230611 Sermon on Matthew 9:9-13 (Pentecost 2 Proper 5A) June 11, 2023

 Audio recording

Sermon manuscript:

Jesus said, “Those who are well have
no need of a physician, but those who are sick.”

Are you sick? It’s not easy to say “Yes, I am sick.”

Let me illustrate. Sometimes pastors get asked to visit
non-members who are terminally ill. I’ve made more than a few visits like that.
I usually ask someone who is dying, regardless of membership, whether he or she
believes that he or she is a poor, miserable sinner. You’re familiar with that
language because we say that in church: “I, a poor, miserable sinner confess
unto you…” When someone has never heard those words, or been absent for a long
time, those words seem to strike them as being overly harsh. More than one such
person has responded to my question by saying, “Yes, okay, I’m a sinner, but
I’m not so sure about that poor and miserable part.” I appreciate these folks’ honesty.
They are only saying what we all would probably say if we weren’t trained to
say something different.

People usually aren’t afraid to admit that they are sinners
in general. I’ve never met anyone who says that he or she is perfect. Everybody
makes mistakes. But everybody wants to believe the best about themselves too. “Ok,
fine, I screwed up, but now I’m on the right track.”

Maybe sometimes we feel very strongly that we are poor,
miserable sinners. That can happen when sin is hot and fresh and stinks to high
heaven. But with the passage of time we can kind of forget about what we’ve
done. Moss grows over the sin so that we can’t see it anymore.

Plus we can usually find some other poor schmucks who are
worse off than we are. I haven’t murdered anyone. I haven’t smoked crack. I
drag my butt out of bed so that I keep my job. Not everybody does that good. Plus,
you might think, I go to church. That’s getting rarer and rarer these days. And
not only have I gone to church, I go to the right church, thank you very much.
My church is in the right synod. My church doesn’t do bad stuff like those
other churches. So, come to think of it, I’m doing alright! I’m not perfect.
Nobody’s perfect. But I can find a whole bunch of other people who are a lot
poorer and more miserable than me!

This kind of reasoning doesn’t sound too bad. It doesn’t
sound too bad, if, for no other reason, it is quite common. Nevertheless it reveals
that we are much worse off than any mere murderer or drug addict. Justifying
yourself by always being on the lookout for others whom you suppose to be worse
than you is a very serious sin. It is a sin against the first commandment. You
are your own justifier. You are your own God. Thus your sin is worse than the
sins of those who might just be breaking the fifth, sixth, or seventh
commandment. You believing in your own goodness and righteousness means you are
spiritually sicker than those whom you might be judging.

You probably have a hard time believing that, and I can
sympathize because I have my common sense and reasoning just like you. If I were
to put one of you fine, upstanding citizens next to troubled soul and asked
people to judge which is better, they would probably pick you every time.

So it was at Jesus’s time too though. One time Jesus told a
group of fine, upstanding pharisees that tax collectors and prostitutes were
going to enter the kingdom of God before they ever would. The pharisees were
quite diligent, lawful people. If you put one of those fine upstanding church
goers next to a thug or a lady of the night, which one would appear to be godlier?
Common sense gives you the answer.

But Jesus means what he says when he says that tax
collectors and prostitutes will enter the kingdom of heaven before the
pharisees. The outside might look as good and respectable as can be, but
inwardly there can be the most devilish things—spiritual sins that common sense
and reason are not so good at understanding. And there is nothing more devilish
than pride. There is nothing more devilish than pointing, sneering, accusing, judging.

Something that we can see from our Gospel reading today is
that Jesus is very different than us. Jesus is good and kind. He doesn’t point
and sneer at the sinners. He doesn’t say, “Look how sick he is! Ack! How
disgusting!”

Imagine if there were a doctor doing that—going from one
room to the next in a hospital, pointing at the poor sick people and laughing
at them. “Oh, how sick you are! Look how sick you are compared to me! How can
you sit there and be so sick when I’m so well?” We would rightly wonder if such
a physician were more profoundly sick than the patients whom he is supposed to
be treating.

