We are reading this passage this morning.
We're gonna be looking at Matthew chapter nine
and then the reading from Hosea that Evan read a moment ago.
And we do have our elementary age kids in here,
so I'd like to welcome you.
And hopefully as you came in,
you received one of these packets.
And I invite you to use this to kind of follow along.
The reading that you just heard from Matthew nine
is actually in here.
Along with some questions and activities,
you can use this.
If you're anything like me,
whenever I sit and listen to a sermon,
I need something to do with my hands.
I fidget a lot.
And so I need to be scribbling or drawing
or taking notes or something in order to focus.
And so if you're like me, use this.
And so this is not only for kids,
but also for grownups if you need help in focusing.
We're gonna be looking at Matthew chapter nine primarily.
At this point in Matthew's gospel,
we're beginning to see that Jesus
is not just another religious leader.
We're beginning to get a sense in Matthew's gospel
that Jesus is not just a social reformer.
Jesus is, it's beginning to be clear
at this point in Matthew's gospel
that Jesus is doing something entirely new.
He's not just starting a new religion.
He's not just amending an existing religion.
But it's starting to become clear
that Jesus is subverting all religion.
He's subverting the mechanisms
that drive religion itself.
And we see this in his encounter
with a man named Matthew
and then a meal that they share
at the home of Matthew.
And if we understand what this passage tells us,
what we see here is that Jesus is establishing
a new kind of spiritual community
that blows apart all existing categories.
And what this shows us is the reason
why the gospel alone has the power
not only to heal individuals,
but it actually has the power
to heal the social fabric of society,
which is something that we all desperately need.
Those of us in here, we desperately want that.
Those of us, all of the people out
around this building all want that.
We all want that kind of world.
This shows us why the gospel alone
has the power to give us that kind of world.
So what we're gonna see is this,
a new social order that is made possible
by a new spiritual foundation.
So we'll look at it in that order,
a new social order,
and then what makes it possible,
a new spiritual foundation.
Let's pray.
Lord, we thank you for your word,
and we thank you for your presence with us.
And we know that apart from your grace,
your word falls on rock,
and that what we need is for your Holy Spirit
to till up the soil of our hearts
to make it receptive to your word.
And that we pray that you would plant your word in us,
and that it would take root and grow,
and that that new life would grow up into our lives.
Lord, that you would pour your life
into our lives through your word.
We pray this in your son's holy name.
Amen.
So first of all, a new social order.
Let's ask this question just to get started.
What does a meal have to do with the social order?
What could this possibly have to do with the social order?
We need a little context here.
In the ancient world,
table fellowship was a very big deal.
Because table fellowship had a symbolic power.
It reinforced the lines of inclusion
and exclusion in society.
And all of those lines were running through society.
And meals were a big way that people in the ancient world symbolized
where those lines were drawn.
So there were strong social boundaries in place
that determined which kinds of people it was acceptable to eat with.
Eating with the right kinds of people
could raise your status in the social hierarchy.
Eating with the wrong kinds of people
could lower your status in the social hierarchy.
Now, in our culture, for a lot of us,
meals don't have that same level of significance.
We have become accustomed to eating meals in our car
while we're driving somewhere.
They're just not as significant.
But the lines of inclusion and exclusion
are still very much in place
and arguably stronger than ever.
We have an innate tendency as human beings
to divide the world into two basic groups of people.
People like me,
the kind of good, acceptable, reasonable people,
and then the other people.
People not like me.
People who I'm suspicious of
and don't regard as highly
and don't prefer to spend my time with
and in some senses find to be offensive and unlikable.
So two groups of people,
people like me and everyone else.
And this really has to do with how our brains are wired.
Remember in Harry Potter, there's the sorting hat, right?
Where kids come to Hogwarts
and the first thing that happens is
they're brought up front
and they put the sorting hat on them.
And the sorting hat just takes a minute or two.
And just after a minute or two,
it can tell which group that child belongs in.
And then the child is sent off
to spend the rest of their formative years
with this group they've been assigned to.
Human beings all sort of have
a kind of internal sorting hat.
Our brains are actually wired to operate that way.
We have an internal sorting hat.
And so our brains tend to do these activities all the time.
We tend, for instance, to see people not as individuals,
but we're actually wired to see people
as part of a group.
We see people as members of a group.
And our brains have evolved to sort people
into those two basic groups, us and them.
