And the scandal of security
Proper 5A  |  Matthew 9:9-13,18-26

What an interesting way to introduce a new character to our story. Jesus is “walking along” and sees Matthew. He appears to be just a guy. It says he is “sitting at the tax booth,” which implies he is a tax collector.

Now, it doesn’t say that he’s a tax collector, mind you. But the plausible deniability is extremely low. People don’t just sit in tax booths. Especially when people are taught to reject tax collectors. People who don’t want to be associated with tax collecting avoid sitting in tax collecting booths.

If you’re sitting at a booth at the Pride festival, it doesn’t mean you’re gay. But it does mean you’re cool with people who are. In other words, we’re splitting the wrong hairs.

The Evangelist paints this picture for us because it is, in some ways better than the alternative. Because Jesus doesn’t define Matthew by what he does for a living. But how he behaves in the world.

Therefore, Matthew isn’t a tax collector. Jesus sees a man sitting at a tax booth collecting taxes. And he sees this man as a disciple.

Parsing the Dinner Guests

It isn’t long before they happen to be eating dinner with people we call tax collectors and sinners.

Again, the incidental character of these events might lead us to conclude that we can’t be certain of them. Even as they are far too coincidental to be accidents.

This game our minds play with the truth has been well-honed by the scientific method, recent legal arguments, and political debate.

Just as it doesn’t explicitly say that Matthew is a tax collector, it doesn’t say that these are Matthew’s associates. It doesn’t need to. Because we know they are. When outcasts hear that they are welcome someplace, they’re inclined to show up there. Especially if that communion is what they crave. What they’ve been denied.

Misplaced Accuracy

I’m sure few of us read this passage this morning and said to ourselves “Well, it doesn’t actually say he’s a tax collector.” Most of us connect the dots with confidence. But that isn’t always the case.

This is part of the great struggle of our moment. We intertwine accuracy with certainty and objectivity while defining truth as provable. These methodological priorities have served us well for a long time. But they now prevent us from comprehending the whole truth.

We don’t mind calling Matthew a tax collector because tradition does. But we blanch at naming the racism in our communities and our tax code. We like using the wiggle room to avoid talking about it. And taking responsibility for it.

Apolitical is Avoidance

Jesus, of course, knows that there is going to be fallout. You eat with people you’re not allowed to eat with, you’re bound to hear about it.

You put up a sign, a flag, or some other marker showing your willingness to not only welcome all people but dignify them—you know there will be something. There always is. It is not only predictable, it is predictably loud. And angry.

Saying nothing is safe. So is inviting “normal” people. Of course, that isn’t proclaiming the gospel to all people. And Jesus’s command to take up our cross and follow him to death—isn’t an invitation to safety.

And we know that. We know that. But we pair it with an idea of being nice and apolitical. And we try to split the difference. But that isn’t actually the gospel. 

It’s telling that we struggle with our own version of eating with tax collectors and sinners. Because we ultimately define “take up your cross” as “too political”.

Everything about Jesus is political. And his command to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves is political. His command to make disciples of all nations is political. And that command to take up our cross and follow him is political.

Our attempts to be apolitical are political statements. And they are fundamental rejections of Jesus’s command to love, serve, and share the Good News. Three different commands to be political when it is easier to do the opposite.

And we use an obsession with certainty as a means of avoiding that truth. Because we can’t be sure we’re doing the right thing.

The Second Half

In the second half of this story, Jesus heals a woman and brings a young woman back from death.

We might easily classify them as healing stories. And, other than the fact that the evangelist tells them as occurring at the same time, the only real connection between them is that they pair a young woman and a somewhat older woman. 

What we’re missing, however, is how transgressive Jesus’s healing stories are. How political he is being. How he helps people he’s not supposed to help. And doing so in ways that others do not.

And he is confronted for doing these things. And yet also for not having his disciples fast very often. They think Jesus has broken priorities. He cares too much about outsiders that he doesn’t care enough for the insiders, perhaps.

What is far more striking is the suffering that Jesus is relieving. The suffering of the outcast and the parent. Suffering that we put below our precious rules and tell people to simply “get over it.”

And the suffering that really sticks is the woman’s.

For twelve years she has suffered. That is a really long time. Women who suffer from endometriosis experience crippling pain for half of every month. Half of their existence. Left untreated, it can lead to lethal complications. Often doctors tell them to “live with it.” Tell them to just take ibuprofen.

Other health concerns, most famously fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome are treated like such mysteries that maybe they’re psychosomatic. Many doctors, believing the pain is in their heads, won’t actually treat them. So getting millions of these women healthcare becomes political.

Because their doctors made it political by denying them care.

This problem is three times worse for women of color, particularly black women, who are, on average, left to suffer in hospital rooms longer and given fewer opportunities for life-saving treatments. Black women are three times as likely as white women to die in childbirth. 

Black women are ignored, left far longer without treatment, and distrusted at alarming rates.

We receive this story that is not only about a woman who was healed by Jesus. But a woman who was ignored by the community’s healers for twelve years. 

Who is suffering in our neighborhood?

That’s the question we need to ask. Not just of one another, but of our neighbors.

This month, our attention turns to the LGBTQ+ community. Where the question of suffering invites both historic and current experiences.

There is also a diversity of challenges within this big bucket of sex and gender identity. Some around education and experience. Others face legal and political persecution by our state government.

And I’m sure all of them face some version of “get over it”. Because we don’t want to talk about it. Seems “too political.” As if the political persecution isn’t political. Or as if the political divining rod resets at neutral inside the church doors. We may as well be saying Yes, people are dying out there, but we’re not literally killing them here. Even as our silence kills people out there. Our neutrality kills people out there.

This is eating with the marginalized.

Transgressing the boundaries of our comfortable culture to relieve the suffering of others.

Suffering isn’t inevitable. Or inherent to certain people. 

This suffering occurs because people like us cause it or prolong it.

Which means that people cause this. And people can change it. We can change it.

This is ultimately what Jesus is doing when he eats with outcasts and heals the ignored. He transgresses the religious, cultural, and social boundaries of his world. He focuses not on who we are, but how we are in the world.

And he lives with a vision that all people are one. That all people are on the same team. Because we all share one creation in the image of God.

Who we are doesn’t matter to the mission. Because we aren’t defined by religion, sex, race, gender, or creed. Our ability, temperament, or political identity don’t define us.

What matters is what we do. And we’re commanded to love our neighbors as ourselves. And if laws make that love impossible? Then we need to change them. If church traditions prevent that? We change them.

That’s the burden and miraculous grace of the cross. And with the Spirit, we can make love, true love, reign.

And if we can, then we must do it.