But Jesus is a good physician. He helps people who are sick.
He isn’t disgusted by them or avoid them. He goes to Matthew and says, “Follow me,” even though Matthew was a notorious
sinner. Jesus stays with some tax collectors and sinners at his house. He eats
with them.

When we consider Jesus’s kind actions towards these folks it
is important to know why Jesus did what he did. Jesus did not associate with
these notorious sinners because he loved how tax collectors abused,
manipulated, and cheated people. Jesus also doesn’t love how the 5th,
6th, 7th, or any of the other commandments are broken.
Jesus doesn’t like any destructive and sinful things. Jesus is the enemy of
these things and wants to set them free from them. So he forgave their sin.
They were sick to death with unrighteousness. They were poor and miserable. Jesus
made them well, giving them his own perfect righteousness.

The pharisees were concerned that Jesus was being too nice
to these people who weren’t doing right and living right. That’s understandable
from a certain perspective. The pharisees were concerned about the example that
Jesus seemed to be setting. It might appear to some that Jesus didn’t seem care
about sins. It was like Jesus was saying that sins didn’t matter. So, the
Pharisees thought, Jesus should shun them and not have anything to do with
them. Otherwise everybody is going to think that sinning doesn’t matter.

As I said, the pharisees’ line of reasoning would be valid from
a certain perspective. If there were no cure for what ailed these people, then
Jesus should probably stay away. Imagine a doctor who can’t help. It’s impossible
to help. And yet he goes and pokes and prods, slices and dices—nothing good can
come from that. In like manner, if there was nothing that Jesus could do for
these spiritually sick people, then all that Jesus probably would accomplish is
to desensitize folks to the seriousness of sin.

But Jesus is able to help these people who are sick. Jesus
can help people who are very, very sick. They can be downright poor and
miserable. In fact, as Paul says in Ephesians chapter 2, your spiritual
condition is so bad that you were “dead in your
trespasses and sins…” Then he goes on, “But God,
because he is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,
made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in trespasses.” Death
is not an obstacle too great for our great physician.

If that is so, if Jesus is such a great physician that he gives
life to sinners who are so bad that they are dead, then in the midst of sinners
is exactly where this physician must be. The Christian Church is a spiritual
hospital. Sick sinners belong here. If you don’t want to be a sinner, then you
are in the wrong place, and have no business being with Jesus.

If there is one thing that I hope you take away from our
Gospel reading today it is that your spiritual sickness is not an impediment to
you being saved. In a way it’s true that sin doesn’t matter. Sin or the lack of
sin isn’t why a single sinner will be saved. God is the justifier of the
ungodly. You are not the justifier of yourself.

We can see this in our Gospel reading: Jesus called
notorious Matthew, a veritable tax collector, to be his disciple. Jesus says
very plainly, “I came not to call the righteous, but
sinners.” Your salvation does not depend on you making yourself well.
Your salvation depends on the skill and power of the physician. He simply says,
“Follow me.” That is, “Listen to me. Believe my
words.” The first task, and almost only task, that the Christian Church has is
to speak Jesus’s words of forgiveness to poor, miserable sinners.

So let me conclude with the question with which I began: Are
you sick? Usually we like to cheer people up. Politeness almost demands that we
say, “You’re doing just fine. You’re getting better and stronger.” But we all
know that being polite and being truthful are often not the same thing.

Although it might not be altogether polite, I hope that you
feel worse about yourself than when you came in here today. I hope you see that
your are poorer and more miserable. On the other hand, I hope that you see how
good of a physician Jesus is. He is so skillful and mighty that he can even
raise someone who is so sick that they are even dead. Maybe you weren’t
thinking you were all the poor and miserable when you came here today, but
maybe you also weren’t thinking how skillful and mighty Jesus is.

Following Jesus, clinging to him, is how we will receive
eternal life. Jesus is how we will stand in the judgement and be welcomed into
heaven instead of going to hell, which is what we all deserve. Jesus makes us
well.

Now the God of peace himself
sanctify you completely. May your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept
blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is
faithful, and he will surely do it.