And our brains are also wired to do this
using the least amount of energy possible.
So you have an internal sorting hat
that has as its sole job
to sort people into groups
using the least amount of time and energy possible.
And this actually increases when we feel stress,
when we feel fear,
when we feel anxiety.
The sorting hat kind of goes into overdrive
because it's essentially a survival mechanism.
If you can determine very quickly
whether someone is a friend or an enemy,
your chances of survival are going to go up, right?
And your sorting hat is dramatically influenced
by all kinds of things.
Your upbringing, your education,
your life experiences,
all manner of social and cultural factors.
But the point is,
when you meet somebody for the first time,
you automatically put on your sorting hat
and you automatically begin to categorize them.
And most of the time,
we're not even aware that we're doing it.
It's not a conscious thing that's happening.
But your brain goes to work
looking for signals
to help it determine what group that person belongs to.
So we look at their appearance.
We look at their clothing,
things like their shoes, their watch.
Are they put together?
Do they look disheveled?
We listen to their accent.
We look at their posture,
their eye contact,
their behavior,
their word choice,
their cultural references.
And all of those things are cues
that our sorting hat is using
to categorize that person.
Right?
So in the ancient world,
table fellowship was a clear indicator
of group identity.
That helped you sort somebody really quickly.
Oh, that's that person's group.
Right?
But we rely on other symbols.
Right?
So we rely on looking at
what people post online, for instance.
You read a couple of tweets
from somebody's account
and you can probably categorize them.
Or at least you try to.
We look at their word choices.
We look at their cultural references.
A lot of people wear symbols
that act as indicators
to self-identify as part of a group.
So a MAGA hat or a pride flag
or a BLM t-shirt or something like that.
You're wearing a kind of symbol
that is self-identifying.
I want you to see me
as a part of this group.
Right?
And so there are all these kinds of ways
that we do it.
And based off these cues,
we immediately start making assumptions
about these people
that we encounter for the first time.
We're trying to determine
what are their values?
What are their beliefs?
But ultimately,
there's the only question
that really matters
for our sorting hat is this.
Is this person like me?
Are they one of the good people?
Or are they not like me?
Or are they an other kind of person?
And here's the thing.
Usually within a few seconds,
your brain delivers the verdict
and it moves on.
Because as we said,
it's trying to do this
as efficiently as possible.
And our natural tendency
is to move away from people
who we identify as the other
and to gravitate toward people
we identify as being like me.
And this impulse, I would argue,
this impulse sits behind religions
that sort people into good people
and bad people.
It sits behind political polarization.
It sits behind race and class divisions
in our society.
Behind all of those things,
you will find this in-group, out-group,
like me, not like me,
sorting hat activity driving things.
So let's ask this.
That's a little bit of a context here.
What would the sorting hat
say about someone like Matthew?
Matthew was a tax collector.
What does that mean?
Well, Rome had conquered
much of the known world.
By this point,
they were the occupying force in Palestine
and they required
all of their subjects to pay taxes.
So they required the Jews
in Palestine to pay taxes.
And in order to collect taxes,
they would hire the locals.
They would hire local Jews
to collect taxes from other Jews.
And in order to collect the taxes,
these Jews would have to go around
to their fellow neighbors
and demand that they pay what they owed.
But here's the real nasty part
of the business.
The incentive for the tax collectors
was this.
They would say,
the Roman officials would say,
after you've collected what we need,
anything extra that you're able to collect,
you can keep,
and that's your commission.
So, of course,
what does this incentivize them to do?
Well, it incentivizes them
to collect a lot more money
than was actually required.
So they're incentivizing Jews
to extort their own people.
And so tax collectors got rich,
literally,
from the oppression and injustice
perpetrated against their own people.
Matthew is someone who makes a living
by working for the oppressors
and extorting money from his fellow Jews.
So he's,
not only is there a kind of
systemic injustice happening,
but he's knowingly getting rich
because of it.
So most Jews would have seen Matthew
and immediately the sorting hat
would kick in
and start sounding the alarm.
This man is a traitor
against God's people.
He's a traitor against God.
He is unclean
because he spends all of his time
with Gentiles.
He's worse than the Romans.
He's evil.
Matthew likely did not have many friends.
But,
Jesus comes along
and Jesus sees Matthew.
And a respectable Jewish rabbi
seeing somebody like Matthew
with the sorting hat would say,
you need to head
to the other side of the street.
