Each fighting faction holds their ground while Jesus is reaching out beyond the assembly halls where church policies are made dogma.

The word of God asks me today if I wish to follow and attend to Jesus and His ministry to the outsiders. I have to admit that it feels comfortable on the inside. I'd much rather live in the illusion that I'm on the right side of every issue and busy myself with inwardly focused church activities, which makes me unfit for the mission of Christ's church. I doubt I'm alone in my thoughts, however deplorable they may be. The gospel compels me to shake off the dust of my ineffective attempts at discipleship and follow Jesus into reaching out to sinners and the marginalized, people very different from me. Pray for me to find grace to "get up and follow".