But Jesus moves directly toward him.
He goes right up to Matthew
and looks at him
and he says,
I want you to follow me.
And it says,
Matthew immediately gets up
and goes and follows Jesus.
And that evening,
Jesus has dinner at Matthew's house.
We know that from the other Gospels.
And Matthew invites the only friends he has
who are Matthew's friends.
Well, other tax collectors.
Right?
The only kind of people
who are going to hang out
with somebody like Matthew
are other people
who do the same job.
So they all hang out with each other
because they don't have any other friends.
And an assortment of other people
that are just identified as sinners.
Now that,
in this context,
that means just notoriously sinful people.
People who,
everybody knows,
that's just a dirty,
rotten, awful person.
And so all of these people come
and they're having dinner with Jesus.
And the religious leaders are horrified.
Why on earth
would a respectable Jewish rabbi like Jesus
eat with unclean people like that?
Because as we said earlier,
in their world,
there were good people,
the morally faithful people,
the clean people.
And then there were
the unclean,
dirty,
evil people.
And associating with unclean people
would make you unclean.
So if you're a clean
and respectable member of society,
just standing with an unclean person
and having a conversation,
that would taint you
and make you unclean.
So they're horrified.
But what we see here
is that Jesus is very clearly
establishing a new social order.
This table is a microcosm.
It's the slightest glimmer
of the kind of world
that God is building.
With Jesus,
people who would otherwise
not even speak with one another
are coming together
around the same table.
And this, my friends,
is exactly the kind of world
that we need.
A new kind of community
where all of the old lines
of division
between insider and outsider
are broken down.
This is the kind of world
that many people long for,
religious,
non-religious.
This is the kind of world
that many people devote their lives
to trying to build.
So what makes this kind of thing possible?
That's the question
this passage really wants to answer.
So we see a new social order,
but what makes it possible?
It's this new spiritual foundation
that Jesus brings.
What do I mean by foundation?
Well, everybody has a foundation.
Everybody has a place
that we look to
to get our sense of worth
and value and identity.
How do I know
that I'm okay in the world?
Whatever I look to for that,
that's my foundation.
And there are really
only two options down deep,
two kinds of foundations.
And the first type of foundation
that people build their lives on
is the foundation
that's sort of the default
for most of humanity.
This is the one
that we're naturally wired to go to,
which is the foundation
of what we might call
moral performance.
In other words,
the moral performance foundation says,
the foundation of my identity
or the way that I know
I'm a good person
is because of what I do.
It's because of the things
that I do in the world,
the way I live.
So if you're a traditional
religious kind of person
like the Pharisees,
you might say,
well, what's my foundation?
Well, I know that
I'm a righteous person
because I read
the scriptures faithfully.
I pray every day.
I go to worship services regularly.
I obey God's law.
I keep myself clean.
Good people go to heaven
when they die.
I'm a good person.
So with the moral performance narrative,
your sense of righteousness
or rightness
comes from the fact
that you're a devoted,
morally upright person.
But that's not the only kind
of moral performance foundation
you can have.
This is going to change
based on your beliefs, right?
So you can have a non-religious,
secular, progressive person,
and they might have
a moral performance foundation,
but it's defined very differently.
They might say,
well, I know I'm a good person
because I believe in things
like tolerance and inclusion.
I'm very open-minded
and I think that everybody
should live their own truth.
And in that case,
you still have a sense
of righteousness,
but that righteousness
comes from a different
set of variables, right?
It comes from the fact
that you believe in tolerance
and inclusion
and you think of yourself
as open-minded.
The point I want to make
is that even though
these groups look completely
different on the surface,
underneath they're actually
all operating according
to the same principle,
which is a foundation
of moral performance.
I'm the traditional
religious framework
and the secular
progressive framework.
He's subverting the mechanism
that drives both
of those foundations.
He's turning the entire thing
upside down.
And we recognize that
because of this exchange
with the Pharisees.
When the Pharisees ask,
why would Jesus associate
with sinners and tax collectors?
Look at what Jesus says.
He says, like a rabbi would say,
go and learn what this means.
And then he quotes Hosea.
I desire mercy
and not sacrifice.
Now, is he saying
that sacrifice is no good?
No, no, no, no.
The main concern
in the book of Hosea
is that God's people
have become totally focused
on moral performance.
In other words,
they've become totally focused
on external religious rituals.
As long as they observe
the rituals
and do the sacrifices
like the Bible tells them,
then they're going to be
right with God.
And Hosea is basically saying
they've forgotten
what it's all about.
They've forgotten
the heart of God.
So we might rephrase it this way.
God is saying,
I desire mercy,
not moral performance.
I desire mercy,
not moral performance.
We say, okay,
well, what does that mean?
What do we mean by God's mercy?
God's mercy,
put another way,
is God's eternal desire,
because it comes out
of his very nature,
his eternal desire
to give people
what they didn't earn,
what they don't deserve,
what they could never repay.
It is God's eternal nature
to give people
what they didn't earn,
don't deserve,
and could never repay.
See, the moral performance
narrative says,
I'm a good, upright person,
and God surely considers me
one of the good guys
because of that.
Right?
On a curve,
I'm probably in at least
the upper third
of good people.
Right?
But Jesus says,
deep down,
no one is okay.
All human beings,
as he says here,
are sick
because of sin.
And he represents himself
in all of the gospels
as the great physician
who has come to heal humanity
of this sickness.
But the point he's making here
is that only people
who know they're sick
are gonna come to the physician.
Only people who know
they need mercy
are going to ask
and cry out for forgiveness.
And this is why we said
at the beginning
that Jesus came to subvert
all religion.
Religion divides people
into good people
and bad people
based on what we do.
Traditional religions
have one way
of doing this.
The modern secular religion
of political activism
has other ways
of doing this.
But down deep,
the moral performance narrative,
if you build your life
on that foundation,
one way or another,
depending on your values,
you're gonna be dividing
the world
into the good people
and the bad people.
Jesus throws the entire paradigm
of good and bad
out the window.
Jesus' community
is not based
on moral performance
at all.
It's based on mercy.
It's a new spiritual foundation
to build your life on.
According to Jesus,
the fundamental difference
between human beings
is not based on what we do.
It's based on whether or not
we know we need God's mercy.
It's based on whether or not
we know that fundamentally
we're not okay.
That there is something
deeply wrong
in the human condition.
And that we need something
outside of ourselves
in order to fix it.
Right?
So at the heart of God's mercy
is God's love.
In fact,
in the Old Testament,
the word that is often
translated as mercy
can actually also be translated
as steadfast love.
Chesed.
So the same word,
God's steadfast love,
means God's mercy.
That's why God is merciful.
And because of that,
this offers a hope
unlike anything else
in the world.
Because religious traditionalists
will say,
if you want to be accepted,
you have to change.
If you want to be accepted,
you have to change.
You have to get your life together.
You have to start living
by God's law.
And then we will accept you
into our community.
And that's a kind of judgmentalism
that offers no hope
because it crushes people.
It's like saying,
in order to come to the physician,
you have to be well.
In order to be served
at this restaurant,
you have to have already eaten.
Right?
In order to come
and wash in this shower,
you have to already be clean.
It offers no hope.
On the other hand,
the kind of secular progressive view says,
we will accept you as you are,
come one, come all.
And how dare you say
that anyone needs to change?
How dare you suggest
that anyone needs to change?
But I think deep down,
we know that that's a kind
of shallow sentimentalism
that really doesn't offer any hope
because deep down,
we all know we need to change.
If human beings didn't need to change
in some fundamental way,
then why is society so broken?
Why is there so much poverty
and injustice and violence and racism
if we don't need to change?
And it's easy to think
that the other person needs to change.
But if we're honest,
do we really believe that?
And what we see with Jesus
is that because of the love
and mercy of Jesus,
the gospel is able to say
both of those things
at the same time
in a way that's only possible
because of mercy.
Another way of putting it is this.
Jesus loves us so much
that he always takes us as we are,
but he never leaves us as we are.
He always takes us as we are,
but he never leaves us as we are.
And all of that is summed up
in two words in this passage
where we see mercy on full display.
Follow me.
Because at the same time,
it is saying both.
On the one hand,
Jesus says to Matthew,
follow me.
And that is an invitation
to be accepted as we are.
You don't need to get your act together.
You don't need to go spend a year
pulling your life together
and then apply to be my follower.
I want you to stand up
and come with me right now
and from this moment forward
before there's been any visible change
in your life,
you're one of mine.
You belong to me.
You'll no longer be known
as a traitor to your people.
You'll no longer be known
as an exploiter of the poor.
From now on,
you're gonna be known as my follower.
You're gonna be associated with me.
You're gonna be defined entirely
by your association
with my new community
as my disciple.
It's a new identity for you.
In fact,
you know,
he has two names
and one theory is that
Levi was his sort of
pre-conversion name
and that Jesus may have given him
the name Matthew
to clarify
this new sense of identity.
The Pharisees thought
that uncleanness was contagious.
They thought that
to be spiritually dirty,
that that was contagious
and if I'm a clean person
and I associate
with an unclean person,
I'm gonna catch it
like catching COVID
and so they practiced
social distancing.
They stayed away
from all of the unclean people.
Right?
But with Jesus,
it's the opposite.
With Jesus,
holiness is contagious.
contagious.
Cleanness is contagious.
The most sort of
wretched person
in the eyes
of the Pharisees,
the most unclean person
imaginable,
just by associating
with Jesus
by faith
is made clean.
Jesus' holiness,
his righteousness,
his cleanness
is transferred
onto that person
simply by associating
with Jesus
in faith,
believing that Jesus
is who he says he is.
Believing that Jesus
can do what he says
he can do.
Holiness is contagious.
So on the one hand,
follow me.
He says,
come as you are.
I accept you as you are
and just by being with me,
you're going to be made holy.
But then on the other hand,
Jesus loves us so much
that he takes us as we are
but he loves us so much
that he doesn't leave us
as we are.
On the other hand,
he says,
follow me,
which means a call
to a radically different
way of living.
Leave your old life behind.
He doesn't continue
to collect taxes.
He leaves his business.
Make everything secondary
to me.
Hold fast to me.
Make the focus
of your daily life me.
Walk with me.
Become like me.
It's a call
to transformation.
And he's not just saying,
you know,
these parts are okay
but these parts
need to change.
He's saying,
by follow me,
he's saying,
everything about you
needs to be rebuilt
from the foundations up.
But that's gonna happen
by following me.
So this is how Jesus
establishes a new social order
built on a new
spiritual foundation.
Right?
When the foundation
of your life
is moral performance,
you will always tend
to divide the world
into good people
and bad people,
insiders and outsiders.
You will always tend
to prefer the company
of people like you
and you will avoid
and look down on
and condemn people
who are less like you.
But when the foundation
of your life
is mercy,
it changes the entire way
that you see
other human beings.
You will become
more and more
the kind of person
who is compelled
not to avoid
those unlike you
but to move
toward them
intentionally.
To move toward those
who are outside the camp,
who are outside the circle,
who are on the margins.
to move toward the people
that other people
in your group
might want to avoid.
And the reason is
because you know
that there was a time
when you were that person
and instead of avoiding you,
Jesus came into your life
and he called you
and he said,
follow me.
And you've experienced
that love that says,
I'm going to accept you
as you are
but I'm not going to leave you
as you are.
You're going to become
the kind of person
who's able to both love
and accept people
as they are
but also the kind of person
who's able to strive
to become more like Jesus
and encourage others
to do that.
You're going to be able
to talk honestly
and openly
about your moral failings.
And you're going to be
the kind of person
that other people
feel comfortable
doing that with
because your life
is built on a foundation
of mercy.
And I know I can share
that kind of thing with you
and you're not going to
sort me out of your group
because we both recognize
that we're sick
and we're both going
to the same doctor
to get well.
God's mercy makes it possible
for there to be a community
where anyone can belong
as they are
and yet everyone
is striving to become
what they were created to be.
Let's pray.
Our Heavenly Father,
we thank you for your mercy.
we pray that what now
may just be words
would become something else.
They would become
that whatever of this
is from you,
that this would become
flesh in us.
That the soil
that you have tilled up
would receive the truth
and the promise
of your mercy.
That whatever there is
in our lives,
whatever foundation
we have built
on our own morality,
whatever that may be,
I pray that that would be
that you would use
the jackhammer
of the Holy Spirit
to tear that out
and that you would build
a new foundation
of mercy in us
that we might become
a people
defined by your mercy.
We pray this for our good
and that we might be
the kind of salt and light
in the world
that you call us to be.
We pray your blessing
on those in this room
and all those outside
these doors, Lord,
that all would come
to know your love
and your mercy.
We pray this
in the name of your Son,
Jesus Christ.
Amen.